Hello, I'm looking for suggestions on the best way to manage the following scenario.
We sell our products in different areas/families and this implies that a Customer can join a product area/family in different times as it can cancel the contract for one area only and continue with the other. I need to manage in an easy way this history using some custom date field such as
- Acquisition date in Area1,
- Cancel date in Area1,
- Open Oppty in Area2,
- Close (Won or Lost) Oppty in Area2,
- Acquisition date in Area2,
- Cancel date in Area2....
My idea is an Account related custom object with all these fields but I also would like to create a sort of graphical timeline to visualize, for each customer, the different steps taken during the time.
Too much complicated? Someone with a similar scenario?
Hi Mimma,
It sounds to me like you'd want to have some kind of child object, as you said, where each record would represent the lifecycle of a product in one particular area. That could possibly be the opportunity object, or you can create something custom. Each record would have several date fields to indicate when the opportunity was created (created date), completed (close date), acquired (custom field), and cancelled (custom field).
Creating a visual timeline is more complicated, and definitely within development territory. My own app does something like that, but if you have the technical resources to build it in code you'd probably want to take that route.
