Kanban Forecast Management
Forecasting is an important part of sales workflows. The Forecast Summary and Forecast Detail Reports are both useful resources to view your forecasting and opportunity data. If you wish to view and interact with your opportunities in a different format, however, we recommend using the Forecast Management page. The Forecast Management page uses Kanban columns and cards to let you drag and drop opportunities through your pipelines.
Before you use the Forecast Management page, we recommend you review your Pipelines and Confidence Levels, as these will be used on the Kanban board. You will also want to make sure your sales team is familiar with creating and managing opportunities.
To begin, go to Sales > Forecast Management. To access this page, you need the User Permission ‘Forecast Management.’
To view opportunity information for users other than yourself, you need the sub-permission ‘Forecast Management All Users.’
Once on the Forecast Management page, you can filter your results to display specific opportunities on your Kanban board.
Pipeline is the only required search field. The Kanban board can only display information for one of your pipelines at a time. If you have multiple pipelines created in your system, you can choose which one to display by using this field.
If you have the ‘Forecast Management All Users’ permission, you will see User Group and Users search fields, that allow you to find opportunities based on the opportunity owner. If you do not have this user permission, these search fields will not be available to you.
If there are expected close dates set on your opportunities, you can take advantage of the Expected Close Date Range search filter. If you have opportunities without expected close dates set, they will be excluded from the results if using this filter.
You can choose to view all opportunities, only ad opportunities, or only service opportunities by using the Opportunity Type filter.
There is a Publication multi-select filter that lets you select and show opportunities associated with the chosen publications. This filter only works for ad items, not service opportunities.
The Product Categories filter allows you to pick which service categories to display on the board. The filter only works for service items, not ad opportunities.
The Delivery Date search field finds opportunities based on either the issue reporting date for ad opportunities, or the service date for service opportunities.
The Sort Order field is a terrific way to customize how you view the results. By using this field, you can choose to sort your opportunities within each column by potential, title, company, or expected close date.
Now, let’s talk about the actual Kanban board, and how to use it to manage your opportunities.
At the top of the board, you will see the totals for the pipeline potential and weighted amounts. These totals will be for all the opportunities displayed on your board.
Each column on the Kanban board is the confidence level in the pipeline that is currently displayed. For example, if you are using our system’s Default Pipeline, you will see columns such as ‘25% (Email or Phone Conversation)’ and ‘90% (Verbal Commit, Awaiting Completed IO)’.
The header of each column shows the confidence level name, and the percentage associated with the confidence level.
Each card underneath the columns represents an individual opportunity that has been created on your site.
Each card shows the name of the opportunity, the company name and icon (if the company record has a website), the potential and weighted amounts of the opportunity, and the rep who owns the opportunity.
If you click on a card, the edit opportunity popup opens, where you can make changes to the opportunity or delete it.
To move opportunities through your pipeline, simply click an opportunity card, drag it, and drop it into a new column. When moving a card to a new column, it will update the confidence level on the opportunity.
For example, if you are using our default pipeline, and you drag a card from the 25% column into the 75% column, the confidence level on your opportunity will be updated from 25% to 75%
Note
If you have the permission to access the Forecast Opportunities page, but you do not have the ‘Add/Edit Opportunities’ user permission, the Kanban board will be read-only. You will be able to view the information on the board but not interact with it.
If an opportunity gets associated with an order or a proposal, it will automatically be removed from the Kanban board. If it gets removed from the order or proposal, it will get added back.
There are some additional features on the Kanban board that make it easy to use.
You can use the search field at the top of the board to find specific opportunities. Simply start typing and results will be displayed in a list format.
The small arrow icons in the column headers allow you to collapse or expand that column, so you can view only the information you need.
If you have the user permission ‘Pipelines & Confidence Levels,’ then you will also see a settings icon on the top right of the board. When clicked on, this will open the Settings > Sales > Pipelines & Confidence Levels administrative page, so you can manage your pipelines.
You can add new opportunities directly from the board by clicking on the + icon that shows up underneath the cards in each column. When you create a new opportunity this way, it will automatically get assigned the confidence level of the column you are adding it to.
Updated 10/18/2022