In the previous chapter, we looked at how through the use of various sharing rules, we could control the access to records in Salesforce CRM. Various mechanisms that help to manage the quality and integrity of data were also described, along with an overview of the facilities for importing and exporting data using import tools.

In this chapter, we continue to look at the subject of data but from the viewpoint of reporting where we will describe the analytics building blocks within Salesforce CRM.

These analytics tools allow you and your users to customize and manage the reporting and visual representation of data. For example, the sales team can produce reports that show the sales pipeline; the marketing team can report on the progress of campaigns and you can create reports that display the numbers of active users in your Salesforce organization.

The features available to report data are described in detail and include details on how to create, customize, and export purpose-build report data.

Reports can also be used to improve the quality of data. You can, for example, create a report that lists all accounts with missing Annual Revenue fields.

We will also look in detail at how these analytic elements can be used to provide sophisticated dashboard charting and graphics.

Salesforce CRM analytics consists of the basic mechanisms of reports, dashboards, and folders: