Using Sales Collaboration

Sales Collaboration can be set up to view your data in many different ways. Learn how to use Views to unlock the full power of Sales Collaboration.

Sales Collaboration allows you to view and manage your Sales plans into the future, broken down into monthly buckets.

Whenever you are using the Sales Collaboration module, you will need to have an Active View selected to build out your data.

The name of the view you are currently on can be seen at any time in the header bar's top right.

Active view in Sales Collaboration

Views in Sales Collaboration

The first time you come to Sales Collaboration, if you are the main administrator, you will need to configure the default view for your workspace. The next set of steps walks you through how to do that.

If you are a general user, the following steps can also be used to create your own personal views.

When you first go to the Sales Collaboration page, you will need to configure your page

To create new views, edit existing views, or even just to see the configuration of your views, you will need to select the 'Configure' option in the views menu.

1. Go to the option menu accessed via the button containing the current view in the top-right of the page and click on it.

2. Click on "Configure".

You can then either choose the view you wish to edit from the dropdown, or, select another option from the menu accessed via the ellipses.

Choose an existing view:

Choose from the extended menu:

The extended menu allows you to:

1. Add - add a new view

2. Duplicate - duplicate the existing view selected in the menu and then edit it

3. Edit - directly edit the currently selected view, or

4. Delete - delete the currently selected view

We'll first look at creating a new view.

Creating a View

When creating a new view, you'll want to select 'Add' from the extended menu found under the ellipses. (Note, if this is the first view being created, you will automatically be in 'Add' mode when you begin.)

We will now create a simple view as a starting point.

1. The first thing you'll then need to do is to give the view a name.

Give the new view a name

2. If you are an administrator you will can also set the view as a Workspace view so all users in your workspace can use it. (This will add a 'w' in brackets after your view name.)

1. Choose which Item Hierarchy Type and Customer Group Hierarchy Type you wish to use. If this is the first view you are creating, select the Default Item Hierarchy and Default Customer Group Hierarchy. Note: You can adjust this later as you start getting used to how hierarchies work.

Select item and customer group hierarchies

1. You'll want to choose the primary hierarchy layout to use. For now, let's choose "Display by Customer Groups". Note: You can adjust this later as you start getting used to how this page works.

Select the primary hierarchy layout

1. Next we want to choose our first "Row Type". Let's choose "Sale Type".

2. Once you have chosen "Sale Type", you'll want to choose which Sale Type you want to see on the first row. In our sample database, we have "Budget", "Forecast" and "History". We'll go with "Budget".

6. Leave "can edit?" unchecked. We do not want to edit the "Budget" Sale Type in Sales Collaboration.

7. Choose the "Calendar". In this example, we'll choose "FY24".

Adding a row to a Sales Collaboration view

8. Click the "Save" button.

9. Now, to show the data, go to the dropdown by the title of the page and click on the top level - 'All'.

To see data, click on a level in the hierarchy from the dropdown

We have now configured a very simple Sales Collaboration page that has one row, the Budget Sale Type.

Simple configuration for the Sales Collaboration page

In the left hand column, you can see Items. This is because we selected 'Display by Customer Groups' as our hierarchy layout. So this allows us to select what customer group level we want to view the data by (in the header) and thens shows us data at that customer group level for each item.

To see the data at a lower level, you can make a different selection in the Customer Group selector up the top and/or expand the items in the left hand column.

Sales Collaboration with the Item hierarchy expanded

Add a "History and Forecast" composite row

Let's add an additional row that combines year to date sales with forecast sales. We will also want to make the forecast portion of this row editable so we can update this with our forecasts.

1. Return to the Configure option in the top right menu and make sure you are still looking at the configuration for the view that was just created.

2. Under the row you added above (the Budget Sale Type), choose the "Hist / Fcst" Row Type.

3. There are two Sale Types to choose. In the first Sale Type, choose "History". In the second Sale Type, choose "Forecast". Click on the "can edit?" checkbox for the "Forecast" Sale Type.

4. The Calendar will be automatically set to the Current Fiscal Year (set in Application Settings)

5. Click "Save".

Sales Collaboration configuration highlighting the History and Forecast composite row

The Sales Collaboration view now contains a second row at each level showing the History/Forecast. The change from History to Forecast will occur in the month set as the 'Forecast Start Date' in Application Settings. In our example this is set to August 1st.

Sales Collaboration view containing 2 rows

Add an equation

There is one more Row Type to review and that is the Equation Row Type. This allows you to create an equation that references other rows. For this example, let's get the difference between the Budget row and the History / Forecast row.

1. Go to the "Options" button (the ellipses) in the top-right of the page and click on it.

2. Click on "Configure" and then select to Edit the existing view.

3. Choose "Equation" for the next Row Type.

4. In the "Equation definition" input box, type: r2 - r1. The "r1" and "r2" are the references for each of the two rows you created earlier.

5. In the "Label" input box, type in the label for this equation (e.g. "Delta"). This label will be displayed in the Sales Collaboration page for this equation.

6. Select a format for the output - This can be 'Number' or 'Percent'

7. Click "Save".

Adding an Equation Row Type and referencing other rows in the equation

The "Equation" Row Type, can be any basic arithmetic formula using other rows along with any constants. For example, if I wanted the percentage over or under of the History & Forecast vs the Budget, I would enter in this equation: ((r2 - r1) / r1) * 100

If you want to add more row types to fill out your Sales Collaboration page, go for it. We just walked through the three Row Types to choose from. Be creative.

Be careful on how you use the "can edit?" checkbox as you add more Row Types. If you make something editable and you edit the data in the Sales Collaboration page, it will replace any existing data.

Example of a Sales Collaboration page with the three Row Types that were reviewed

Show trend charts

Within the view configuration you can also add trend charts to each row to graph your sales numbers over time.

1. Go to the "Options" button (the ellipses) in the top-right of the page and click on it.

2. Click on "Configure" and then select to Edit the existing view.

3. Check the 'Show trend chart per row' checkbox.

4. Select 'Save'.

A trend chart column is then added, charting the sales in each row.

Navigating the Grid

We have made it easy to go up and down the Item and Customer Group hierarchies within Sales Collaboration to provide you the ability to work and view data at any level you want. Depending on the hierarchy layout in the Configuration for the view you are on (see below for details), on the far left you see the other hierarchy listed out in a way that you can dive down or roll up. For instance, if you chose "Display by Items" in your configuration, after selecting the level of the Item hierarchy to start with, you'll see the Customer Groups on the left-hand side of the page. Here you can show the details per level or roll up different levels.

Showing the Customer Group hierarchy is on the left and the Item hierarchy is on the top

Once you have your base view configured, which may well not yet contain any sales figures, you can begin Collaborating on Sales Data!