Remote working and ever-increasing digital transformations have significantly increased companies’ reliance on cloud-based applications. Over 150,000 organizations worldwide have adopted Salesforce as their business-critical application for reporting, analytics, and customer relationship management.
Salesforce reporting has become one of the most powerful features due to the wealth of information on Salesforce org. The feature enables users to examine their information in almost infinite combinations, display the data in the most understandable formats, and easily share their insight with others. It also allows Admins to demonstrate how the application can boost an organization’s productivity when used effectively.
Salesforce reports are filtered records that meet the criteria a user defines. The Salesforce Admin should have explicit knowledge of all available options and resources to build these reports in a drag-and-drop interface known as Lightning Report Builder. Unfortunately, most technology leaders underutilize at least one of the Salesforce reporting resources.
This article will discuss some Salesforce advanced features that are not used appropriately, such as custom reports, standard reports, and third-party tools for creating better reports. Salesforce users can use these resources to create reliable reports in the most scalable and efficient way, even with challenging data models.
Salesforce has different report types that make reporting easy. Report types are similar to templates that determine which records and fields are available for use during report creation. They are based on the relationships between the primary objects and their related objects.
Standard report
Standard reports are predefined reports that are tailored to unique requirements. They are the primary structures containing business objects such as opportunity, campaign, contact, lead, etc. They are mainly generated from the group or company menus or maintain and transfer menus.
Examples of standard report types
- Account and contact reports.
- Activity reports.
- Administrative reports.
- File and content reports.
- Campaign reports.
- High-velocity sales reports.
- Opportunity reports.
- Lead reports, among others.
The standard reports are great pieces in an organization, but may be challenging to create and use-a probable reason why they are not used appropriately by the technology leaders.
How to create Salesforce standard report types
- Open your Salesforce account, open the Reports tab, and select the New Report option.
- Open the Property and click Create to begin the process.
- Select elements you would like to see in the report like Filters, Fields, and Properties.
- Save the created report to a folder and click Run report to finish the process.
Salesforce custom reports
The standards reports are not one-size-fits-all reporting resources. Perhaps, you may want to report two or more objects, or you need your report to display different records independently without affecting other associated records.
For instance, you may want to display Account records without Contact records or Opportunities without Products. In this case, the custom reports become the best solution. They help you create complex reports far better than the standard report types.
Examples of custom report types
- Accounts without or with opportunities.
- Contacts with case activities.
- Accounts with products and orders.
Benefits of custom report types
- Fields via lookup: The report allows you to add fields from any related objects.
- Multiple objects: You can add up more than two layers of objects, provided they have a child-parent relationship.
- Rename, create, remove and reorder fields and sections.
- Default columns: You can easily control the columns that display in the reports, especially when creating the new one.
How to create Salesforce custom report types
- Select all objects you would like to display in your report.
- Select up to 4 child and grandchild objects you would like to include in the report, depending on the primary object.
- Specify whether you want the selected object to having related records to display or not by pulling the “without” report.
- Edit the report’s layout to select the fields you want to appear as report columns every time users create new reports.
Salesforce third party tools
The appropriate Salesforce integration of the third-party tools enables adequate data analysis and improved accessibility. They also help directors and managers make the most effective decisions at every stage. The tools include:
App-native tools
Quip
Quip is modern productivity and a mobile first suite that comprises all relevant features like spreadsheets, documentation, and team chats under one roof. They create a very interactive environment and enable your teams to complete more work with great collaboration. It significantly reduces the time for physical meetings and emails and provides opportunities for growth to meet the ever-increasing customer demands.
Gridbuddy
Gridbuddy is a spreadsheet-like workspace that enables Excel-like feature to create, edit and update operations across various objects. It enables you to configure grids and charts to offer your users a single view to enable them to work on entire data in a single dashboard.
Conga Composer
Integration of Congo Composer with Salesforce significantly simplifies report creation, reporting, and delivery. It allows technology leaders to compose all documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and HTML email in one platform-thus, saving time for frequently updating the Salesforce API.
Heroku
Heroku is a data replication tool that enables developers to scale, deploy and manage modern apps. It allows cross-data source analysis and reporting in Salesforce CRM.
Google Cloud (G Suite)
Google Suite is collaborative productivity software that offers technology leaders business-related professional emails, online document storage and editing, shared calendars, and video meetings, among others, directly from Salesforce.
Hubspot
This CRM platform allows companies to sync data between platforms in real-time. It brings all the information scaling companies require to deliver the best customer experience. As a result, the teams can effectively manage and nurture, leads to increase organizational productivity.
DocuSign
DocuSign is a fast and reliable tool for preparing, managing, and signing contracts and agreements electronically within Salesforce. It can be used in almost all devices worldwide, thus accelerating an organization’s workflows, increasing customer experiences, and significantly reducing costs.
Admin/DevOps tools
Gearset is a popular Salesforce DevOps that allows technology leaders to review and compare deployments between instances. It has fast metadata deployments, full org backups, automated CI, sandbox seeding, and easy-to-use UI, among others, to give an insight into what is being deployed and its likelihood of succeeding.
Dataloader is one of the most popular web-based data loaders for Salesforce to securely and quickly export, import, or delete unlimited data. It also helps technology leaders manage files on local or remote servers using FTP, Box, and Dropbox.
As companies realize more digital transformations, reporting and analytics are becoming buzzwords in business communities. Business managers and technology leaders are expected to make data-driven choices and decisions. Thanks to Salesforce, reporting and analyzing resources for making it easy to pull information and access various processes to achieve desired results. However, the resources should be used appropriately to enjoy unmatched productivity.
At Coherent Solutions, we understand the hassles the technology leads, and business managers go through to boost organizational productivity. We offer comprehensive Salesforce software development services that cover different technologies, entire SDLC, and a wide array of industries. Contact us today to schedule your services.