The Salesforce for Forecast integration has a variety of useful functionalities to help you manage your sales from Salesforce Opportunity to Forecast Project. Once the integration is setup, you can proceed with bringing over opportunities from Salesforce and turning them into projects in Forecast.
This article includes:
Manually enabling the opportunity to project sync
Once the Salesforce for Forecast integration is set up, all of the opportunity stages already configured in Salesforce will display in Forecast, under the Salesforce integration menu. Administrators can then manually select at which stage, sales opportunities in Salesforce, need to be brought over and converted to projects in Forecast, directly from the Salesforce integration page.
To select when an opportunity should be turned into a project in Forecast
- Click on Admin in the top bar.
- Select Integrations from the dropdown.
- Click on Salesforce to open the integration page.
- The Salesforce menu will now open together with all of the opportunity stages and other options available within the Salesforce integration. The stages have a number of columns with details for the stages. Those are:
- Order: The order of the opportunity stage from Salesforce.
- Name: The name of the opportunity stage.
- Project Stage in Forecast: The project stage to which the opportunity stage should map once the project is created.
- Salesforce Probability, shows the probability of the opportunity when it is in the corresponding stage.
- Forecast Probability: Shows the probability of the project in Forecast, based on the settings.
- Create Project: indicates whether or not an opportunity reaching this stage should be created in Forecast as a project.
- Click on the 'Create Project' toggle to sync a particular opportunity stage into Forecast so as to enable the opportunities from Salesforce that fall under that stage to be converted into Forecast projects.
Automatically creating Forecast Projects from Salesforce Opportunities
An opportunity in Salesforce will only be created in Forecast when it is put into a stage in Salesforce which has been selected in Forecast as eligible for creating a project. The default setup is that the lowest order opportunity stage is set to create a project in Forecast. This means that if one of the opportunity stages from Salesforce has the lowest percentage of success, Forecast will by default mark it for project creation. Since that opportunity stage has the lowest chance of succeeding, every other opportunity will also set the project to the "Opportunity" project stage in Forecast.
To enable project creation for a Salesforce opportunity stage in Forecast
- Click on Admin in the top bar.
- Select Integrations from the dropdown.
- Click on Salesforce to open the integration page.
- Locate the Salesforce logo and click on it.
- Click on the button under the Create project column on the stage that you wish.
Once the project is created, it will be moved to the corresponding Forecast stage when moved to an opportunity stage with a different stage than the previous one (eg. a project moving from "Qualification" to "Id. Decision Makers" will move that project from "Opportunity" to "Planning" if those are the Forecast stages selected for those Salesforce opportunity stages).
Customizing the opportunity sync conditions
If Salesforce opportunities should not be created as Forecast projects solely based on their stage, it is possible to customize the condition with which opportunities get synced, by specifying a Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL) query to work as a condition.
Once the SOQL query is saved, every trigger from the Salesforce opportunities changing stage will have the condition checked against it, in addition to the configuration of the opportunity stage table. This means that whenever a new opportunity moves under a stage in which it has been indicated that it should be made into a project, the system will check the conditions that were added to decide whether or not a project will be created.
For the condition to be successfully saved, it has to be valid SOQL syntax (as verified by your Salesforce instance). Therefore we recommend developing the condition in a developer console in the Salesforce instance and then copying and pasting it to Forecast.
To specify a SOQL query to work as a condition
- Click on Admin in the top bar.
- Select Integrations from the dropdown.
- Click on Salesforce to open the integration page.
- Locate the Salesforce logo and click on it.
- Scroll until you come across the Opportunity condition.
- Set it to Enable.
- On the text field enter a condition, some of those conditions could be:
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OPTION 1: SELECT COUNT() FROM Opportunity WHERE Id = <OpportunityId> AND Id IN (SELECT OpportunityId FROM OpportunityLineItem WHERE Quantity > 10,0 AND Product2Id = '01t09000001LcVQAA0'). Checks that the opportunity has more than 10 quantity of a specified product.
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OPTION 2: SELECT COUNT() FROM Opportunity WHERE Id = <OpportunityId> AND Name LIKE 'PRIORITY%'. Checks that the opportunity has the prefix 'PRIORITY'
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OPTION 3: SELECT COUNT() FROM Opportunity WHERE Id = <OpportunityId> AND Amount >= 50000. Checks that the opportunity has at least an amount of 50.000
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- Click on Save to save the conditions.
