D365 Sales: Forecast Configurations Preview

I logged into my Dynamics 365 Sales instance today and when I navigated to ‘Forecasts’ I noticed my previously configured forecasts were gone and there was a message showing in yellow stating ‘Warning: Forecast definitions have been removed an replace by Forecast configurations’. I’m not sure if you have been able to play around with forecasting yet in Dynamics 365 Sales, but if you haven’t, the forecasting feature helps predict how much revenue the sales team will generate in a specific time frame. Users with the appropriate security roles can configure forecasts in Dynamics 365.

It seems that the forecast definitions entity has been replaced with the new ‘forecast configuration’ entity, so lets take a look how we can configure this new entity, and what it looks like after the configuration(s) have been published.

Considerations

Keep in mind, (at this time) this is a preview feature and therefor not complete yet. Preview features aren’t meant for production use and may have limited or restricted functionality. In the future there could be changes to this feature, so it should only be used in test and development environments.
In order to configure this functionality you need to have a system administrator security role or the forecast manager role.

Configuration
Open the Sales Hub in Dynamics 365, then change the area (bottom left) to ‘App Settings’. Navigate to forecast configuration wizard by scrolling down and clicking on ‘Forecast configuration’ under ‘goal management’. You will see the forecast home screen as shown below.

Currently there are is only 1 template available; Org Chart Forecast. This template allows us to create forecasts base for individuals or users that have direct reports. If a forecast is created for a user that has direct reports in Dynamics 365, (defined by the manager field on the user record) this hierarchy will be shown in the forecast if this template is chosen. As you can see in the screenshot, the territory forecast and product forecast options are not available as of yet.

General
Click on ‘Org chart forecast’ to create a new forecast configuration. The Forecast configuration screen opens. You can see we’re editing the ‘General’ section of the forecast. Here we have to enter a forecast name, then select the user we want to create a forecast for. In my example I will be picking David So, he’s user that I have configured as a manager with 3 direct reports. Obviously you can also configure forecasts for individuals. You can see the selected user and the direct reports under the ‘preview’ section on the form. Under scheduling you can set the time period(s) of the forecast. The forecast Period has two options: monthly and quarterly. Users have the ability to create forecasts up to a year. I.E if you select the forecast period to be monthly you can set the number of periods to 12, with equals 12 months. In my example I will create quarterly forecasts with a number of 4 periods.

NOTE: If you select the forecast period as monthly, Fiscal year as FY19, Start month as January, and Number of forecasts as 4, the forecasts that are generated are grouped by four months, January, February, March, and April. In such case, the Forecast start and end date is automatically set to January 1, 2019, and April 30, 2019, respectively.

You’ll notice that you can’t change the ‘valid from’ and ‘valid to’ dates, these are generated based on your selections in the fields above. Once the required fields have been completed, click on the blue next button on the bottom.

Layout
In the layout section we can configure the columns that will show in the grid of the forecast record. These columns have to be option set type of fields. I recommend using the Forecast Category option set that will be added to the opportunity as part of the Forecast solution. We can see the preview of our selections on the right side. Click the ‘+ Add from Option Set’ button, and select the ‘Forecast Category’ field, then click ‘Choose selected’ to add the field. A popup window will open asking if you want to auto-configure the columns. Click the ‘Auto-configure’ button. We will now edit each of the values of the selected option set. Hover your mouse on the right side of the column you want to configure, then click on the ellipse and select ‘configure’.

In the configuration window you can change the name of the column, set the amount and date fields, and if you scroll down you’ll be able to show progress compared to the assigned quota. This can be configured for each individual column. Click the blue next button to move to the Publish & Quota portion of the configuration.

Publish & Quota
Now you probably noticed that we didn’t enter a quota amount in any of these steps, that is because we need to publish our forecast first. Once we publish the forecast, the system will generate a quota template which we can download and enter the quota numbers in. Then we can upload it back into Dynamics 365. Click on the Publish Forecast button. It will take a few minutes for it to complete, but once it does, click on the download quota template. We now need to enter the quota in the template and load it back into Dynamics 365. Open the quote template. You’ll notice there are two tabs on the excel sheet, one called ‘Manager’ and one called ‘Individual’.

Excel – Individual Tab
This tab shows all the users (including managers) that report to the user we created the forecast for. We need to enter a quota amount for each user in the ‘Quota as an individual’ column. If the manager has a ‘team’ quota (which is the total quota amount of the team combined) but is also working on opportunities him/herself and adding to the combined team goal, this is where you will enter that data. In my example the individual goals are $200,000 for each team member per quarter.

Excel – Manager Tab
In our example the manager tab shows the user (David So) we created the forecast for. If there would be other managers reporting to David So, we would see them on this tab as well. Keep in mind that the quota amount entered in this tab is all the combined effort of the entire team rolling up to the associated manager. In my example the manager goal is the sum of each individual goal ($200,000 x 4) which equals $800,000 for each quarter.

NOTE: Keep in mind that if you configured multiple periods in the forecast, you need to fill out the quotas for each period for individuals and managers.

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