Opportunity Workflows

This chapter covers setting up and managing opportunity workflows. It includes the following topics:

About Opportunity Workflows

Opportunity workflows enhance lead routing and provide sales professionals with greater visibility into their sales activities. These workflows are executed from the Opportunities screen. An opportunity record describes important information about the opportunity such as the account, potential revenue of the deal, the probability of closure, the lead status and sales stage, the sales team primary, and the expected close date. The Opportunities screen allows you to manage and track information associated with a potential revenue-generating event.

Opportunity workflows allow managers to manage opportunities by tracking potential high-income opportunities, informing managers about sales teams actions regarding an opportunity, and notifying sales team when an opportunity meets a set of criteria.

The predefined opportunity workflows allow you to use email to capture information related to the opportunity and distribute timely notifications to key members of the sales team. These workflows help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales cycle while also providing sales representatives and sales managers greater visibility into sales activities. The email notification process is activated only if the opportunity has a possible revenue of more than $50,000.

The seven predefined opportunity workflows are:

Opportunity Assigned Notification Process
Opportunity Inactive Notification Process
Opportunity Lost Notification Process
Opportunity Pending Notification Process
Opportunity Won Notification Process
Create rerouted Oppty Activity
Get Manager Email

You can use Siebel Audit Trail to track the changes that have been made to the opportunity records. For information about configuring, implementing, testing, and monitoring workflows, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide. For more information about how to audit opportunities, see Siebel Audit Trail

Setting Up Opportunity Notification Workflows

Follow these steps to correctly set up the opportunity workflows:

In Siebel Tools, revise all Siebel workflows so that they are editable and have a status of In Progress. All Siebel workflows are initially inactive and cannot be edited. Make any necessary changes and activate the workflows. For more information about how to revise Siebel workflows, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.
Verify that the Workflow Server component and the Communication Manager component are enabled and running. For detailed instructions, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network.

Note: For Siebel CRM product releases 8.1.1.9 and later and for 8.2.2.2 and later, the system requirements and supported platform certifications are available from the Certifications tab on My Oracle Support. For information about Certifications, see article 1492194.1 (Article ID) on My Oracle Support.
Create an Opportunity Notification Profile communications profile for the Internet SMTP/POP3 Server driver. Enter the appropriate values in the From Address and in the SMTP Server parameter overrides for the profile. For more information about implementing and configuring outbound communications integrations for your Siebel Business Applications, including creating profiles for the Internet SMTP/POP3 Server driver, see Siebel Email Administration Guide.
Set up and activate the workflows and policies.
- Activate the opportunity workflow processes. For more information, see Activating the Opportunity Notification Workflow Processes and Policies.
- Modify Opportunity workflows, as necessary. For more information, see Modifying Opportunity Workflows.
- Set up the Create Reroute Oppty Activity. For more information, see Rerouting an Opportunity Using Workflows.
- Set up the Get Manager Email. For more information, see Setting Up the Get Manager Email.

Load the run-time events for the emails. For more information about run-time events, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.
Generate the triggers. For more information about how to generate triggers, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.
Run the workflow monitoring agent. For more information about the workflow monitoring agent, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.

Activating the Opportunity Notification Workflow Processes and Policies

There are five different workflow processes that generate automatic emails. All of these processes must have the communication profile specified.

Opportunity Assigned Notification Process
Opportunity Inactive Notification Process
Opportunity Pending Notification Process
Opportunity Lost Notification Process
Opportunity Won Notification Process

The following procedure sets up this automatic notification process. For general instructions on how to set up workflows, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.

To set up the opportunity workflows

For each of these workflows, make sure to:
- Revise the workflow.
- Set the Communication Profile to Opportunity Notification Profile.
- Activate the workflow.
- Clear the Expiration field.

Opportunity Assigned Notification Process

This workflow sends an email message to both the primary sales representative and the sales representative’s direct manager when a new lead is assigned to a sales representative. The email provides the basic information about the opportunity, including the opportunity ID and account, the primary revenue amount, and the number of days allowed before the lead is withdrawn and rerouted. The sales representative is directed to the Opportunities screen for further details.

Opportunity Inactive Notification Process

This workflow sends out an email notice when the sales representative has accepted a lead by changing the Status field to Accept, but has not taken any action on the lead for 30 consecutive days. An email reminder is sent to both the sales representative and the sales representatives direct manager. The notice reminds the sales representative that if no action is taken on the lead within seven days, then the lead is withdrawn from the queue and rerouted.

