Account Collections

An account collection is a manually or automatically defined list of accounts. While accounts in manual collections are put together by OMC users, accounts in automatic lists are determined on the basis of freely defined criteria. The application areas of account collections are many and diverse. Salesmen, for example, can use them to maintain client lists.

Account collections can be accessed via the Accounts main page (and via the clipboard if a list has been placed there):

Click this button to have the list of existing collections displayed:

Note that only those account collections are displayed that you created for yourself or that were created for one of the roles you have.

By means of the search form in the upper section, you can search for account collections. If you enter a search term, only those collections will be displayed that have the term in their title. Additionally, or alternatively, you can restrict the list of collections to those that were assigned to a particular role, or are solely yours. Click an item in the search results list to view its contents, to add accounts to the collection, or to remove accounts from it.

Creating a New Manual Account Collection

Click the New Manual Collection button on the overview page of the account collections. A form will then be displayed for specifying the properties of the new collection:

The properties of a collection include the following:

• Title: Specify a title that helps you (and others, if appropriate) to recall the purpose of the collection later on.

• Visible by Role: Do not select anything here if you are creating the collection just for yourself. Otherwise choose one of the roles from the dwop-down list. The list includes only roles you have.

• Entries Changeable by Role: Specify here the roles authorized to modify the collection. A user with a role enabling him to modify a collection also requires read access in order to do this.

After clicking Create, the details page of the collection is displayed (including the message that the operation was successful):

The details page of a collection supports searching for accounts contained in that list. Additionally, the following functions are available via the button bar:

• Edit: Modify the title or the visibility of the collection.

• Delete: Deletes the collection.

• Edit Entries: Add accounts to the collection, or remove accounts from it.

• Delete Entries: Opens a page on which accounts can be selected and then deleted.

• Data Export (CSV): Exports selectable fields of the accounts contained in the list as a text file with comma-separated values.

The function Edit Entries offers several ways to add accounts to the collection, or to remove accounts from it. Since new collections do not contain any accounts, you can only add accounts the first time this form is displayed:

You can specify an existing account collection, an individual account, or a CSV-File. If you specify a CSV file, the first field of the records is expected to be the account ID.

Click Add Accounts. The same page, however with more options for modifying the contents of the list is displayed:

Since the collection now contains accounts, the following options (in addition to Add Accounts) are available:

• Intersect Accounts: From the collection being edited, those accounts are removed that are not also contained in the set of accounts specified via the input elements of the form. This is practical if you wish to reduce a collection to the accounts that are also present in a different collection.

• Remove Accounts: This removes those accounts from the collection that are selected by means of the form input elements. This is equivalent to “subtracting” accounts.

• Remove all Accounts: This removes all accounts from the collection. The accounts specified by means of the form input fields are ignored.

After filling in the form, click the button for the desired operation. You can repeat this process until the collection contains the desired accounts. When finished, you can return to the collection you modified by selecting it from the context navigation.

Creating a New Automatic Collection

On the Accounts main page, click Collections followed by New automatic Collection. By means of the form which is then displayed you can set the title of the collection, the visibility of the collection, and the account search criteria:

Click Create after having provided the desired information and criteria. Afterwards the details page of the collection is displayed:

In addition to the pieces of information relevant for this collection, several functions are available on this page:

• Edit: Offers the possibility to edit the properties of the list as well as the search criteria.

• Delete: Deletes the collection.

• Recompute Entries: The accounts contained in the collection are determined in regular intervals by the OMC. Using this button the collection can be recomputed in between.

• Data Export (CSV): Exports selectable fields of the accounts contained in the list as a text file with comma-separated values.