Chapter 23
IN THIS CHAPTER
Defining reports
Creating reports using Report Builder
Exporting to Excel
Organizing your reports
How much time do you waste every week trying to prepare reports for your manager, your team, or yourself? You have to chase down the information, get it into a useful format, and then make sense of the data. By the time you do all of that, the information is probably already out of date, despite your best efforts. Have you ever felt less than confident of the details or the totals?
If this sounds like a familiar problem, you can use reports in Salesforce to generate up-to-the-moment data analysis to help you measure your business. As long as you and your teams regularly use Salesforce to manage your accounts, opportunities, and other customer-related information, you don’t have to waste time wondering where to find the data and how to consolidate it. Instead, let Salesforce do that work for you.
And unlike other applications in which the business users often have to spend precious time relying on more-technical people to build their custom reports, you can do this all by yourself in minutes, with no geeky programming. With an easy-to-use reporting wizard, you can customize existing reports or build them from scratch.
This chapter includes an overview of the standard reports provided by Salesforce, building reports from scratch, and modifying existing reports to make them your own. Within a report, we take you through the different ways you can filter the report to get just the information that’s necessary for creating a clearer picture of your business. Finally, be sure to check out our suggestions on how to keep your reports organized in easy-to-find folders as your universe of reports expands.
With reports, you can present your data in different formats, select a seemingly infinite number of columns, filter your data, subtotal information, use color to highlight when certain conditions are met, and embed formulas, just to name a few features. And like other pages in Salesforce, you can quickly find the details. So, for example, you can go from the Reports home page to a lead report to a lead record simply by clicking links.
When you click the Reports tab, as shown in Figure 23-1, you’ll see a search bar, a Folders navigation tree in the left panel of your browser, and a list of recently run reports within a particular folder in the main panel of this page. Salesforce has functionality on the Reports home page to help you more easily navigate through a large set of reports and dashboards. Salesforce comes standard with a set of predefined reports and folders that are commonly used for measuring sales, marketing, support, and other functions. For example, the Opportunity Pipeline report is an oft-used report by sales individuals and managers to help prioritize which deals to work on.
From the Reports home page, you can do the following:
When you click a report title or run a report from the wizard, a report page appears based on the criteria that was set. For example, under the Opportunity Reports folder, click the Opportunity Pipeline link. The Opportunity Pipeline report appears, as shown in Figure 23-4. This report, as we mention earlier, is one of the most-used standard reports in Salesforce.
A basic report page in Salesforce is broken up into a few parts:
Salesforce comes with a huge menu of useful reports, and yet they may not be exactly what you’re looking for. For example, if your company has added custom fields on the account record that are unique to your customer, a standard New Accounts report doesn’t show you all the information you want to see on recent accounts.
The next time you need a custom report, don’t pester the IT geeks. Instead, use Report Builder to build a new report or customize an existing one.
You don’t have to be a technical guru to create a report in Salesforce. Just make sure that you can articulate a question that you’re trying to answer, and then Report Builder will guide you through the steps for creating a custom report that will help you answer the question.
To create a report from scratch, click the Reports tab and follow these steps:
Click the New Report button.
The Create New Report page appears, as shown in Figure 23-5.
Select the report type that you want to report on, and then click Create.
You do this by first selecting the basic category of object from the Select Report Type panel, which displays a list of folders representing key objects. Clicking a folder reveals more specific report types to choose from. The standard report types will give you a visual preview of sample data and how it would look in that report template. The Create button is at the lower-right corner of this page.
When you click Create, the Report Builder drag-and-drop interface appears.
When you’re done creating your report, click the Save button.
The report saves, and a sample preview appears in the Report Builder Preview pane.
You can get pretty advanced with filtering options. As long as you can explain to yourself in plain English what criteria you’re looking for, you should be able to build a report for it using options under the Filters ⇒ Add drop-down list, as shown in Figure 23-6. For example, if you define strategic accounts as companies that either did more than $1 billion in annual revenue or had more than 500 employees plus $500 million in annual revenue, you can generate this report. To do this, add your field filters from the Filters ⇒ Add picklist and then choose the Filter Logic option. A field will appear where you can order each filter you have and associate it using AND or OR logic.