The default time lapse between when the lead is accepted (or last worked on) and when the email is delivered is 30 days. To modify this default value, edit the Duration Days property for the workflow in Siebel Tools.

Note: In the preconfigured application, reassignment of leads is manually executed. You might want to create a workflow that automatically reassigns the lead to a sales manager or administrator after a specified amount of time.

Opportunity Pending Notification Process

This workflow sends an email notice when the sales representative has not responded or taken action on the opportunity for five days. This notification occurs when the sales representative has not changed the Status field from pending to accept, reject, or reroute. The email is sent to both the primary sales representative and the sales representative’s direct manager. The email reminds the sales representative to act on the lead or risk having the lead withdrawn from the queue.

To modify the time lapse between lead assignment and email delivery

Navigate to the Administration - Business Process screen, then the Workflow Policies view.
Query for the Email Notification of Pending Oppty policy.
Verify that this policy is activated, and modify the Duration and Units fields.
Activate the workflow, and run the Workflow Monitor Agent.
For more information, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.

Opportunity Lost Notification Process

This workflow sends an email message to both the primary sales representative and the sales representative’s direct manager when an opportunity is closed with a loss. The status of the opportunity must change to lost before the email notice is generated. The email refers to the Opportunities screen and asks the sales representative to update the Reason field.

Opportunity Won Notification Process

This workflow sends an email message to both the primary sales representative and the sales representative’s direct manager when an opportunity is closed with a win. The status of the opportunity must change to win before the email notice is generated. The email refers to the Opportunities screen and asks the sales representative to update the Reason field.

Rerouting an Opportunity Using Workflows

The Create Rerouted Oppty Activity workflow is executed when a sales representative receives a lead and changes the Status field to Reroute. The workflow creates a new Activity record with a Type of Reroute for the designated sales operator. This informs the sales operator that a specific opportunity has been requested for rerouting. All reassigned opportunities are listed in the Activities view as rerouted activities.

Note: If a sales manager or sales administrator is responsible for rerouting leads, then you can modify the workflow so that the Create Rerouted Oppty Activity is assigned to the sales manager or administrator. You can also create a workflow that reassigns the lead to a sales manager or administrator.

To set up the opportunity reroute activity

Revise the Create Rerouted Oppty Activity workflow process.
Replace the value of the Default String field in the Sales Operator Login record with the username of the sales operator to receive the activity. Remember that the username is case-sensitive.

Modifying Opportunity Workflows

An administrator can modify the opportunity workflows. The administrator can make the following changes:

Modify the text of the email.
Change the notification time.
Set the lead notification restrictions.
Add other Siebel fields.

Note: The opportunity workflows are shipped as seed data. To modify a workflow, make a copy of the original workflow, and then modify the copy.

To modify the text of an opportunity workflow email

In the Send Out Emails step of the workflow, edit the value of the Message Body input argument.
The text includes field placeholders for data from the opportunity record. These placeholders appear as follows:

“+[Placeholder field]+"

Restricting Conditions for Delivery of Emails

Complete the following procedure to restrict conditions for delivery of emails.

To restrict conditions for delivery of emails

Navigate to the Administration - Business Process screen, then the Workflow Policies view.
Select one of the following email notification policies:
- Email Notification of Assigned Oppty
- Email Notification of Inactive Oppty
- Email Notification of Lost Oppty
- Email Notification of Pending Oppty
- Email Notification of Won Oppty
In the Conditions list, select a condition, or create a new condition.

Change the values in the Operation and Value fields to modify the condition.

For example, to send email notifications for leads that have a high lead quality, create the record in the following table.

Field	Value
Condition Field	Opportunity Lead Quality
Operation	=
Value	1-excellent

Stop Sending Email Notifications to a Sales Representative’s Manager

Complete the following procedure to stop sending email notifications to a sales representative’s manager.

To stop sending email notifications to a sales representative’s manager

Edit the workflow so that there is a single connector between Start and End.
Delete all other arrows.

Setting Up the Get Manager Email

This process identifies the manager of the sales representative so that the manager can receive a copy of the five email notifications that are delivered. Because the Get Manager Email process is part of the five notification processes, the Get Manager Email process must be activated for the other processes to function correctly.

An email is sent to the sales representative and the appropriate manager for each of the notification workflows.