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C4C server-side groupware integration: Turn off automatic sending of invitation for visits

Dominik_Meier
Participant
0 Kudos

Dear SAPlers,

we recently started using the server-side groupware add-in with a group of pilot users. Now these users noticed that for all visits they created in C4C their Outlook systems automatically sent out invitations.*

This is a huge problem! We must not send every visit created in C4C to the participants. There could be information for internal use in there!

With the client-side add-in this problem did not exist: The visit was synched to the Outlook client, but unless the sales rep manually pressed "send" this would not have triggered an invitation to be sent out.

Can this be turned off by adjusting a setting somewhere? Like this the server-side groupware integration is unusable for us.

*) Ps.: I tried creating the visit in Outlook without sending (just saved) and then categorized it as C4C relevant to trigger the upload. Even this sent out an invitation after the visit was changed in C4C later on.

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

Dominik_Meier
Participant

Updating this with a "solution" we found that goes along with Ankan's suggestion of a custom role:

- We created a custom role for Attendees that can be used as "Involved Parties" in visits

- We renamed the "Involved Parties" tab in the visit to "Attendees".

- We hid the standard "Attendees" tab from view.

- We used Data Workbench to change the role of all (regular) Attendees to our (custom) Attendee role

After this we thought we had solved the problem but there were cases in which the standard Attendee fields would be filled automatically and invitations were still sent out. So additionally

- We implemented a PDI solution removing all (regular) attendees when the visit is saved (Event-BeforeSave)

foreach ( var attendee in this.AttendeeParty ) {
 attendee.Delete( );
}

Downside is that this messes with visits created in Outlook as well. But as with our scenario we only use C4C for internal visit documentation and Outlook for sending appointments to clients (resulting in two separate Outlook cal. entries in case we need both) that is not a problem for us.

Answers (4)

Answers (4)

Hi Ankan,

I understand there are probably more number of users wanting to sync and have the invite automatically sent, however would it not make sense to have some settings to be able control this, so depending on individual customers needs this could be activated or deactivated accordingly?

Best Regards

Alexander

Bart_V
Explorer
0 Kudos

Hi all,

We are facing a similar situation and indeed having the option to choose whether invitations are automatically or not is highly desirable.

Best regards,

Bart

former_member584290
Discoverer
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Hello,

we are facing the same problem. It would be great if there is a solution on this. ankan.banerjee It would be great, if the influence entry could be considered for this: https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#/idea/227333

DAcker
Contributor
0 Kudos

Hi ankan.banerjee,

we are using the client-side outlook integration and want to do the opposite thing. We have recognized that the synch doesnt sent the invitations for the appointments, but we want to have automatically send the invitations. Is the an option in the settings to change the behaviour or not?

What we are really looking for is to have an reminder in Outlook for SAP C4C tasks. So the sales rep is creating a task in CRM (there a emails send as reminder, but unfortunately currently there are too many emails, so there are just get ignored). The task is via client-side integration synchonized to Outlook, but there is not reminder (15 min before) active. We cannot change this setting, so that for tasks from CRM or all tasks have a reminder active (15 min before) - or can we?

Thanks for feedback, very appreciated! 🙂

Best regards, Deborah

Dominik_Meier
Participant
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Hi Ankan,

an update about this: We will remove the custom role again as it worsens UX for sales reps who now have to consider multiple attendee roles. Also the custom role is not suitable for handling in Outlook in the way that contacts should be managed.

I spoke to various other SAP clients on SAP CX and they have the same expectations as we do in as they want to prevent any invitations to be sent automatically. Many follow the process of creating the visit in the system after it actually took place only using it for documentation purposes (-> don't want to send out invitations anymore) and most do not send any invitations to their customers at all (usually the way of conduct is that the sales rep creates a calendar entry for himself/herself and the customer creates his/her own entry individually).

We'll get back to you regarding the matter.

Kind regards

Dominik

former_member192750
Active Contributor
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Hi Dominik,

Thanks for the update.
While the process you mention might make sense in your scenario, we have an equal (actually much larger) number of users who sync appointments as they are working on them and not in the past and also expect invites to go out.

Over and above, not sharing invites is not a setting we plan at the moment (or at all if I am honest) - expecting an end-user to open each synchronised event (going through their calendar manually?) and then opening every event to check the event sent out status and then sending it is not a simple user experience. Any process which adds manual steps is an additional complication that users would love to avoid 🙂

Creating another role should not worsen the UX in my view, this is normal system functionality - the system comes pre-delivered with multiple roles. In fact, my suggestion would be to explicitly name the role so that it is evident to the user that no invite would be sent out when using it.

