Creating a Relationship Between Order Product (salesorderdetail) and Service Activity (serviceappointment)

[Mitch Denny]

Hi folks,

We are using CRM 4.0 to run a consulting business. Its working pretty
well but we want to simply the way we are doing some things. What we
want to do is create an Order (salesorder) with multiple Order
Products (salesorderdetal). So good so far.

Next I want to be able associate each Order Product (salesorderdetail)
with a Service Activity (serviceappointment), this representing that
this billable line item in the order is actually going to be fulfilled
as a consuting engagement.

The problem is, I can't seem to be able to create an association
between the Order Product (salesorderdetail) and Service Activiy
(serviceappointment). It simply doesn't appear in the drop downlist.

Can anyone think of a reason for this? I've seen some posts about
relating field mapping between Quote Product, Order Product,
Opportunity Product and Invoice Product, but that isn't quite what I
am after.

Any suggestions greatfully received - even if it is an explaination of
why its not possible.

[Mitch Denny]

Excuse my typos :)

[MD]

It is not possible to directly associate an Order Product to an Activity
(whether it's a Task or a Service Activity). I can't offer the logistical
reason behind this restriction, but there is a workaround you can use. This
is to create a custom "Linker" entity between the SalesOrderDetail entity and
the ServiceAppointment entities.
I would call it New_SalesOrderDetail_ServiceAppointment, but the Display
Name can be something like "Order Product Service Activity". You will need to
decide if you want to set the Ownership to User or Organization, I'd be
inclined to set it to User. I would uncheck the Notes and Activities
checkboxes and keep it hidden from all areas. The reason for this is you'd
only want users to manage these records with either the Service Activity or
the Order Product (you may even opt to not display this in the Order Product
entity).
Next, you'll need to create 2 N:1 relationships. One to the SalesOrderDetail
entity and one to the ServiceAppointment entity. When creating these
relationships, you may want to use a Custom Label in your Display Option
section. This means that when you're in a Service Activity and you want to
add a new Order Product to it, the user would see, say "Associated Order
Products" in the Left Nav Pane.
Once these have been created, you can expose both lookups
(SalesOrderDetailId and ServiceAppointmentId) on the Form
You should set a naming convention for the "Name" field, since this will be
the field exposed in the entity's Lookup view.

Once this Entity is published, you will be able to link (albeit indirectly)
Order Product records with Service Activities by going into either records
left navigation pane and click on "Associated Order Product" (or whatever you
name this relationship.

--
MD

"Mitch Denny" wrote:

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[Mitch Denny]

Hi MD (cool initials by the way),

Thanks so much for this advice. I'll have a look at this on my CRM
sandbox. Hopefully it will solve my problem. I'm thinking I might name
the entity "Engagement" (Display Name). In fact this could work quite
nicely...

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[bayareacrm]

I had a hard time with the workaround here, as only N:1 relationships can be
created FROM the salesorderdetail entity to other entities.

What this means is you will not be able to see related service activities
from the order lines because the quote order and invoice product (lines)
entities are what MS refers to as 'tier2' entities, therefore ability to
create 1:N relationships from these entities is restricted, as well as many
workflow actions on them.

The suggested workaround works if you plan for and expect to see a lookup
field on each order line, that refers to your service activity, and only one
service activity per order line. So, just to be clear, N:1 FROM the order
line.

If you have a complex method of product configuration that requires you more
fully use the quote, order or invoice detail lines, I would seriously
consider re-creating all of these entities to give you more freedom over what
types of relationships you can create in your data model, as well as use
native workflow on these entities. What you give up in this method is of
course the ability to leverage the native price calculations written into the
product for quote/order/invoice lines rolling up to the header, but if you
need these types of calculations they can be easily created using CRM 4.0's
plug-in model.

Best,

Michael D. Mayo

"Mitch Denny" wrote:

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