Note:
- The condition is considered passed if it returns more than zero results.
- The opportunity which the trigger is regarding (ie. the opportunity that was updated) can be referred to by id with <OpportunityId>.
- When saving, the query is run against your Salesforce instance "/query" endpoint, to check that the syntax is valid. The condition is considered valid for any 2XX status code, regardless of the number of results.
Applying and editing projects templates for the opportunity sync
With the integration, it is possible to select any existing projects in Forecast as templates and export them to Salesforce. These templates can then be selected to be applied when a new opportunity syncs from Salesforce to Forecast as a project. This will help with avoiding manual work, especially if the team is performing routine tasks for every opportunity created.
There are four stages involved with this process, enabling the section Forecast Project Template, configuring the project templates in Forecast, exporting them, and finally selecting the appropriate template for the appropriate opportunity.
Enabling the Forecast Project Template section is necessary so that users can select the project template that the opportunity should copy when it comes over as a project in Forecast.
To enable the Forecast Project Template section in Salesforce
- 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).
- From the available fields, find the Forecast Project Template section and drag it into Opportunity Information field.
- (Optional) Repeat the same process for the Forecast Project field which will allow the user to view which project in Forecast this opportunity falls under.
- Click on Save in the fields section to save the changes and exit.
Now that the field is available in Salesforce, the user can begin configuring templates in Forecast and exporting them to Salesforce. Configuring templates includes selecting projects that will act as templates for Salesforce opportunities and selecting which settings those templates should retain.
To select and configure a project template
- Click on Admin in the top bar.
- Select Integrations from the dropdown.
- Click on Salesforce to open the integration page.
- Locate the Salesforce logo and click on it.
- Scroll until you come across the Project Template field.
- Click on the slider to enable templates.
- Select a project that will act as a default template from the dropdown button.
- Change the reference (optional).
- Click on the green plus button to save.
- Click on your profile icon in the top right corner of the screen from anywhere on the platform.
- Click on Admin. This will take you to the Admin panel.
- While on the Admin panel click on the Integrations tab.
- Scroll until you come across the Project Template field.
- Click on any of the available options, such as workflow columns, all tasks and phases, all team members, and more.
- Click on your profile icon in the top right corner of the screen from anywhere on the platform.
- Click on Admin. This will take you to the Admin panel.
- While on the Admin panel click on the Integrations tab.
- Locate the Salesforce logo and click on it.
- Scroll until you come across the Project Template field.
- Click on the Default button at the end of the project line that you wish to be the default project template.
Now that templates are configured, the user has to export them to Salesforce so that they can be selected for each opportunity. Keep in mind that if a template is not chosen by the user and the Opportunity lands on a stage where a project will be created for it in Forecast the 'default' template will be applied.
To export the template to Salesforce
- Click on Admin in the top bar.
- Select Integrations from the dropdown.
- Click on Salesforce to open the integration page.
- Scroll until you come across the Project Template field.
- Click on the Export to Salesforce button and after a moment the template will be exported.
Manual linking and unlinking of Forecast projects with Salesforce opportunities
With the integration, it is possible to manually link and unlink Forecast projects from Salesforce opportunities. From the project settings page, opportunities can be manually selected from a dropdown to link that Forecast project to that Salesforce opportunity. Once linked, data is sent to your Salesforce instance, as when a project would be created from an opportunity entering a configured opportunity stage as described above.
To manually link a Forecast project with a Salesforce opportunity
- Click on Projects in the top bar.
- Select All Projects from the dropdown.
- Click on a project to open it.
- In the left side panel, click on Settings.
- Click on Integrations.
- Find the Salesforce integration field.
- Click on the dropdown field and select the Salesforce opportunity you wish to link to this project.
To manually unlink a Forecast project from a Salesforce opportunity
If a Forecast project should no longer be linked to a Salesforce opportunity, it can be manually unlinked.
- Click on Projects in the top bar.
- Select All Projects from the dropdown.
- Click on a project to open it.
- In the left side panel, click on Settings.
- Click on Integrations.
- Locate the Salesforce integration section.
- Click on the red Unlink button to unlink the Forecast Project.
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