22. Creating Forecast Types
Just now dive more deeply into these forecast settings and just keeping in mind that these different forecast types are just different ways of slicing and dicing data represented in it to you as it relates to forecast. And that’s being able to look at what is projected to happen revenue wise and also based on other types of forecast types as well. And so this one that we had set up out of the box here was Opportunity Revenue, revenue for the first default forecast type. If we click on that, we can’t added this as far as the forecast type, the measurement which is Revenue or the forecast date which is based on close day. But we can change the fields that show in the Opportunity related list. And so the different columns here would be Opportunity name and the account name that it’s related to, the amount, the stage probability, the forecast category as well, owner.
And you can move these around much like in any other instance of a field in Salesforce or a related list for that matter. You can select which columns which will be fields and move those over to the available columns or add additional. So I’m going to cancel out of this though, and let’s instead add an additional forecast type. It starts to make more sense as you create more forecast types and see them in action. And so we first would, in order to create another forecast type, is to select which of the following now we’ve got options for Opportunities or product families. We also have Opportunity revenue splits or overlay splits for Opportunity. And then as well, we can have Opportunity revenue by territory or Product family revenue by territory.
Now, speaking of seeing these in action, before we get into this further, let me show you what this looks like from the user interface for the one forecast type that we have. And I’ve clicked on the Forecast tab in the Sales application. And so you may want to look and see if you’ve got Forecasts in your Sales application, see if you remember how to add that. If you don’t have that how to add a tab to an app. Once you click on Forecast, though, and you can get to the Forecast tab either from the Sales application or once again from the App launcher and selecting all items and looking for forecast down here. Once you get to the Forecast tab, we’ve got the Forecast Opportunity Revenue Forecast and this is showing based on our settings that were set up in the previous lesson, the total of four quarters with the current quarter and the subsequent ones after that. And we’ve got the different forecast categories such as Closed Only or commit, best Case and Open Pipeline. And then as well, another thing to note is you can click this down arrow here and you can select other forecast types if you have them set up. We only have the one which is opportunity Revenue.
So we can’t select or toggle between different forecast types. Now, there are other settings display options here such as showing quoted percent attainment. We’ll go ahead and thought I added that, let’s see, let me uncheck that. Not really seeing a difference there. Not sure. So I don’t think I’ve got quota set up yet. So we’re not really seeing the tangible difference. So we could hide the quota column, which is this one here, by unchecking this, checkbox it refreshes, and then we’ve removed the quota column as well. And so that’s what these different forecast types look like. So let’s now return back to the other tab here to select a forecast type. Let’s select another forecast type related to opportunities and then we have options for revenue or quantity.
Now let me go ahead and plow through a few of these just to show how the screen refreshes based on what we select if we were instead of select forecast families, we’ve got some screen refreshes that happen and it just really depends on what’s available in these different forecast types opportunity, revenue splits. And a lot of this has to do as well with the different fields or columns on an object as far as what you’re showing in this related list, which this is, the related list or the forecast list. And so in our previous one, I read through a lot of those different fields or columns and you find those here. And so beyond these other options, opportunity overlay splits, not a lot of changes there opportunity revenue by territory, and a lot of these have revenue or quantity options and some have options in addition to revenue and quantity. And a lot of these have different options as far as forecast data types and some don’t have forecast data types. So let’s return back to opportunities and let’s select Opportunities Quantity. And there’s further notes here as well, depending on what you’re wanting to set up or choose. So it gives you more details on what these values are based upon.
If you select close date, for example, versus product date. So if you want to use dates and total prices or quantities and opportunity products, then you select Product Date and then for Schedule Date, you use dates and revenue amounts or quantities from product schedules, you would use Schedule Date. There’s also additional information here with these different help icons that don’t appear to be working for me at least. So I’m just going to go with close date for my forecast type and then for the fields to display or show in the opportunity list. I’ll just keep the default and we’ll click OK. All right, so here’s where it’s easy to miss and think, okay, I’ve saved my changes because you see this new forecast type in the list. But if you actually go into the interface and let’s refresh and see if we can see that in action and we’ve got our opportunity revenue forecast type.
We could click on this and see that we only still just have the one. And that’s because unfortunately, the UI doesn’t have a Save button visible here. You’ve got to scroll down and know, okay, in order for this to be committed to the database, I need to scroll all the way down to the bottom and click Save. And this gives you the opportunity as well to make other changes to forecast settings. My view is that this should be saved and persist because it is showing up here in the list. But if you go to the interface as you saw, it’s not showing up. So you got to actually click Save and then hope that that actually does the trick. So now it refreshes and it intuitively takes us to the setup home screen. Another kind of, I think, failure on salesforce’s part, but I digress.
