Appointment Synchronization

Appointments are activities that you schedule in your calendar, which can have attendees.

Client groupware integration synchronizes all appointments with the category SAP CRM and for which the user assigned as employee responsible between SAP CRM and the groupware client.

Note Note

Employee responsible
- For Microsoft Outlook, appointments without an employee responsible cannot be synchronized. The employee responsible can only be assigned using the Relate to SAP CRM add-in in Microsoft Outlook. There is no automatic assignment of the user as employee responsible.
- For Lotus Notes, the employee responsible is automatically determined from the user properties in Lotus Notes during synchronization.
Attendee synchronization
- Attendee names are downloaded from SAP CRM to the groupware client as notes in the body of the appointment only, and not as proper attendees.
- Attendee information is not synchronized from the groupware client to the Attendee assignment block in SAP CRM.
  Attendee names are synchronized as appointment notes and the appointment is distributed to the attendees' calendar.

End of the note.

Features

Organizer/CRM Attendee

Organizer

The organizer is assigned as employee responsible. The organizer can make changes to the appointment and synchronize them with SAP CRM. These changes are downloaded to the attendees in the next synchronization and overwrite any changes that were made to the appointment in the groupware client of the attendee.

CRM Attendee

The CRM attendee is not the employee responsible and cannot change the employee responsible assignment. The CRM attendee can make changes to the appointment in the groupware client but cannot synchronize the changes to SAP CRM.

Related Information

Information such as account, account address, contact person, attendees, and reference transactions are shown in the Notes section of the appointment. As of version 10.30 of the client groupware integration component, in Microsoft Outlook this information is shown in a separate pane instead of the Notes section (for Lotus Notes this information is still contained in the Notes section). For more information, see Business Information.

Mapping of Fields Between Microsoft Outlook and SAP CRM

Note Note

You cannot change the predefined field mapping.

End of the note.

Microsoft Outlook	SAP CRM
Appointment/All-day Event/Meeting Data
Subject	General Data Description
Location	General Data Location
Start Date/Time End Date/Time	General Data Start Date/Time End Date/Time
High Importance/Low Importance	General Data Importance
Private	References Private
Description	Notes/Notes
Attachments	Attachments
Relate to SAP CRM — CRM Employee Responsible	Relationships

Mapping of Fields Between Lotus Notes and SAP CRM

Note Note

You cannot change the predefined field mapping.

End of the note.

Lotus Notes	SAP CRM
Appointment/All-Day Event/Meeting Data
Subject	General Data Description
Where Location	General Data Location
When Starts Ends	General Data Start Date/Time End Date/Time
Not supported	General Data Importance
Not supported	General Data Active Status
Mark Private	References Private
Description	Notes/Notes
Not supported	Attachments
Relate to SAP CRM — CRM Employee Responsible	Relationships

Time Zone Handling

Since groupware users can be working in different time zones, accessing the same data and interacting with each other, time zones are taken into account for appointments. Time zones are not maintained in the profile, instead the groupware client reads the local system time zone (where the groupware client is running) and uses it for synchronization of appointments.

If the time zone in the SAP CRM system and the local system time zone are different, appointment times shift accordingly. While this is logically consistent, this can be confusing because the start date/time or due date/time may change.

Example Example

The following examples show how appointment times shift depending on the local system time zone.

	Local System (Groupware Client)	SAP CRM System
Time zone	UTC + 5:30	UTC + 1
Appointment start and end date/time	June 09 13:00 – 14:00	June 09 8:30 – 9:30

	Local System (Groupware Client)	SAP CRM System (With Daylight Saving)
Time zone	UTC + 5:30	UTC + 1
Appointment start and end date/time	June 09 13:00 – 14:00	June 09 9:30 – 10:30

End of the example.

Time Zone Handling for All-Day Appointments (Events)

An appointment created in the groupware client always uses the local system time zone. During synchronization, the time zone from the date profile of the relevant transaction type is used for creating an appointment in SAP CRM.

Example Example

A business user has the local system time zone Pacific Time. During synchronization, the appointment is created in SAP CRM with the same time zone (Pacific Time).

If the time zone in the business user's SAP CRM WebClient UI is also set to Pacific Time, the date-time span remains the same as in the groupware client. If not, the all-day event moves to adjust to the different time zone.

If the user modifies the appointment in SAP CRM and synchronizes it to the groupware client, the appointment is synchronized as a normal appointment (not an all-day appointment). If an all-day appointment is created in SAP CRM and synchronized to the groupware client (with a different local system time zone) it is also synchronized as a normal appointment rather than an all-day appointment. Therefore, the time zone in the business user's SAP CRM WebClient UI and the local system time zone must be the same for the appointment to be consistent in both applications.

End of the example.

Date Profile Customizing

As an administrator, you define date profiles in Customizing for Customers Relationship Management, under Start of the navigation path Basic Functions Next navigation step Date Management Define Date Profile End of the navigation path . On the Reference Objects screen, the reference object of the date profile must be ACTIVITY (Time Zone of Location of Activity) to ensure that the activity is created with the time zone of the groupware client.

You assign date profiles to transaction types under Start of the navigation path Basic Functions Next navigation step Date Management Assign Date Profile to Transaction Type End of the navigation path .