A fast and easy way to generate reports is to customize an existing report and save it as a new one. For example, if you like the standard Pipeline Report but you want to modify the columns, you can simply work from the existing report.
To customize an existing report, go to the Reports tab and follow these steps:
Find a folder that contains a report that you want to customize; click that folder, and then click a link for that report in the main Reports pane.
The report appears.
Click the Customize button.
Using the Customize button, the Report Builder page appears. You can then drag and drop interface fields into columns for that report (as discussed in the previous section). A preview of the report appears while you’re customizing it.
Continue customizing your report until you’re satisfied, and then click the Run Report button.
The report appears modified based on your settings from the wizard.
When you’re done, click Save or Save As.
The Save button replaces the prior custom report. The Save As button saves the new report as a new one. In either case, a page appears to save the report.
Complete the fields and click Save.
The Reports home page appears, with a link to your new report.
Over time, you’ll develop core reports that have the columns that you want in a format that makes sense to you. One of the huge benefits of reporting in Salesforce is that you can use existing reports on the fly and apply report options to filter or reorder the report results.
All those options and more are possible in seconds without having to use the Customize button. In the following sections, we show you how to filter your reports with tools and enhanced drill-down and breakout options.
When you open a report, it appears with a variety of filters in the Report Options section at the top of the page, as shown in Figure 23-7. By using the filters in the Report Options section, you can look at your data from multiple angles. The available standard filters depend on the type of report that you selected.
To try out the standard filters in the Report Options section by using the Opportunity Pipeline report as an example, first go to the Reports home page and click the Opportunity Pipeline link. The report appears. From the report, you can do the following with the filters in the Report Options section:
At any particular time, click the Run Report button to apply your selected filters. The report reappears based on the filters you defined.
If you ultimately want to save the report, click the Save or Save As button, and then save the report as usual. (See the section “Building a report from scratch,” earlier in this chapter, for details on saving.)
To see a collapsed or expanded view of your report data, click the Hide/Show Details button in the Report Options section. For example, from the Reports home page, click the Sales by Account report under Sales Reports. When the report appears, click the Hide Details button. The report reappears in a collapsed view, and the Hide Details button morphs into the Show Details button. Now click the Show Details button, and the report expands again. By using Hide Details, you can easily view headings, subtotals, and totals, especially for matrix reports.
Reports in Salesforce have a drill-down function that you can use to select rows within a report and instantly break them down by a different field. For example, if you’re reviewing an Opportunity by Rep report, you may want to select a specific rep and then sort the rep’s opportunities by stage. With enhanced drill-down and breakout options, you can do this in just a few quick clicks.
To use the drill-down and breakout options (using Sales by Rep as the example), follow these steps:
From the Reports home page, click the Sales by Rep link under the Sales Reports folder.
The report appears.
In the left column of the report, select check boxes for records you want to view.
If you don’t see check boxes and you know you’ve closed opportunities in Salesforce, select an interval in the Report Options section to see all your historical opportunities and click Run Report to view more records.
At the bottom of the page, select a field from the Check Rows to Filter, Then Drill Down By drop-down list to summarize the information, if desired, and then click the Drill Down button.
The report reappears based on your selections. For example, if you chose the Close Month option from the Drill Down By drop-down list, your selected opportunities would be sorted by close month.
If you want to use the report in the future, click Save As, and then follow the normal directions for saving reports.
See the section “Building a report from scratch,” earlier in this chapter, for saving details.
If you have reports with advanced filters, you can easily view and clear the filters to expand the results. For example, if you created and saved the test report in the preceding section, you may want to clear the filter on the selected rep(s) to see all closed opportunities by close month for all reps. The advanced filters, if any, appear just below the Filtered By header on a report page.
To clear a filter, follow these steps:
Click the link for a report to which you applied filters.
The report appears, and your criteria filters are listed under the Filtered By header, as shown in Figure 23-8.
Right below the Filtered By header, click the Clear link to remove a filter.
The report reappears, displaying a potentially wider universe of data.
Ideally, you want to run your reports right out of the application, getting rid of that mad scramble of collecting data before your next big meeting. However, sometimes you’ll want to generate a report and then export it to Excel. Maybe you need to run some complex spreadsheet calculations, or you need to plug numbers into an existing macro template. No problem. You can do that with the click of a button.
To export a report, click the Reports tab and follow these steps:
Click the Name of the report you want to export.