So as far as just usability goes, now that is confusing and could be improved most assuredly. So let’s click back to this tab here. Refresh once again in the interface. From the Forecast tab, we’ve got the Opportunity Revenue for the forecast category or forecast type. I keep interchanging those terms, but this is forecast Types is what we’re setting up. But now we see that the save is what did the trick. We can switch over to Opportunity Quantity and see the screen refresh and see that type of forecast. And we see a quantity forecasted in a fiscal quarter two of fiscal year 2019, a quantity of 25. I don’t have a lot of data in this, but you do see this represented here. As far as the data that I’m responsible for and Opportunity owner for, in my open pipeline, I’ve got 25 units or quantity. Now, if I go back into revenue, then we see that the projected revenue for that is $4,925. So that’s how you can set up additional forecast types and toggle back and forth. Let’s go ahead and do another one now. And we go back into forecast settings and we’ll do one more real quickly. I know this is kind of running long, but we want to add another forecast type.
Let’s do one under Opportunity Revenue by Territory and bring in territories into the mix. And we select Revenue for the forecast measurement. The fields for the Opportunity list, we will click okay, taking the defaults, we have the third one listed here, Opportunity Revenue by Territory. And we’ll leave everything else the same and click Save.
And now we should have, if we return back to our Forecast tab, a third forecast type. So we will click the down arrow here. We have to refresh. And now let’s click the down arrow and we see the third one, Opportunity Revenue by Territory. All right. And so now we’re getting into some deeper complexities with forecasts. Forecasts aren’t available because you’re not a forecast manager on a territory or assigned to a territory without a forecast manager. So we need to set up a forecast manager in order to go deeper into forecast management. And so, in the next lesson, we will set up a forecast manager.
23. Setting a Forecast Manager on a Territory
Right. So now we’re getting into where forecasts start to overlap with territories. The issue that we encountered when we tried to have this forecast type of opportunity revenue by territory that did not display because it mentioned that we’re not a forecast manager on a territory or we’ve been assigned to a territory without a forecast manager. And so we’ve got to get into territories and access territory types and configure a forecast manager for a territory in order for this to display correctly. So let’s go into setup and let’s search for territories or territory territory models. And I think this is this year, next year. So we’ve got two territory models. We had this year which is archived, and then next year which is active. So let’s click on the next year territory model. And under here we have View hierarchy. Clicking the button we need to create a territory for this territory model. We’ll call this territory North American and then tabbing over, we’ll fill in the territory name and then for territory type here’s the two territory types that I was just looking at, geographic or business size. Let’s select geographic. Since our example is North American, the parent territory is the territory model of next year, which is the one that we were on. If I click the search here, you can expand all we only have next year.
This year one was not active and then we can enter a description and then the territory access levels. You can set different and varying degrees of access level for accounts, opportunities and cases. And so I’m more concerned with opportunities and accounts at this point more than cases because we’re dealing with forecasts that are on opportunities.
So I want to open this up a little bit. Rather than saying users in this territory cannot access opportunities that they do not own that are associated with accounts in the territory, I want to say users in this territory can view and edit all opportunities associated with accounts in the territory, regardless of who owns the opportunities. This is the most open of the three options for the opportunity access level. I’ll do the same for accounts and just for grins, we’ll do that as well for cases and click Save. So now we’ve got a territory model for North American or we have a hierarchy for the territory model of next year. And that hierarchy contains a territory hierarchy of North American.
Now we could create another territory underneath this and make the parent of this new territory North American and have this be underneath of that and have this be America, for example, make this geographic as well. And let’s just have this be the middle option as far as can view all opportunities or cases. And then for accounts, it’s view and edit accounts. Let’s just click Save on this one. So now if we view the hierarchy, we have the next year territory model and then viewing the hierarchy for the next year territory model. We have North American and then underneath it we have America because we have the parent territory.
Listed here under the America line item is a parent of North American. And so now we need to assign users to this territory model for the territory of North American. So we could create a manager here at this point and here’s the available users. Now these available users I believe would be users that have selected allow forecasting on their user records. So what I mean is that we’ve got integration user Jim Doe and Mike Wheeler myself. Let’s make Jim Doe assigned and myself assigned as well. And let’s click save. And so then we’ve got two assigned users.
And you notice this is forecast manager. Let’s edit Jim Doe. He cannot be specified as a role in a territory. Let’s try and edit myself and see if I can set myself as the manager and I can’t set up the role in the territory. So let me try the American. All right. Okay, so I overlooked this. So the forecast manager is set here under the information section of the territory. So let’s go back up to North American and let’s set the forecast manager here. So I just kind of spaced that. So let’s do the users that are available are those that have allowed forecasting set on their user records. So I’ve got Allow forecasting set on my user record, but I can select myself. So I’m just going to make myself the forecast manager and client.
