3549328 - Impact of Forecast Categories in the Pipeline Flow/Manager

You would like to understand how to Forecast Categories and the Pipeline Flow/Manager are connected. 

• SAP Sales Cloud Version 2 and SAP Service Cloud Version 2
• SAP Sales Cloud Version 2 

In order to use ISE (which Pipeline Flow/Manager are part of), the configuration for Forecast Categories should include three mandatory categories - Pipeline, Best Case, and Committed.  The fourth category, "Most likely," is optional. 

You have the option to either use the standard Forecast Categories provided (Pipeline, Best Case, and Committed) or create custom Forecast Categories. In either case, you need to map these Forecast Categories to the required three categories mentioned above. This mapping is done in Settings > Pipeline Management and Forecasting > General Settings > Forecast Category Mapping. 

However, in SAP Sales Cloud, you can choose less than three Forecast Categories within Opportunities Settings. It means that currently there is no warning message suggesting the user to include three categories (required to use ISE).

This happens because the Forecast Categories are taken from Opportunities and that configuration is independent of ISE. Therefore, you can choose to deactivate Forecast Categories (and remain only with two Forecast Categories, for example) and use Opportunities normally.  It also means that the configuration to maintain Forecast Categories is generic: its purpose is to just maintain Forecast Categories.

The three categories are only mandatory when using ISE. If they are not maintained, an error message (e.g. "Opportunity data retrieval encountered errors. Please contact support for further investigation.") should appear when trying to access Pipeline Flow/Manager. 

ISE , Pipeline Manager , Pipeline Flow , Categories , Forecast , Opportunities , Error ,  , KBA , CEC-CRM-PMF , Pipeline Management and Forecasting for Sales Cloud , Problem