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When adding or editing a contact or organization, what is the State field?

Environment:

Contacts, All versions

Resolution:

Within your Oracle B2C Service application, contact and organization records are shared across all modules enabled in your site, Oracle B2C Service, Oracle B2C Service Outreach, and/or Oracle RightNow Opportunity Tracking Cloud Service.  This allows staff to use a single record to view opportunity, mailing, and support activities associated with that record.

The  State  field allows you to specify which modules of your application a contact or organization is associated with -- Service, Outreach, and/or Opportunities. The State field allows you to delineate different types of contact and organization records in your application based on their activity and involvement with your staff.

Depending on your site configuration and your business processes, records may be enabled for only one of the States or they may be enabled for multiple components.

For example, a sales representative in your organization might be working with a specific contact to demonstrate your products and provide sales information. This contact could be enabled with the  Opportunities state since someone from your sales department is working with them. This allows all staff to know that the contact or organization is a potential customer.

If your marketing department is also sending marketing information to the contact such as outbound emails, newsletters, and campaigns, the contact should also have the  Outreach state enabled so that staff know that the contact receives communication from your marketing department.  For contacts that you are sending Marketing information, but your sales department is not actively engaged, you could set the State to have Outreach enabled, but Opportunities and Service disabled.

If the contact is not involved with submitting incidents to your support department through the Service application, the contact does not need the Service state enabled. If you have designated support contacts at your customer's organization, you could enable their records so that the Service state is enabled. 

Note: The state(s) selection does not affect outgoing messages to a contact (i.e. customers that do not have an Outreach state can still receive marketing messages).  However, it can affect how incoming emails from contacts are processed.  See Answer ID 6937: Assistance Request Denied email sent to customer for more information.

Using State Fields in Reports: 

When configuring reports, you can include a filter for each of the three States as you deem necessary. Each of the three states is a separate field (Opportunities State, Outreach State, Service State) that can be added independently of the others.

You can also include the States in the output columns of a report. In the Expression field select the contacts or organizations table and then select either Outreach State, Opportunities State, or Service State from the contacts or organizations table.

Staff Profiles: 

When configuring staff profiles, you can specify which types of contact and organization records (based on the State field) can be viewed, edited, or deleted. For contact records, you can specify which types of contact records can be moved to a different organization record. This allows you to protect content and restrict access for certain types of records.

• From the Configuration items, select Staff Management > Profiles, Click the Permissions button on the ribbon. Then click the Organization and/or Contact tab to specify which types of records can be read, edited, deleted, or moved.
  
  

Some aspects of the State fields work differently for different releases. For specific information, select your version and review current documentation.  To access Oracle B2C Service manuals and documentation online, refer to the Documentation for Oracle B2C Service Products.

Quick Search reports: The default quick search reports have no filters based on the State values. This allows sales, marketing, and support staff the ability to easily search for the contact or organization record they are interested in.

You can create custom quick search reports that include the Opportunities State, Outreach State, or Service State fields as either filters or output columns in the report. For more information on customizing quick search reports, refer to Answer ID 2476: Customizing Quick Search Functionality.

Default State for new records: The default is that all three states are selected for new contacts or organizations. The default state is determined by the contact or organization workspace used.

Trouble finding records:  If you have difficulty finding records with a specific state, verify that the staff member's profile allows access to records with that state.

Also check the configuration of the report used for the search to make sure there are no fixed filters on a specific state. For example, make sure that the report does not have a fixed filter for Service State equals yes.