Dynamic Reports: The Challenge, The Solution….

Let’s face it, if you are reading this blog, then you are a Salesforce geek, at least to some extent.  While I’ve got responsibility at work for a wide range of sales operations functions (sales compensation, sales process, budgeting, etc.), I will admit I still geek out on Salesforce.  I love the platform, and I often challenge myself to come up with creative solutions to business problems.

To quote some TV commercial, the concept presented here, – Dynamic Reports – is my “A-ha!” moment!   Once this idea came to me, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.

Using standard Salesforce functionality, with a couple tricks, I was able to create a simple, easy to use solution that would save my users lots of time, literally every day!

Now it may not seem that simple if it takes a 5-part post to explain, but I want to make sure I fully explain the concept and how to implement it, so you can take advantage of it in your organizations.  (Honestly, it took me more time to write these blog posts than it did to create the Dynamic Reports object).

So now…. on with the post…

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The Challenge…

Some of my best ideas come while I am sitting in on sales account reviews.

About six months ago I was in an account review, watching a sales manager go through the same six reports with eight different sales reps.  For each rep, the manager would pull up a Salesforce report, change the sales rep name, and run the reports to look at key sales metrics like opportunity pipeline, recently closed opportunities, new pipeline added, etc.

As I was sitting there, I wondered if I could build a web page, maybe in Google sites, to allow the Sales manager to just click a few links and launch ALL the reports he needs to assess the sales rep’s performance.  Maybe there was a way could leverage the custom report links that I’m sure many of us have used on page layouts (as documented in this Salesforce.com Tip Sheet.)

But that would require a lot of maintenance – adding and deleting hyperlinks on the Google page as sales reps come and go.

Then it occurred to me that any variable (like Sales Rep name) that I would want to report onalready exists in Salesforce.  Could I build a custom object to manage these report variables?  l knew I could launch an Opportunity page from a List View… But could I launch a report from a list view? And could I pass a variable to that report?

After a couple hours tinkering around in my Sandbox…. A-ha!  I got it! 

The Solution:

A new Dynamic Reports object, with secure, custom List Views for each Sales VP or Manager, that acts as a report launcher for our most common sales reports.  AND the concept can be extended to just about any custom or standard object, all within the same Dynamic Reports object.

There a sneak peak of the Dynamic Reports main page at the top of this page.  Hopefully, you’ll see the value in it right away.  On the next post, I’ll explain how it works, and then I’ll tell you how to build it.