The Salesforce for Forecast integration contains a variety of useful tools to help you manage your sales from Salesforce Opportunity to Forecast Project. While it is possible to view Salesforce data in Forecast, you are also able to view Forecast data in Salesforce. The article goes over the data that appears in Salesforce and where you can find it.
This article includes:
Displaying Forecast projects as opportunities in Salesforce
It is possible to display Forecast projects as opportunities related to an Account in Salesforce. To do so, the opportunity layout must be edited directly in Salesforce to display the Forecast fields.
To display projects as opportunities
- Go to your Salesforce instance
- Go to Setup (Click the cog in the top right and select Setup)
- In the left-hand sidebar, find the Object Manager
- In the list of objects, find Opportunity and click it
- Click Page Layouts in the left-hand menu
- Select Opportunity Layout (or if you have changed the default page, choose your new default).
- Place the desired fields to display with the drag-and-drop menu option.
We recommend that you create a new section and name it Forecast Project, to distinguish the Forecast-related fields from the Salesforce ones.
To create a Forecast Project section
- Drag the element labeled Section from the grey menu at the top and drop it under the other sections just under the Opportunity Detail.
- Name it Forecast project once the section properties appear after dropping the section.
- Click OK when you are ready to proceed.
- Click on Save in the top right and view your changes by navigating back to the opportunity page.
Viewing Account related projects
Included in the package is also a Visualforce Page which displays the list of related Forecast Projects (via opportunities for an Account) from an accounts' page layout. The Visualforce page is called Account Related Forecast Projects.
Understanding the Forecast data sync (in Salesforce)
Phases of a Forecast project record in Salesforce
There are three distinct phases in which the Forecast Project record in Salesforce will be updated:
- Opportunity: the first phase starts as a Salesforce opportunity triggers the creation of the corresponding Forecast Project in the "Opportunity" stage. When the opportunity changes stage, it will also be updated with the most recent information from the Forecast project. In addition, a periodic update will run when changes are made to the project in Forecast.
- Project: the opportunity is won and the project is moved to the "Planning" stage. The periodic update will be the sole way in which the information in salesforce is updated.
- Archived: the project is moved to either "Done" or "Halted", which consequently locks all of the data in Forecast. This manually triggers a data update, to ensure that the "final" data in Salesforce is the same as in Forecast.
Asides from the initial creation of a project, all of the data flow from Forecast to Salesforce. An exception to this rule is that the probability is synchronized from Salesforce to Forecast (if possible).
Forecast Project record
Once an opportunity has a corresponding project in Forecast, we create a Forecast Project record in salesforce and link it to the opportunity. The Forecast Project record contains the budget number, progress, and some overall data, all of which are also reflected in the opportunity object
| Field | Description | SF API Name* |
| Forecast Project Name | Name of the project | Name |
| Start Date | Start date of the project |
__Start_Date__c
|
| End Date | End date of the project |
__End_Date__c
|
| Project Progress | Project progress |
__Progress__c
|
| Stage | Which stage the project is in |
__Stage__c
|
| Status | The raw status of the project (RED, YELLOW or GREEN) |
__Status__c
|
| Project Status | The status of the project interpreted to colors. |
__Project_Status__c
|
| Project URL | URL to the project |
__Project_Url__c
|
| Project Contact | Contact person of the project |
__Project_Contact__c
|
| Baseline budget numbers | Baseline revenue, cost, profit and margin. |
__Baseline_Revenue__c
__Baseline_Cost__c
__Baseline_Profit__c
__Baseline_Margin__c
|
| Planned budget numbers | Planned revenue, cost, profit and margin. |
__Planned_Revenue__c
__Planned_Cost__c
__Planned_Profit__c
__Planned_Margin__c
|
| Actual budget numbers | Actual revenue, cost, profit and margin. |
__Actual_Revenue__c
__Actual_Cost__c
__Actual_Profit__c
__Actual_Margin__c
|
| Forecast budget numbers | Forecast revenue, cost, profit and margin. |
__Forecast_Revenue__c
__Forecast_Cost__c
__Forecast_Profit__c
__Forecast_Margin__c
|
| Invoiced | Invoiced total on project. |
__Invoiced__c
|
| Invoiced paid | Paid of the invoiced total. |
__Invoiced_Paid__c
|
| Total scope | Scoped hours for the project. |
__Total_Scope__c
|
| Approved scope | Approved scoped hours for the project. |
__Approved_Scope__c
|
| Reported | Reported (registered) hours for the project. |
__Reported__c
|
| Remaining | Remaining hours on the project. |
__Remaining__c
|
These fields are exposed through the opportunity, so they can be added to page layouts as soon as the package is installed. You can find more information in our article on utilizing Salesforce components.
Viewing the Forecast Projects Report
With the package also comes a report displaying all of the Forecast Project records in Salesforce. The report is named Forecast Projects Report and is placed in the Forecast Project Reports folder in Salesforce. This report will list various numbers on existing Forecast projects in your Salesforce instance.
You are of course also able to create your own reports and include Forecast data in those, Salesforce permitting.
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