Advanced Salesforce Reporting Features To Know

You cannot demonstrate the value to the business without an effective reporting in Salesforce. You should be able to build reports within the shortest span through simple drag and drop interface which are simpler to use. As it is evident about how essential reporting in Salesforce can prove to be in a business, it is extremely important for Administrators to identify all the available options whenever reporting requirements open up.

Here are some of the reporting features that Salesforce Partners can offer organizations in addition to simple drag and drop interface.

Custom Report Types

Standard report types are offered by default to Salesforce. Most of the standard objects such as Contacts & Accounts, Opportunities with products etc are comprised of standard report types. Standard report types are automatically created by Salesforce for most of the custom objects and relationship being built. Based on whether you are making use of a Lookup or Master-detail relationship, the type of Salesforce report being created would depend up on. However the relevance of Custom Report Types increases whenever companies wish to report more than two objects at a single time. Custom report types are also required whenever organizations do not only want to have only 'with' relationship, but also want 'and' relationships.

Generating a custom report type is based on the relationships being selected as well as the objects that are likely to be included. The wizard would provide access to child objects and grandchild objects based on the primary object being chosen. Details regarding the possibility of the selected objects to have related records for showing up would be also included within the report. It can prove to be very useful whenever companies would like to display a report such as Accounts with & without opportunities.

Exception Reports

Exception reports help you to identify areas where data does not exist and are created using cross filters. Normal filter drop-down usually consists of cross filters and it can be generated using any report type with a child object associated with it. The cross filters would be used for filtering the child objects that are related to the primary object and this is how Exception Reports work. Specific fields on the child object can be filtered further by making use of Sub-Reports.

Custom Summary Formulas

When it comes to calculating complex data from summary levels, Custom Summary Reports are used for reports. It is included within a report like any other field. The formula would be created once the custom summary formulas are brought in to the report. Enhanced access is available for most of the functions whenever a normal formula field is created with a few additions so as to deal with particular situations within a report. Using this formula, companies can calculate about how many the accounts are contributing towards the total revenue of new customers. In addition to it, averages, moving averages and totals of varied groupings can be calculated using custom summary formulas.

Analytical Snapshots

Analytical Snapshots allows users to create historical reports by means of capturing data at scheduled points in time. These historical reports are useful in estimating the long term data trends which is impossible with standard functionality. Even though the normal reports in Salesforce displays the data similar as in real-time, Analytical Snapshots can be useful in viewing the cases that are open on a single day and the trend created by it. Analytical Snapshots are designed to harness the maximum potential of Salesforce Platform and Salesforce Partner companies makes use of this useful feature for Salesforce Reporting purposes.

It can be created by following three of the below mentioned steps.

Source report has to be created first. Source report will consist of data that needs to be historically trend on. For example, if it is about historic open cases, then a source report needs to be created which would display all the open cases today.

Secondly, a custom object has to be created which is capable of holding the data from the source report. This means loading of complete data in to a new record within the object which would allow reporting on the object as well as data.

Finally, the snapshot can be created. The snapshot should include naming of the snapshot, source report selection, target custom object selection and the frequency that should be run by the Settings.

Historical Trend Reporting

If you are looking forward for tracking smaller changes in the data on a daily basis or weekly basis, then Historical Trends Reporting feature allows you to track almost 8 fields in the Opportunity Object and up to 3 custom objects. A maximum of 5 snapshot dates that includes either five business days or five business weeks can be selected using this feature. For viewing the direct changes to data, the reporting and viewing of the data can be done on the same row.

William Hills is a technical writer at JanBask. He loves writing and sharing topics on Web Design Services, Web Development, Salesforce Services & Cloud services and latest trends going around in web world.