Oracle CPQ Cloud and Sales Cloud integration: Integration users (part four)

Integrating Oracle CPQ Cloud and Oracle Sales Cloud? Doreen Nyeko, CX Cloud Consultant, expands on a few hurdles you might face during integration in the final part of her technical blog series.

This blog post is the fourth and final part in a series of technical blogs exploring a few interesting scenarios that you may come across if you decide to integrate Oracle Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ) Cloud and Oracle Sales Cloud. If you’d like to read the previous posts within this series, please click the links below:

Part one - Lead to Quote: An introduction to Oracle CPQ Cloud and Sales Cloud integration

Part two - Oracle CPQ Cloud and Sales Cloud integration: SSO

Part three - Oracle CPQ Cloud and Sales Cloud integration: Integration files

What is an integration user? #

As you will have seen on the previous post in this series, the ‘standard’ integration pattern between CPQ Cloud and Sales Clouds relies on a number of SOAP Web service calls.

Sales Cloud SOAP Web service calls need to be authenticated by a user and CPQ Cloud does not use the details of the logged-in user to authenticate Web service calls. Instead, it uses the details of a specified integration user. It is best practice for this user type to be reserved for integration only, and should not be used by the sales department as a login to the application.

The user-chosen must have the right permissions to access and carry out CRUD operations for all of the Web services used in the integration. For a basic integration, this will mean that the user needs to have edit access for Account, Opportunity, Sales Order and Product Item objects.

Integration users: An example case #

To illustrate this instance in more detail, please see below example. Here, we are assuming that Sales Cloud will be the master for Accounts, Opportunities and Products, and will store Sales Orders matching CPQ transactions.

These permissions can be assigned in Oracle Sales Cloud when creating the integration user. Giving the integration user the standard Sales Administrator and Product Data Steward job roles will be sufficient for the standard use case integration, but you may want to look into providing finer-grained control.

The integration user will then need to be mapped in CPQ. Using the CPQ FullAccess user functionality, you have the option to first navigate to Admin > Users > Internal Users. Then, you can select Superuser and click on the Partner Info button in the bottom left hand corner. You will be taken to the Partner Info page, where the integration user will be specified.

On the left-hand side, you’ll see two tabs: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Product Information Management (PIM). It is important that the Sales Cloud login information for the integration user is specified in both of these tabs. You can use the same login details for both the CRM and PIM integrations (again, assuming Sales Cloud will master both areas), as long as the user has permission for both editing Opportunities and accessing the Product Catalog (e.g. Sales Administrator and Product Data Steward job roles). Failure to populate both tabs correctly will result in either the Parts or Transaction integration links failing.

This blog post concludes our short series on the most common scenarios you might come across when implementing Sales Cloud and CPQ Cloud integration. You can return to the main blog post, ‘Lead to Quote: An introduction to CPQ Cloud and Sales Cloud integration’ to view all other blog posts in this technical series.

We will be posting more in the future about our experience with both applications, so please keep an eye on our blog for further insightful pieces.

More information #

Boxfusion Consulting boasts a deep knowledge of the Oracle CPQ Cloud technology, and offer expert advice and implementation services supported by constant engagement with Oracle’s product roadmap team. A specialised Oracle partner, particularly recognised by our skills and expertise in Cloud CX, we have deep expertise in the Oracle CPQ Cloud and Sales Cloud integration architecture and can help you implement all applications successfully with your existing systems.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Oracle CPQ Cloud features, or the benefits and opportunities that come with Oracle CX Cloud integration, call us on +44 203 283 4315 or contact us here.