Setting Up Sales Activities

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to set up sales activities to streamline processes and boost productivity

Configure Sales Activities

Productivity and Activity Management 

Prioritize tasks and maximize productivity to get the most out of the day. SAP's Activity Management highlights activities for every customer interaction.

As a business user, access the Activity Manager and the Task Manager from the main menu.

The SAP home page shows the search bar with the word manager.” There are two options highlighted: Task Manager and Activity Manager.

Use the Activity Manager

The Activity Manager page features three icons for scheduling, preparing, and managing appointments.

The Activity Manager enables to:

  • Manage appointments directly from the Calendar.
  • Prepare for upcoming appointments using the Appointment Insights and Relationship Intelligence.
  • Schedule both meetings and phone calls making the scheduling events user-friendly and consistent with other external applications.
The Task Manager page features several tabs, such as My Lists, My Day, and the Task, with pre-visit meetings, overview, related entities, notes, attachments, and others.

The Task Manager enables sales representatives to:

  • Manage all tasks from an easy-to-use new Task Manager application.
  • Focus on active and overdue tasks with two separate task views, My Day and My Planned.
  • Create and complete tasks with one click.
  • Complete action-oriented phone calls and email tasks using set leading actions.

Use Prerequisites for Administrator Activity Settings

The All Settings tab highlights the Tasks, Appointments, and Calendar.

As a prerequisite, administrators need to create business roles for the business users responsible for making appointments, doing tasks, and using the calendar. Then, assign the necessary business services to these business roles.

These prerequisites are the business services related to appointments, tasks, and calendars:

  • appointmentservice to the business roles responsible for activating appointments.
  • activitymanagementservice and appointmentservice to the business roles responsible for seeing a list view of appointments.
  • taskservice to the business roles responsible for activating tasks.
  • activitymanagementservice and taskservice to the business roles responsible for seeing a list view of tasks.
  • calendarservice to the business roles that will need to use a calendar.

If not configured yet, the administrator also configures the following settings:

  • For Tasks, the administrator configures general settings and then task categories.
  • For Appointments, the administrator configures the general settings, appointment categories, the number range for appointment IDs, and the Party Schema, that is, the structure and organization of parties involved with appointments.
  • In Calendar, the administrator configures card colors and working-day and holiday calendars for different countries/regions.

Administrator Sets Appointments in General Settings

When creating an appointment, the system sets the default duration to one hour, the default category to Meeting, and the priority to Urgent.

However, administrators redefine these default appointment settings by:

  1. Navigating to the User Menu
  2. Choosing Settings
  3. Selecting All Settings
  4. Finding the Appointments widget
  5. Using the General Settings.
The General Settings page for appointments highlights the appointment duration, category, and priority.

This action allows administrators the flexibility to use the user's default values and pre-populate business users' appointments.

Create Appointment Categories

An administrator creates new appointment categories beyond the default categories, Meeting and Outbound Phone Call.

The Appointment Categories show the appointment categories and highlight the plus icon to create a new appointment category and the actions to delete it.

Note

Administrators can delete existing custom categories, but the standard system prevents them from deleting the two default categories for Meetings and Outbound Phone Calls.

Create a Number Range

The administrator configures a new number range for appointment IDs.

The Number Range page highlights the configuration of a new number range, including the range identifier, prefix, from-to range, number range status, an edit action, and a plus icon to add a new number range.

The number range includes a distinct set of character strings and generates unique appointment IDs.

Note

Changing a previously assigned number range can lead to errors in the system.

Appointment Party Schema Configuration

The party schema configuration determines the structure and organization of the parties involved in appointments. Parties include individuals, such as the organizer, and entities. Also, it includes owners, accounts, contacts, and other entities related to an appointment.

Through the party role assignment feature, administrators define relationships between parties, each party’s role, and the information to capture for each. This configuration guarantees that appointments correctly reflect the roles and responsibilities of all parties involved. It helps improve the overall organization and efficiency of the process.

The Party Schema page highlights the appointment and party role assignments, including whether they are active or mandatory. It also highlights whether they are active in the party role determination steps as an organizer.

The administrator configures the party schema for appointments: It includes the following:

  1. Activate or deactivate specific values.
  2. Choose which party role is mandatory.
  3. Review the determination steps for each party role and turn steps on or off based on the requirements.

Manage Tasks

Administrators enable and set the default start dates and times for newly created tasks, the default reminder for a task, and configure the default category and priority for a task.

  • Users keep their own default settings for the Task Create, default filters for My Day, and My Planned. This overrides the administrator defaults set in the system configuration.
  • Sales representatives customize the Task Manager to their needs using the defaults set by their administrators.
The General Settings for the Task page highlight the reminder, category, and priority for managing tasks.