Regards,
Ankan

former_member192750
Active Contributor
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The behaviour is designed considering the fact that for server-side there is no client interface to let you "manually press 'send'".

I would be surprised if the expectation is for a user to go in and open every appointment in his calendar to check whether the invite is sent out or not. For client-side - we have an interface (in the taskbar) where you can do this in bulk.

There are two solutions:

1. Use a custom field (KUT) for internal notes. The standard notes field is exchanged with Outlook and shared externally.

2. Consider usage of the option E-mail Integration > Groupware Settings > Settings > Freeze Description Fields
Using this option synchronizes the notes field only on creation and subsequent updates to it are not synchronized.

Dominik_Meier
Participant
0 Kudos

Dear Ankan,

the problem is not just with the description. We solved this by adding a task called "Visit documentation" to the visits and maintaining the internal documentation as a task description.

However, imagine the following use-cases for example:

1) Sales rep creates a visit in C4C with a purchasing manager on site. Invitation is sent out to the purchasing manager. During the meeting other participants join, i.e. board members or other high ranked staff. Sales rep wants to document their participation, adds them to the visit. Ends up sending invitations for past visits to the newly added participants. This does not leave a very professional impression.

2) Also there are still cases in which visits are documented on paper and maintained in the system during "office-day" (I do realize that this is not considered best practise, but let's face reality). This will send out invitations for all completed visits during this week, as office day is usually Friday.

3) Sales reps would like to be in control of who they invite and when the invitations are sent out. Therefore some of them established a process of creating regular (not C4C-synched) outlook invitations that they send out to the customers and one that is synched with C4C for the visit documentation. With the behaviour of the server-side add-in this is not possible anymore and results in a duplicate invitation being sent out (one with the internal description and one with the public one). Admittedly this is somewhat redundant but again understandable from a sales reps point of view.

4) The invitation may be sent by the customer (or only agreed on verbally) or by their secretary not even participating in the meeting. Now creating a visit in C4C to document these actions would result in the wrong person sending the invitation.

To sum it up, the general expection and way of work I have encountered with different sales reps is that the visits created in C4C are to be synched to Outlook but not to be sent to the customer automatically. In cases they do want to send out invitations they create the visit in Outlook, send the invitations from there and then synch it to C4C.

It just does not feel natural for the users to create a visit in C4C and then have another system (Outlook) send out automatic invitations.

former_member192750
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

The setting doesn't deal with description only - it deals with the description and notes fields which should cover your cases. In a background sync scenario, we do not expect users to control invites by opening them manually. For attachments, there is already a separate flag to not sync appointments under the individual object sync settings.
For a solution perspective, the aim is to reduce the amount of work done in maintaining information (not increase it) and hence the decision to send out all invites automatically. I believe most users would expect things to be automated.


1. Use another role other than attendee for newly added participants in SAP and no invites would be sent out. For the sake on simplicity, an attendee receives an invite and all information in the invite. Other roles don't. Leaving it to a user to manage when to send out invites is probably inviting trouble as they can make a mistake and send out internal info anyway?

2 and 3. Same as above

4. This is not a scenario which is allowed in server-side - a user can only sync appointments where they are the organizer. Creating a duplicate visit to track it internally, you can use the same process as above.

Dominik_Meier
Participant
0 Kudos

"For a solution perspective, the aim is to reduce the amount of work done in maintaining information (not increase it) and hence the decision to send out all invites automatically. I believe most users would expect things to be automated."

Only to a level of automation where the consequences are still transparent to the user. Otherwise it will result in uncertainty and fear of changing/inputting data.

So far I have not met a single sales rep who was not surprised and somewhat taken aback that his inputs in an internal CRM system could be sent out by another system (their own Outlook) to the customer without them explicitly pushing a "send" button.

However, your suggestion of using another role might solve the problem for now. I was not aware that only the standard attendee role will receive invites. Thank you very much for the fast assistance!

Dominik_Meier
Participant
0 Kudos

Hi Ankan,

an update about this: We will remove the custom role again as it worsens UX for sales reps who now have to consider multiple attendee roles. Also the custom role is not suitable for handling in Outlook in the way that contacts should be managed.

I spoke to various other SAP clients on SAP CX and they have the same expectations as we do in as they want to prevent any invitations to be sent automatically. Many follow the process of creating the visit in the system after it actually took place only using it for documentation purposes (-> don't want to send out invitations anymore) and most do not send any invitations to their customers at all (usually the way of conduct is that the sales rep creates a calendar entry for himself/herself and the customer creates his/her own entry individually).

We'll get back to you regarding the matter.

Kind regards

Dominik