by Mike Walsh | Jan 30, 2015 | Salesforce Tips
Reports are an awesome tool in Salesforce. In a matter of minutes, you can filter, group, and summarize your data in countless ways to give you exactly the information you need and reorganize it in seconds. But let’s say your team constantly needs to see a very specific Report based on information from a record. Maybe you want to quickly see how much revenue is being generated by accounts in the same State as the one you’re looking at, or what Cases have been opened by people from the same company while you’re working on a support ticket. Your team could all constantly update the same Report or you could create an individual Report for each circumstance, but that means slowing down the process or filtering through thousands of Reports. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just have one Report that was smart enough to always give you the information you need right now? Well, you can with dynamic Reports in Salesforce!
This is the quick and dirty guide to creating dynamic Reports for those of you with too little time in your day. You’ll probably want to grab a cup of coffee like you did when you read our URL hacking guide, but know that this is only skimming the surface of what you can do with dynamic Reports.
So, start off by creating a Report – we’ll call our example Opportunities Won by State. Add all the fields your team needs. Next, add the filters you want to apply starting with the ones that need to be dynamic. To make your life easier, throw in values for those filters rather than leaving them blank so that you can see what the Report will look like when it works. In my Report, the first filter in my Opportunity Report (which should be dynamic) is Billing State equals CA, and the second (which should always stay the same) is Stage equals Closed Won. Save your Report to a public folder, and make a note somewhere of the Report ID (the 15 character code after salesforce.com/ in the URL – see example below) and the exact order of those filters.
https://na8.salesforce.com/00O60000003ioH4
Now, go to the object where you want to access the Report from (I want to see mine from Accounts) and create a new Custom Link. Be sure the Content Source is set to URL, then in the big box, enter a /, the Report ID, and a ?. It should look like this:
/00O60000003ioH4?
Almost done! Now comes the fun part. We need to tell the Report what parameter values (pv’s) to use. When I created my Report, my first filter, or parameter, was Billing State. So I’ll start by typing pv0= (note the 0 – Salesforce starts the count from 0 rather than 1 here). Next, I’ll select the merge field I’m looking for using the formula editor to insert, or if I know the API name, I can just enter it in the format of {!sObject.Field}. It should look like this:
/00O60000003ioH4?pv0={!Account.PostalCode}
Let’s say I had one more filter that I wanted to be dynamic. I don’t just want to see Opportunities from this State, but ones referred by the same Account. Just add an & (no spaces) in between each value and increment the number after pv:
/00O60000003ioH4?pv0={!Account.BillingState}&pv1={!Account.Referred_by_Account__c}
Once you’ve finished setting up the link, save it, then add it to your page layout. Go to a record and click on the link to test. Sometimes you’ll find that you may have mixed up your pv’s or that the filters are too restrictive or too open-ended and you’re not getting the data you need. If that happens, open up your Report in one tab, your Custom Link in another, and a sample record in a third. This will allow you to quickly make changes to your Link and Report and see the results. Once you’re totally satisfied, let your team know about the awesome new feature that’s already waiting on their page layouts and treat yourself to another well-deserved cup of coffee!
-Jared and the Salesforce Guys
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Dec 12, 2014 | Blog, Salesforce-Apps-AppExchange
Closing deals is the most critical part of your job every day. A closed deal means new revenue and more resources to find future deals. Letting a deal fall through the cracks should never be an option, but let’s face it: you only have so much time. That’s where the Opportunity Accountability Dashboard comes in.
Sales Managers, this dashboard will allow you to stay on top of closing deals that might be a problem. Identify opportunities that are stuck or missing valuable information.
Start closing more of those challenging deals today with the free Opportunity Accountability Dashboard!
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Oct 15, 2014 | Blog, Salesforce-Apps-AppExchange
Going beyond out-of-the-box and customizing your Salesforce org with Custom Fields, Objects, Workflow automation, custom Apex functionality and more is as revolutionary as the steam engine. But the more you build, the harder it can be to review your existing customizations and bring the next best thing to your team. You can report on just about everything in Salesforce, but you can’t report on the backend customizations that drive your data. As an admin or developer, you deserve the same tools the rest of your team has, tools to give you insights into the work you do behind the curtain. And that’s just what Astrea brings you with Octopus!
Octopus allows you to document all the items in your Salesforce instance. Get information about apex classes, pages, workflows, triggers, objects, fields and much more in a single place. You can also download it as a PDF/Word file for future reference. Cut down on all those hours spent on documentation. Use Octopus and get a document ready with just a few clicks!
This awesome new tool is already getting great reviews, including one from the fantastic Phil Walton. Check it out today!
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Sep 5, 2014 | Salesforce Tips
When you want to make the sale, voicemail is most certainly not your friend. If you leave your message after the tone, you never know if they’re going to call right back, start a game of phone tag, or miss it entirely, giving your competitors another opportunity to snatch your hard-earned revenue. No different with customer service – when a client is angry, nothing can sooth their frustration like a friendly, live voice on the other end. The answering machine isn’t going to answer their questions. If you’re using Salesforce, you have six standard phone number fields (yes, 6, I counted) between Accounts and Contacts, not to mention any custom phone fields you’ve added over time. But which one is going to get a pick-up instead of going straight to that annoying automated teller? Wouldn’t it be great if you could clearly and easily identify the preferred phone number? You can, with two simple fields!
First, create a picklist field called “Preferred Phone?” and make the values the names of all your phone number fields (Account Phone, Mobile, etc.). Now, create a formula field called “Preferred Phone” (to make your life easy, add “_Formula” to the API name). The formula: CASE(Preferred_Phone__c, “Account Phone”, Account.Phone, “Mobile”, MobilePhone,…,null) – obviously add any other numbers in that … bit. Add the picklist near the other phone numbers, and give your formula a predominant place at the top of the record and you’re all set! You can leverage this field in related lists, list views, and anywhere you’ve got a lookup to Contact. Now, you’ll always know which number is best to get an answer! It’s so simple, why not give it a try today!
-Jared and the Salesforce Guys
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Aug 22, 2014 | Blog, Salesforce-Apps-AppExchange
Chatter is the cool tool for connecting your teams and concentrating on collaboration. One of the great things about Chatter is that, like your social media, you can get a good pulse on how well it’s being used just by looking at your Chatter feed. Lots of posts, comments, and likes speak to a thriving community. But if you want to measure your team’s engagement on Chatter, identify which users might need support and which might make good mentors, and find areas of growth within your system, there’s going to be a lot of hard work involved building challenging Custom Report Types and working out the most crucial Dashboards. Well, that, or you could just download the Chatter Usage Dashboards by Salesforce Labs.
The Chatter Adoption Dashboard includes 20 dashboard components and reports for a broad view into your org’s usage of Chatter. Extend it with your own new reports by using the 7 included Chatter custom report types!
As usual with Salesforce Labs, Chatter Usage Dashboards is a free app, so why not give it a try today!
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
