Scenario:
You have activity writing enabled in Eloqua so when someone submits a form it writes it as an activity to the CRM. Another example, you have email click through enabled so when someone clicks through an email you have it written to the CRM.
Problem:
You have a few internal forms, blind form submissions, cloud connector form submits that you do not want written to the CRM. An example is, I just created a form that salespeople will be submitting on behalf of the contact in order to clean up their data in Eloqua and trigger a few Eloqua processes but they do not want this form submission activity written back to the CRM because the actual lead/contact did not do it.
This article will explain how to turn off or modify activity writing for form activity but remember it can be applied to other activities as well. (Email click through, Email Open and Email Send)
Note: The form will still be considered a form submit in Eloqua. It will show up in a filter as a form submit if you are segmenting on 'submitted a form', it will count in lead scoring/program builder as a form submit, it will show up in the contact activity record and it will show up in Prospect Profiler BUT it will not write an activity to CRM.
How to do it:
1) Navigate to the CRM integration area in Eloqua
Setup --> Integration --> Outbound --> Expand Activity on the left hand side
2) Click on Form Submit
You will see the following screen:
This screen shows you what external calls (activities) will be executed when someone submits ANY form in the database. The Eloqua default will create a task 'Form Submit' on the lead and on the contact. This activity will then show up on the relevant CRM record if the person has a lead or contact in CRM.
What is important and not clear about this screen is: If you choose a specific form in the drop down list and either set the external calls (activity) to none or choose different external calls. That particular form will not be part of the 'ALL' category anymore and these external calls under 'ALL' will not be applied anymore.
3) Use the drop down menu to select a specific form
4) To set this form to have no activity writing: Click 'Add Existing External Call' at the bottom right of the page
It should now look like this:
5) Click Save --> Also on the bottom right of the page
6) Now this form will have no activity written to CRM when someone submits the form.
Note: The form will still be considered a form submit in Eloqua. It will show up in a filter as a form submit if you are segmenting on 'submitted a form', it will count in lead scoring/program builder as a form submit, it will show up in the contact activity record and it will show up in Prospect Profiler BUT it will not write an activity to CRM.
** If you want to write a custom activity for this form to CRM, (not the activity under the 'All' category) you can also just select the external calls from this screen and save it. This form will not be under the 'ALL' category anymore, it will be over ridden by the External calls saved on this screen.
Remember you can do this for Email Open, Email Click Through and Email Send also for specific emails.
All forms you do not do this for will remain under the 'ALL' category and any External Calls setup under the 'ALL' category will be executed. Any new forms created will also be under the 'ALL' category unless you follow these instructions for the specific form.
I hope you found this empowering and will now go and customize what activities you are sending to your Salespeople in CRM.
Omar Hassanali
Senior Product Consultant - Eloqua Expert Program