The Nextian product catalog extends the standard Salesforce product catalog to support effective quoting and lifecycle management of cloud and communications services.
All Salesforce objects and views required for managing the product catalog are available in the Nextian Product Management app (App Launcher → Nextian Product Management).
In addition to the standard Product and Part record types available in Salesforce’s Product2 object, Nextian introduces an additional record type: Service Request.
- The Product record type is used for subscription-based services (e.g., Business Internet – 24 months) or physical products (e.g., a router).
- The Part record type is used for subscription-based or one time-parts.
- The Service Request record type represents a one-time service request such as configuration audit.
A Service Request can be one of two types:
- Standalone, i.e. not associated with a particular service (e.g., “Perform a network security audit on my network”).
- Service-specific, i.e., associated with a service (e.g., “Check equipment on my internet service”).
Whether a service request is service-specific or not, depends on the value of Service-Based metadata value associated with the service request product.
Product, Product Record Types, Metadata, and Price Book Entries
The relationship between Product, Product Record Types, Metadata, and Price Book Entries (PBE) is shown on the diagram below:
Quoting Process Overview
When adding line items on a quote, the quoting process follows these steps:
- Selection of the price book on the CRM opportunity and creating a quote
- Selecting the operation type (new service, service request, etc.), which corresponds to PBE type
- Choosing the product or service
- Specifying quoting dimensions (e.g., term length)
- Providing additional parameters (e.g., service location)
