Configure User Access to Forecasts and Pipeline Management

Purpose

This article provides a simple overview of how customers can govern user access to forecasts and pipeline management features in Outreach.

Intended Audience

• Outreach Admins

Prerequisite reading

• Enabling Forecasting and Pipeline Management Capabilities in Outreach

Basics of Governing Forecasts and Pipeline Management

Governance Model

Governing access to Forecasting & Pipeline Management in Outreach is very similar to any other feature in Outreach. First, let’s review a handful of important concepts to understand when it comes to governance. Here’s a visual detailing how these play together:

1. User¹ - An individual within your organization (ex: Joe Smith)
2. Profiles² - A defined set of permissions that get assigned to users. Most organizations have different profiles for their SDR users vs. their AE users vs. their Leadership users that grant different levels of access
3. Role³ - Indicates where a user sits within your organization, which users are considered their peers, and who they report to. The roles & corresponding hierarchy in Outreach are most often a mirror of User Roles in your CRM
4. User Rollup⁴ - A new section of Outreach where you can define your forecasting hierarchy. In many cases this may be a direct replica of your user role hierarchy.

User Permissions for Forecasting and Pipeline Management

Once Forecasting and Pipeline management has been enabled, all existing and new Profiles will have a new section that controls users access to these features:

Forecasting and Pipeline Management will have 4-levels of access to choose from. Note that the permissions are additive, as described below:

1. None
   • User doesn’t have access to any forecasting or pipeline management features
   • This is the default level of access every user will have
2. View
   • Users can view forecasts. If user is considered a manager*, they will have access to the Pipeline Summary, Forecast Rollup, Scenario Planner and Pipeline Movement Report.
   • If the user is considered a rep*, they will be able to view their own forecasts from the deal grid.
   • This level of access is appropriate for reps and managers who are not managing pipeline on a day to day basis and/or need access to pipeline data as read-only.
3. Submit
   • In addition to viewing the forecasts, users with this level of permission can also submit their own forecasts.
   • This level of access is appropriate for users that need to manage their or their team’s pipeline and forecasts
4. Administer
   • In addition to view and submit, users with this level of access can also administer forecasts, including granting permissions to forecast elections and will be granted the ability to set up their organization’s user rollup required for forecasting
   • This is the highest level of access and therefore should be limited only to admins and delegated admins

Note: Whether a user is considered a manager or a rep is determined by their location within the User Rollup. Configuration of the Rollup is discussed in more detail in a later section.

Setting up your Organization - The simple way

Once you have all of your users set up and ready to go, the next step is to set up your User Rollup in a way that best represents your organizational hierarchy to make sure Forecasts and Pipeline data are segmented correctly.

User Rollups

Forecasting is most effective when sales managers, and sales/ revenue leaders can easily view their entire organization. Outreach empowers organizations to define their desired forecasting structure using User Rollups.

You can set up your User Rollup by going to Administration Settings > Forecasting > User rollup:

Rollups can be thought of as an accurate representation of the real organizational reporting hierarchy for those involved with pipeline management and forecasting. 

Once configured, Rollups can be used to view sales forecasts, set sales goals for distinct teams and reps, and view rep progress against quota attainment alongside other reporting.

Note: Rollups are required only if you are planning to use forecasting and pipeline management capabilities in your organization. They are not necessary otherwise.

Defining the User Rollup for your organization

There are 3 primary ways that you can choose to build out your User Rollup in Outreach for the most effective forecasting:

1. Build your User Rollup manually by creating each desired level of your hierarchy and manually assigning users
2. Link your User Rollup to Governance Roles in Outreach and map Governance Roles to their corresponding location in the User Rollup
3. Take a hybrid approach by linking only certain Governance Roles to the User Rollup and manually managing the rest

Note: If your organization is using CRM to manage user hierarchies, review Configuring Forecasts and Pipeline Management for Complex Organizations.

Creating your User Rollups manually

In the ‘User rollup’ section of settings, you can use the ‘Add level’ button to create¹ your first level within the Rollup. To create child levels², you can click on the ‘+’ button on the parent level within the Rollup:

Adding users to Rollups

To add users to a level within the Rollup, click on the user icon¹ > find² and add³ all the users you want to add and > then hit ‘Save’⁴

Tip: A Rollup rule to keep in mind

Since Rollups are used to generate forecasts, the same user cannot be part of multiple levels within the Rollup. This is to ensure there’s no duplicate accounting of quotas, pipeline etc.

If you try to add a user who’s already part of another Rollup, Outreach will generate a warning¹.

You can choose to add² the user anyway, but they’ll be removed from the Rollup they were originally assigned to.

Using Forecasts

Once given appropriate permissions, users can go to Forecasting > Forecast Rollup to view their forecasts¹.

The actions available on the page are determined by the permissions given to the user in their Profile. For example, the Submit action² will show up only if they have the necessary permissions.

Similarly, managers³ can see the entire top down view of their (own) organization, as set up through Rollups, while reps will be restricted to only their own forecast within the Deal Grid.

Using Pipeline Management

Once given appropriate permissions, managers can go to the Pipeline Summary¹ to view the status of their pipeline.

Similar to Forecasting, the contents² of the page are determined by the permissions given to the user in their Profile and their location within the User Rollup.

For example, a Sales Leader³ will be able to see the pipeline for their own organization or drill down further to other levels of the User Rollup that report into them.

Further reading

This article sets the foundation for understanding how you can govern your forecasts and pipelines.

For organizations that manage their hierarchy using CRM, please review the Governing Forecasts and Pipelines for Complex Organizations article next.