The default reminder options are:

  • No reminder
  • 5 minutes
  • 15 minutes
  • 30 minutes
  • 1 hour
  • 2 hours before
  • 4 hours before
  • 1 day before

The default category options are:

  • Text Message
  • External Channel
  • General Task
  • Email
  • Outbound Phone Call

The default priority options are:

  • Immediate
  • Urgent
  • Normal
  • Low
The reminder option shows that the enable reminder is on, with options in the drop-down menu. The category options show the general task and other options in the drop-down menu. The priority options show the task's default priority, along with options in the drop-down menu.

Manage Task Categories

The system comes with four default task categories that users can't change or delete:

  • External Channel
  • General Task
  • Outbound Phone Call
  • Email
The Category page highlights the task categories, including the code and description, if it’s active, the plus icon to add a new task category, and actions to delete them.

An administrator needs to add new task categories or change existing custom ones.

Note

To create new task categories, administrators need to use a code that starts with Z and includes at least five characters. The standard system prevents users from deleting existing task categories.

Calendar Appointment Priority Configuration

The administrator links appointment-priority entries by color. Also, sales representatives customize the colors of calendar card entries based on priority or category.

The Card Colors page highlights the card color configurations, including the activity type, parameter, parameter value, color, plus icon to add a new card color, and trash icon to delete it.

Configure Working Day and Holiday Calendars 

SAP Sales Cloud Version 2 offers improved flexibility by enabling administrators to configure custom working days and holiday calendars tailored to different countries/regions.

Administrators assign the following business services to business roles that need to work with calendars:

  • Add the Global Calendar (sap.crm.service.calendarService) to business roles and view appointments and visit days.
  • Add the Working Day Calendar (sap.crm.service.workingDayCalendarService) to business roles that need to define and customize working day calendars for different countries/regions.
  • Add the Holiday Calendar (sap.crm.service.holidayCalendarService) to business roles that need to define and customize holiday calendars for different countries/regions.
  • Enable the Calendar, Team Calendar, Working Day Calendars, and Holiday Calendars for all business users' roles that work with calendars, including the administration roles.
  • Enable the Calendar Administration application for administration roles.

Configure a Working Day Calendar

To set up a Working Day Calendar:   

  1. Navigate to the Working Day Calendar and select the plus button (Create).
  2. Enter the Working Calendar Name, Working Calendar Code, Valid From year, and Valid To year.
  3. Select the countries/regions and click Next.
  4. Use the Working Day switch to select the working days.
  5. Select the first day of the week and select Next.
  6. Select the appropriate holiday calendar and click Next.
  7. Review the summary and click Finish to save the working day calendar.
The Working Day Calendars page highlights the Working Day Calendar Description, Code, Type, Holiday Calendar Description, Actions to copy, and the plus icon to add a new working day calendar.

Configure a Holiday Calendar

To set up a Holiday Calendar, administrators need to :   

  1. Navigate to Holiday Calendars and select the plus button (Create).
  2. Enter the Holiday Calendar Name, Holiday Calendar Code, Valid From year, and Valid To year.
  3. Select holidays.
  4. Review the summary and click Finish to save the holiday calendar.
The Holiday Calendars page highlights the Holiday Day Name, Code, Regions, Type, Actions to copy, and the plus icon to add a new holiday calendar.

Configure Appointments Simulation

If a business needs to add a new category to appointments, the following demonstration shows administrators how to configure appointments.

ExerciseStart Exercise

Summary

Throughout this lesson, you learned how to configure these functionalities:

  • Activity and Task Management: It explores how sales representatives use the Activity Manager to schedule and prepare appointments, including the Task Manager, which helps organize, prioritize, and complete sales tasks efficiently.
  • Administrator Prerequisites: It covers the need for administrators to create business roles and assign relevant services (appointments, tasks, calendar) before users manage activities.
  • Appointments Configuration: It explores how administrators set default values, create appointment categories, configure unique ID number ranges, and define party schemas to structure appointment participants and roles.
  • Task Configuration: It outlines how to set default reminders, categories, and priorities for tasks, and how users customize these settings. Also, how to recognize the system’s default task categories and rules for adding custom ones.
  • Calendar Management: It reviews how administrators configure working day and holiday calendars for different regions, assign related services to business roles, and manage calendar color coding for appointment priorities.
  • Customization and Flexibility: It recognizes that both administrators and sales reps can tailor activity, task, and calendar settings to meet specific business and personal productivity needs.

Learning

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