Data Structure: How to map your data in SELLSATION.

1. General Information

Different information can be displayed in different pipelines and detailed views.

You can select the desired different information for different pipelines and detailed views under Administration/Customer data/Data Structure and Administration/Customer data/Overview.

In this way, all desired processes in your company can now be mapped in SELLSATION. Not only sales processes, but also other processes such as recruiting or purchasing processes can be optimized and digitalized.

As an administrator, navigate to the second icon within SELLSATION Administration "Customer Data".

A basic distinction is made between master data - such as customer or contact person information, and transaction data - such as sales project information or activities (meetings, calls, notes, etc).

SELLSATION offers a variety of standard fields to process informations. They can be activated if required or deactivated if they are not needed. In this way, SELLSATION remains as clear and simple to use as possible.

In addition, you can add so-called user-defined fields to the data structure for the respective information areas in a variety of ways. We will also look at the access control options for these user-defined fields below.

2. Corporate Customers (B2B) and Private Customers (B2C)

One of the strengths of SELLSATION is that both corporate and private customers can be mapped at the same time. To edit the data structure, navigate to the "Data structure" menu item (when you open the "Customer Data" function, this is loaded first).

• Using the dropdown at the top, you can specify whether SELLSATION should only be set up for corporate companies (B2B) or only for private customers (B2C). You can also specify here whether SELLSATION should be set up for both customer classes and which class takes precedence for you. This has an effect on how the input screen is initially opened for customer data, either for business customers (company name etc.) or for private customers (first name and surname etc.). Which customer entry screen is opened is then saved by user.
• The option below allows - especially for B2B applications - a submenu item "Contact Persons" to be displayed in the main menu "Customers". In this case, there is also an overview that only shows contact persons. Please note that in this case each contact person can also act as a customer, i.e. sales projects can also be assigned to contact persons.

2. Selecting Standard Fields

To activate standard fields provided by SELLSATION, certain fields can be checked or unchecked in the area below. In the image below you can see a small section of the standard fields in the data section "Contact Data and Adresses" of the information area "Customer". The first line "Address" is always selected and cannot be deactivated.

In our case, both customer classes are activated, so we see the standard field settings for corporate customers on the left and those for private customers on the right. If we had only selected the B2B customer class, the right-hand area would not be displayed.

Select the desired fields on the left. If you also set a marker on the right, this means that these fields should be mandatory fields.

Sections for standard fields

As mentioned above, we use the term section, i.e. areas in which fields are grouped together. These sections serve as tabs in the detailed views with which the user works.

The following sections are provided for customers:

• Contact Data and Addresses
• Customer Information
• Payment and Delivery Information

For projects, SELLSATION knows project details and for contact persons there is the contact person section.

3. Overview of all Options for displaying standard and user-defined Fields for Customers, Projects and Contact Persons

4. User-defined Fields, Sections and Containers

For all those cases in which the standard fields are not sufficient to store information on customers, contact persons or projects, SELLSATION offers the option of adding user-defined fields. It is only important to pay attention to where or in which area you add the fields.

In the table shown in Chapter 3, you can see where the user-defined customer, project or contact person information can be displayed.

4.1 Adding custom fields that appear on the first page of the detail view

Adding custom fields that are visible on the first page of the detail view is possible in the following sections:

• Contact Data and Addresses
• Project Details

Click on the "+" sign below the list of all standard fields in a section mentioned above. This will display a new user-defined field:

Now assign a name for this field and select the field type (see a section 4.3. below). Decide whether this field should be a mandatory field and, if you have created several fields, you can change the order of the fields.

4.2 Adding user-defined fields for customer and project information

If you scroll down in the respective customer or project information areas, you will find the area for creating so-called containers.

Containers are named groups of user-defined fields that are displayed in their own tabs as mentioned above. This option makes sense if you have a large number of user-defined fields.

The names of the containers serve as a kind of "table of contents" that allows the user to quickly "jump" to the respective container. This is particularly useful if a large number of user-defined fields have been created in different containers for your SELLSATION client.

If you click on the "+" to create a new container, a dialog opens, depending on which area you are in, in which you can define who and where this field information can be viewed.

Assign a name that best describes the group of fields it will contain in the future.

The checkboxes below are used to control the visibility of this container depending on various attributes. These are for customer data:

• Customer Categories
• Customer Type
• User Role

In the case of project data, these are:

• Customer Category
• Product Categories
• Customer Type
• User Role 
• Pipelines

These is are the settings for a container for customer data:

If you have created a container, you see on the far right the usual icons for moving (arrows), editing (pencil) and deleting (x) the container. 

Within the container you can add fields with the "+" symbol.

4.3 Types of user-defined fields

When adding new fields, it is important to decide which data type this field should be. Use text and multiline text for information that you do not want to report on.

Selection and multiple selection ensure that input errors are excluded for categorization; in addition, selection fields serve as a possible criterion for evaluations.

You can use the heading type to highlight fields within a container and increase readability for your users.

The available field types are

• Number, to store numerical content.
• Date
• Text to store short texts
• Multiline text to store longer comments or descriptions.
• Selection, also known as a "dropdown field", where you offer your SELLSATION user a choice of fixed answer options when entering values. With single selection, the user can only select one value.
• Multiple selection offers similar options, but the user can select more than one value.
• Currency
• Checkbox
• Customer Selection (this is a special case and is described in a separate article).
  Heading as a design element to group data fields together. The headings together with the arrangement of the fields increase the clarity and orientation when entering but also when reading the data.
• Hyperlink to save a clickable link to a web address.