SAP CRM Call List Management

When managing call lists in the IC Webclient, you have quite some options you should be aware of.
On Februari 11, Joshi triggered me that this is something worth blogging about with his comment on call list management here.

Call lists basically are a hierarchical list of customers that should be called.
Typical call list use cases would be cold selling, where you would be calling a list of prospects, but of course also a follow-up call on a sale or service, or maybe a list of planned calls in the contract ending period. A lot of processes can be valid for call listing.

Depending on the process and your requirements, you would typically make different choices when building your call list. For instance, if the contacts you are calling are personal contacts of an account manager, you would create call lists specifically for one user. If on the other hand the target group consists of prospects, you would create a call list for a whole group of users, specifically a department. Let's take a look at the settings in SAP.

Settings in SAP

As far as I understood, officially, call list management is supposed to be done in the IC Manager business role.

Even though I am working in a fairly high version of SAP CRM 7.0 (enhancement pack 1), the webclient still does not support all functions available in the SAP GUI call list maintenance transaction. So, for all implementation consultants and call list managers, my advice to check the functionality available in the SAP GUI transaction CRMD_TM_CLDIST, and forget about the webclient functionality in the IC Manager business role unless all functionality is supported in later releases.

Call list processing though can very well be done in the Interaction Center.

CRMD_TM_CLDIST

Log in to SAP CRM in the SAP GUI and open transaction CRMD_TM_CLDIST.
In this transaction in the locator (the left side of the screen, you will see a list of call lists in the system. As you can see, this is a hierarchy. You can open the nodes by clicking on the black triangle in the list.

So let's take a look at what a call list consists of.

Assignments

This node holds all the objects that the call list is assigned to. If the call list has no assignments, the call list will not show up in any users' interaction center, and the call list cannot be processed. Call list assignments can be a User, Position, Business Partner, Target Group or Organisational unit.
Personally, I have not used Business Partner and Target Group, so I don't know if this works as expected. If you assign a user to the call list, the call list will show up in the interaction center of this user. If you assign a Position or Organisational unit to the call list, the call list will show up in the interaction center of all users assigned to the Position or Organisational unit.

If a call list unexpectedly does not show up, please check if the call list has been activated and if it does indeed contain calls that need processing. The Interaction Center automatically hides call lists that are inactive or do not contain calls.

Business Context

The business context can contain a link to a business partner or a script. The use of linking a business partner to a call list is not clear to me. The link to a script is obvious. You can use the link to the script to automatically navigate to this script if a call is being processed in the interaction center.

Call Lists

Unlike what you might expect, a call list can contain not only calls, but also for instance other call lists. This enables you to create multiple call lists within another call list. The benefit you get from doing this, is that you are able to group and organise your call lists in 'folders' so to speak. This also enables you to view statistics both on call list level, as well as on group level.
If you organise this well, this can be a powerful option for you.

Calls

The calls node shows all the calls that have been planned in this call list. The call itself is an object that contains the status of the call, planned dates and actuals etcetera. The call is linked to a business partner, which is the partner to be called. The call can also contain a link to an activity, which is the representation of the call in the customer's context. Calls and attached activities synchronise status and processing dates. Check here for more information.

Overdue Calls

Overdue calls is a list of calls where the 'Complete By' date is in the past.

Rescheduled Calls

Rescheduled calls are calls that have received a new planned date either during the phonecall or during call list maintenance. A rescheduled call is a call with a processing date (or time) that differs from the original processing time.

Search for Calls

In the 'Search for Calls' node you can define search criteria for calls within this call list. This enables you to search for calls that apply to specific criteria. You can also save the criteria, so you can reuse the search defenition in the future, allowing you to create your own lists of calls inside the call list.

Unaccomplished Calls

Unaccomplished calls is a list of all calls that still need to be processed.