Each initiative can define its target market by specifying the criteria that must be satisfied before a customer is invited to participate in a program (see About Initiative Eligibility Criteria for more information). An initiative may also be targeted at a specific entity (or related object) for that customer; for example, assume a customer has two properties in two different states - one in State A and one in State B. The customer may only be invited to participate, or be eligible, for a program for their specific property located in State A. In this situation, each eligible customer may then be subjected to Related Object Criteria following the execution of Initiative Eligibility Criteria to determine which of their properties are eligible to participate in a program (meaning, have one lead generated just for the account if one of their properties meets the criteria or a lead generated for each of the customer’s eligible properties).

An initiative defines the related object(s) to associate with leads via the Object Nomination algorithm on the initiative business object. The lead generation process executes the object nomination algorithm after executing initiative eligibility criteria. The base-supplied Initiative parent business object (C1–Initiative) is configured with an object nomination algorithm that retrieves the premises that are associated with the account’s active and pending start service agreement’s service points. The algorithm applies the related object criteria (configured on the initiative) to each premise and if the premise is deemed eligible, it is returned as a related object for the lead.

Designing related object criteria can be easy or time-consuming. It all depends on the complexity of your business rules. The base product provides examples of related object criteria that looks for one or more premises to associate with a lead. One example checks for premises with a specific service point type. Another looks for a premise using its geographic value. For additional ways to find premises to link to a lead, implementations can either add specific related object criteria business objects (similar to the base samples) or extend the base-supplied Freeform Premise Criteria business object. The Freeform Premise Criteria business object provides flexibility in that the value to supply in the comparison field is driven by a Derive Value Algorithm Type. A number of these algorithm types are delivered with this business object. Your implementation can add to these algorithm types as needed. Refer to Designing Related Object Criteria for more details.

When you set up a related object criterion, you must define two things:

For the field to be compared, you can execute an algorithm to retrieve a field value or values from someplace else in the system; for example, retrieve a premise’s service point types for which the customer has service.

For the comparison method, select the operator to perform the comparison on the field to be compared. The result from the comparison will be TRUE, FALSE, or INSUFFICIENT DATA. Each of these results should specify the next action. The valid actions include:

Refer to Defining Related Object Criteria for an Initiative for more information.