Assign Outreach Action to an Opportunity

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to provide direction to Outreach Users in assigning activities to Outreach Opportunities. 

When taking an action on a prospect, you have an option to assign the activity to an Outreach opportunity.

You can assign activity to an Outreach opportunity when

• adding prospects to a sequence,
• sending an email,
• creating a task,
• logging a call,
• booking a meeting

If there are automated actions taking place in the background (i.e. triggers set up by admins that are automatically adding prospects to a sequence), then admins can select a fallback behavior in the org settings.

Notes:

• When associating an action with an opportunity, we do not automatically link prospects to that opportunity, unless they are already assigned to it.

Intended Audience

• Outreach Users
• Outreach Admins

How to Assign Activities to Outreach Opportunities: 

1. Take an action on a prospect, either adding them to a sequence, sending them an email from Outreach, logging a call or booking a meeting.
2. On the activity, there will be a section labeled “Opportunity”. You’ll have few options to choose from based on the type of activity you perform. See more details here.

3. If assigning the activity to the Opportunity, you’ll see the activity appear in the Opportunity activity list.

Create a Fallback for Actions Taken Automatically in Outreach

Outreach Admins have the ability to set a default opportunity association option. This default value will be automatically selected when associating opportunities to actions. Especially for actions that do not require user involvement, such as triggers that add prospects to a sequence.

To change the default opportunity association value:

• Go to “Administration”.
• On the settings panel that appears, find the section labeled “Communication tools” and select “Opportunities”
• On the Opportunity settings page, find the section labeled “Basic info”. You’ll see a question that asks, “How do you want to associate actions to Opportunities?” You’ll have a few options:
  1. Most recently created open - associates that activity to the most recent open Opportunity. Outreach will look for the Salesforce creation date first and, if not present, will fallback to associate to the date the Opportunity was created in Outreach.
  2. Most recently updated open - associates the activity to the Opportunity that has most recently been updated.
  3. Do not associate with an opportunity - the activity will not be associated with any opportunities.

Note: The option you choose will be the default option that appears for users when taking manual actions in Outreach (eg. adding prospect to a sequence) and the behavior that applies for automated actions (eg. triggers). 

Important note on CRM sync

In the event that a contact can be associated with multiple open opportunities in SFDC, be sure to disable the setting labeled "Fallback to associate activity with most recent Opportunity in Salesforce" which is located in the Advanced Settings for each Task object, the Contact object and the Event object. 

This way, when a user is choosing a specific open opportunity to associate activity within Outreach, the task will appear on the opportunity that was selected. Otherwise, the fallback setting will override the user's selection and default to the most recently created opportunity. 

It is also very important to make sure that you have the Opportunity field mapped to the Related ID SFDC field on Tasks & Events in the CRM integration so the task can link to the Opportunity in SFDC.

Here are instructions for mapping this field on Tasks & Events:

1. Add Mapping
2. Add Related to ID on the SFDC Fields and map it to Opportunity
3. Set the Advanced Field settings by clicking on the 3 dots to the right of the field mapping within the object and enable Mapped field and set the Salesforce object that the fields maps to to Opportunity in the drop down menu

Opportunity Association Options based on Type of Action Performed (Bulk vs Single (Non-Bulk))

There are two types of actions: single actions performed on individual prospects and bulk actions that trigger multiple actions performed on each prospect separately.

Depending on the action type (bulk or single (non-bulk)), different options will be available to associate with an opportunity.

Action Type	Opportunity Association Options
Single (non-bulk)	Specific open opportunity associated with a prospect Any opportunities associated with this prospect will appear. Note: only opportunities the Prospect is associated with via contact role populate in the list.You can select the correct opportunity to link this activity to from the dropdown. Specific open opportunity associated with an account (NEW) Any opportunities associated with an account where the prospect is in will appear. You can select the correct opportunity to link this activity to from the dropdown. Do not associate with opportunity
Bulk	Most recently created open Most recently updated open Do not associate with an opportunity Custom opportunity association (NEW) Note: currently custom opportunity association is not supported for creating tasks in Bulk

As mentioned, some actions can be performed as bulk or non-bulk, based on the scenario on how they are performed. This defines what options will be available to associate with an opportunity for a particular scenario:

Custom opportunity association for Bulk actions

For bulk actions like “bulk send email” and “bulk adding to a sequence”, users can now manually select and associate a specific opportunity for each action performed on selected prospects.

Previously, the "Opportunity" dropdown for bulk action association only provided the following options:

• Most recently created open
• Most recently updated open
• Do not associate with an opportunity

Opportunities were automatically selected without user control.

Now, we have introduced a new option called "Custom opportunity association" in the Opportunity association dropdown.

After selecting the "Custom opportunity association" option, a dialog will appear where users can manage and update the association with fallback rules applied, if necessary.

The dialog includes:

1. A list of prospects on whom the action is performed (e.g., sending an email, adding to a sequence)
2. The number of open opportunities associated with each prospect (sorted from highest to lowest)
3. An opportunities picker to select and associate with each action for every prospect
4. Each opportunity dropdown offers the same choices as for a single action (such as adding one prospect to a sequence). You can either select a specific opportunity to associate with or choose not to associate any opportunity.

Note: Currently the custom opportunity association works for bulk actions where less than 25 prospects were selected. If more than 25 prospects were selected for bulk action - the custom opportunity association option will be grayed out.

Additional Resources: 

• Outreach University - Outreach Opportunity Sync
• How To Associate Email Activities with Opportunities – Outreach Support