CRM Configuration Guide for Forecasting and Pipeline Management

Purpose

This article aims to inform Outreach Admins about the requirements and steps to enable Outreach’s forecasting and pipeline management features.

Intended Audience

• Outreach Admins

CRM Configuration Guide for Forecasting and Pipeline Management

The Forecasting admin experience guides Admins through the prerequisite steps to configure and enable Forecasting and pipeline Management in Outreach. The purpose of this guide is to provide admins with the information needed to ensure their Outreach plugin is successfully configured to support these features.

Check Outreach Connection Integration User

Check that the Salesforce Integration User account does not have the ability to bypass validations in CRM. This will ensure that we respect your Salesforce field validations when edits to Opportunity fields occur within Outreach. See the Outreach & CRM Connection Overview article for more information.

Tip: The permissions of the Integration User in SFDC should align with the permissions of the users interacting with Opportunities in Outreach so that validations will trigger when appropriate.

Configuring Opportunity Field Mappings

Your Organization must use the Salesforce Opportunity record as the source of truth for your Deals and Forecasts. The Opportunity record in CRM must have numerical values on each opportunity representing the pipeline amount. 

Note: the native amount field in Outreach is called “Estimated Total Sales Amount” when mapping in the plugin. 

Configuration Steps

Step 1: Ensure all the important Opportunity fields from your CRM are mapped into Outreach, including any custom fields that may be needed. Note that Forecast Category is not a native Outreach field, so it will need to be mapped to a custom field if leveraged by your organization. See Designing your Forecast in Outreach for further details on fields you may consider adding. Learn more about forecast categories in Salesforce.

Step 2: Ensure that the Outreach Opportunity custom fields are labeled accordingly. While these custom fields are displayed as string fields, Outreach will reconcile the field types and available values based on your CRM schema. As a result, these fields will operate as expected when in-line editing from the Opportunity list view; date fields will function like date fields, and picklists will show appropriate options.

Step 3: Enable Outbound Updates to Salesforce for any fields that Reps or Managers will update from Outreach as part of their workflows. 

Note:  If you already have Opportunities syncing into Outreach, please bulk sync your Opportunities with Salesforce before enabling updates out to CRM to help ensure Outreach is fully up to date. You can do so by following the process shown here

Opportunity Stages

Opportunity Stage Field Mapping

Ensure that the Opportunity Stages available in Outreach align with what’s in Salesforce and that the stages are mapped accordingly in the Plugin.

Opportunity Stage Sync

Create & Update into Outreach must both be enabled for Opportunity Stages.

Ensure that Polling is set to manual and that Pushing is disabled.  

Opportunity Contact Role

Contact Role Field Mapping

If your organization leverages contact roles, it is beneficial to ensure those are coming into Outreach. No additional fields are required to be mapped into Outreach, but ensure the updates into the Outreach box is enabled for all fields. Updates out to Salesforce should all be unchecked. 

Opportunity Contact Role Sync

Ensure the Create & Update into Outreach boxes are both checked.

Ensure that Automatic Polling is enabled and sync frequency is set to every 10 minutes or less frequently if desired. Ensure that Pushing is disabled. 

User Object Sync

User Field Mapping

Important: If your User Rollup (aka forecasting hierarchy) mirrors your user role hierarchy in Salesforce, in order for users to be automatically added and/or moved to the appropriate level within the User Rollup (aka forecasting hierarchy), it is important that we proactively sync User role changes from SFDC. 

To learn more, reference the User Rollup article linked here.

Important: If you’d like to ensure that unwanted users in Salesforce aren't created in Outreach, you can pass back the user’s Outreach ID to a custom field on the User object in SFDC and then leverage “Outreach ID” “is not empty” as a polling condition to ensure Outreach is only scanning SFDC for updates on users that have already been created in Outreach.

Object Syncing

Inbound Create & Update into Outreach boxes should be checked. Additionally, if you plan to leverage the polling condition outlined above, you will need to ensure Update to Salesforce is enabled as well.

User Sync Frequency: To ensure that user role changes are identified proactively by Outreach, polling should be set to automatic. Every 12 hours is a reasonable polling frequency.  

Tip: To avoid unwanted users coming into the platform, it is recommended to add the polling condition of: “Outreach ID” “is not empty” 

Enable Outbound Opportunity Sync and Sync Frequency

Important: Enable Outbound Update is the final step and should only be completed once you have validated that all of your Opportunities and fields are successfully syncing into Outreach and that no errors exist.

Ensure the outbound Update and inbound Create & Update into Outreach boxes are checked.

Ensure that Polling and Pushing are both enabled. The sync frequency should be set to every 10 minutes or less frequently if desired.  

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: When are values updated in forecasting in Outreach?
A: Opportunity values that drive the current forecast and next period forecast are synced from CRM as frequently as a 15-minute interval using Salesforce’s bulk API. Inline edits made on the Opportunity grid are reflected in the app in real time. Each time an inline edit is executed, 1 REST API call is used. 

Q: How does this impact my Salesforce API call budget?

A: Forecasting and pipeline data are synced using Salesforce’s bulk API, and do not impact call limits. Each inline edit to the deal grid uses a single REST API call. 

Q: Where do I set the custom field types and formats in Outreach?
A: While these custom fields are described as strings in the Opportunity, Outreach will reconcile the field types and available values based on the CRM schema. As a result, these fields will operate as expected; date fields will function like date fields, and picklists will show appropriate options during the in-line editing from the Opportunity list view. 

Q: Can I test the configuration in a Sandbox?
A: Outreach recommends Admins test CRM settings in a separate sandbox environment before applying these changes in your production environment so that you can confirm the settings work as desired. It is possible to test CRM configuration changes in an Outreach Sandbox and import this configuration into your production Org. See How To Import a CRM Plugin Configuration. We do not recommend connecting a CRM sandbox to your production environment to avoid data integrity issues due to data from multiple CRM instances existing in your environment.