The report appears.
For some reports, you can skip this step by selecting the Export option in the Action drop-down menu next to the report name.
Click the Export Details button.
A page appears to define your settings for exporting the file.
Complete the fields and click the Export button.
A window appears, prompting you to open or save the file.
Follow the steps, as desired.
When the file opens, the report data appears in Excel.
Click Done to return to your Salesforce report.
The report page reappears.
Nothing is worse than seeing a gazillion reports under the Unfiled Public Reports folder. You start wasting a ridiculous amount of time just identifying which report is the one you want. If you have permission to manage public folders, avoid the headache by creating new report folders.
To create a new report folder, click the Reports tab and follow these steps:
Click the New Folder link to the right of the Find Folders search bar.
A New Report Folder page appears.
Type a name for the folder in the Report Folder Label field.
For example, if you want a folder for operational reports, you might name it Sales Ops Reports.
Use the Public Folder Access drop-down list to determine read versus read/write privileges to the folder.
If you select Read/Write, a user with access to the folder can save over the original report.
Use the radio buttons to select who should have access to the folder.
As with other Salesforce folder tools, your choices are All, None, and Selective.
When you’re done, click Save.
The Reports home page reappears, and your folder is added to the Folder menu.
One of the great features of Salesforce reporting is the ability to determine who gets to access which reports easily and intuitively. Access to reports (and dashboards) is controlled via the settings on the folder in which they’re stored.
When you’ve created some report folders, you can use them to determine who gets access to which folders. For example, if you don’t want anyone to see a report you’ve created (or you’re not ready to share it yet), just keep it in a personal folder that only you have access to. By default, any folder you create is only accessible to you and administrators until you decide to share it with others.
Salesforce has three different types of access levels to report folders:
To add users with these privileges to a report, just hover over the folder in question, click the pin on the right side, and click Share.
As Salesforce has matured over the years and more users have come to rely on it to house the bulk of their customer-touching information, users’ reporting needs have also matured. Salesforce has done a great job of making potentially very complicated database queries still accessible to the business user.
In this section, we talk briefly about some of the more advanced functionality, in case you’re feeling stuck about how to get information in your reports in a certain way. Most likely, you have a way to get you what you want, but you may need to dig a little deeper into Salesforce.
Salesforce provides prebuilt functionality that calculates the sum, average, highest value, and lowest value of certain fields that you select for your reports. However, you may need additional summary information based on calculations unique to your business. For example, your business may want to see win-rate percentages or coverage ratios in your reports. Salesforce allows the addition of custom formula calculations for your reports (and dashboards). This means that you can take summary information from other fields and lump them together to come up with a new calculation and corresponding result. It doesn’t matter whether you know old math or new math, Salesforce can derive these values for you using Excel-like commands.
To create a new custom summary formula, follow these steps:
Click a link for an existing report.
The report appears.
Click the Customize button.
The Report Builder appears.
Select the Add Formula option, as shown in Figure 23-9, and drag it into the preview pane as its own column.
The Custom Summary Formula Wizard page pops up.
Select one of the fields listed in the Summary Fields drop-down list, and then choose the kind of summary type to use in your formula.
This field’s value, and how it will be summarized, are automatically added into your formula. In our example, we select Amount and Average.
Click the appropriate operator icons from the drop-down list with the same name.
In our example, we select the / (Divide) option.
Repeat these steps, as needed, to build your formula.
If you need to know what functions to use for a particular operation, use the Functions picklist. Salesforce will also return some help text to give you an idea of how those functions should be formatted.
Click Check Syntax to check your formula.
Syntax that contains errors is automatically highlighted.
Click OK when you’re finished.
The pop-up window closes, and you’re back at the Report Wizard. You should see the new column showing sample data in the Preview section.
The custom summary formula isn’t saved until you save the report. Clicking Done just includes it in this step of the Report Wizard. Make sure that you save the report.
You can do a lot more fun things with reports. Even many long-term users of Salesforce reports may not know about all these additional analytics capabilities. Here is a brief summary to get data detectives more excited about it:
For more in-depth information on each of these advanced analytics capabilities, click the Help & Training link in Salesforce and search using the appropriate keywords (conditional highlighting, bucketed fields, and joined reports) in the search bar.