In Chapter 7, we covered limits of declarative customization and studied when to use programmatic development. We then explored various types of sandboxes. Last, we discussed different deployment tools in Salesforce using a few real-life examples.
This chapter is comprised of three parts. In part one, we walk through the capabilities of social features through some use cases. In part two, we take a look at reports and report types. In part three, we examine the role dashboards play in rendering underlying analytics.
Social Features
Salesforce social features allow users to connect accounts, contacts, and leads to social networks such as Twitter and YouTube. By so doing, users can keep abreast of the latest activities in their organization’s accounts, contacts, and leads in the social ecosystem. In the Winter'20 release of Salesforce, only Twitter will be available in Lightning Experience; in Classic, however, both Twitter and YouTube are accessible.
By default, social features for accounts, contacts, and leads are enabled in all orgs.
Update Social Accounts, Contacts, and Leads Settings
Now that you understand what social features Salesforce offers, it is time see how to update the settings for social accounts in an org. Let’s join Pamela Kline once again. Her manager has requested that she make sure GoC users are not able to access information about their accounts, contacts, and leads using YouTube.
Pamela meets her manager’s requirement by performing the following steps:
- 1.
She navigates to Setup (gear icon) ➤ Setup ➤ Feature Settings ➤ Sales ➤ Social Accounts and Contacts Settings.
- 2.Next, Pamela deselects the Enable YouTube check box, as shown in Figure 8-1.
Figure 8-1Social Accounts, Contacts, and Lead Settings section
- 3.
When done, she clicks the Save button.
Going forward, GoC users will only be able to access Twitter by default. Pamela immediately informs GoC users of this change and notes they may configure Social Accounts, Contacts, and Leads for their individual use.
Hide Social Network Profiles
If Social Accounts, Contacts, and Leads is enabled in your org, and some users do not want to use it, they can hide it by navigating to their personal settings.
Richard Adams is working as a senior sales director at GoC. He does not want to use Social Accounts, Contacts, and Leads features. Let’s help hide these features.
Tell Richard to follow the steps listed here to hide the Social Accounts, Contacts, and Leads features:
- 1.
Navigate to Personal Settings ➤ Display & Layout ➤ My Social Accounts and Contacts.
- 2.Uncheck the Use Social Accounts and Contacts check box, as shown in Figure 8-2.
Figure 8-2My Social Accounts and Contacts Settings section
- 3.
Click the Save button.
Link Twitter Profiles to Accounts, Contacts, and Leads
Linking social accounts
When you press the button, you will automatically see the available Twitter feeds for the record. Remember, users have to connect their Twitter account to view information from an account’s Twitter feed. Salesforce doesn’t store any Twitter data; all you see is a-real time feed fetched by Salesforce.
Introduction to Reports
Reports are a way to analyze how efficient teams are performing over time. For example, GoC’s senior sales director, Richard Adams, wants to know the effectiveness of a campaign that ran during the current fiscal year. The campaign’s report showed the current status of leads that came via referral.
Reports always generate data in real time based on the criteria you define. Reports respect an organization’s security and settings. As a result, users only see records in the reports to which they have access.
To share reports with users, save them in a folder. Then, share folder access with the users. It is possible to create reports for standard and custom objects.
When you create reports in Salesforce, you must select a report type. A report type is nothing but a holding tank for records from one or multiple objects.
Report Types
- 1.
Standard report types
- 2.
Custom report types
Standard Report Type
By default, standard report types are available for building reports on standard and custom objects, and their related objects. When a system administrator creates a new custom field, the field is automatically added to standard report types.
Custom Report Type
You are allowed to select combinations of up to four related objects.
You can select an object’s fields (parent to child) and use them as columns in a report.
Setting up a Custom Report Type
- 1.
She navigates to Setup (gear icon) ➤ Setup Home ➤ Feature Settings ➤ Analytics ➤ Report & Dashboards ➤ Report Types.
- 2.She clicks the New Custom Report Types button, which opens a window where she enters the following details:
Primary Object: Pamela selects the primary object from all the objects available in her organization, even those she doesn’t have permission to view! In this case, Pamela selects the Account object.
Report Type Label: She enters a meaningful name for the report type label: Accounts with Contact and Opportunity.
Report Type Name: This field is autopopulated based on the report type label.
Description: Pamela writes some meaningful text so other developers and administrators can understand easily why this custom report type was created in the first place.
Store in Category: She select the Account & Contacts category to store her custom report type.
- Deployment Status: Pamela selects Deployed. Her screen looks like Figure 8-4.
Figure 8-4Defining the custom report type
- 3.
When done, Pamela clicks the Next button.
- 4.With Account as her primary object, she now needs to relate another object to it. She selects Contacts as her secondary object and then selects the check box Each "A" record must have at least one related "B" record. She then selects Opportunities as the tertiary object and selects the check box Each "B" record must have at least one related "C" record, as shown in Figure 8-5.
Figure 8-5Defining the report records set
- 5.
When done, Pamela clicks the Save button.
Report Format Types
- 1.
Tabular
- 2.
Summary
- 3.
Matrix
- 4.
Joined
Tabular Report Format
Use the tabular report format to display rows of records in a table without any subtotal.
Pamela’s requirement hasn’t changed: create a report that lists all accounts with at least one Contact record, and each Contact record must have at least one related Opportunity record.
- 1.
She navigates to the Reports tab and clicks the New Report button.
- 2.She is redirected to a page where she must choose a report type. Pamela selects the Accounts with Contact and Opportunity report type, as shown in Figure 8-6.
Figure 8-6Choosing a report type
- 3.
When done, she clicks the Continue button .
- 4.In the next screen, she adjusts the filter by changing the Date field filter by selecting Created Date with the range All Time (Figure 8-7).
Figure 8-7Custom report
- 5.
When done , she clicks the Save button.
- 6.
Last, she saves the report to an appropriate folder and checks the report folder sharing settings.
Summary Report Format
Use a summary report format to display groupings of rows of data. Let’s start with a business use case.
- 1.
Pamela navigates to the Reports tab and clicks the New Report button.
- 2.
She is redirected to a page where she must choose a report type. Pamela selects the Leads report type.
- 3.To apply row grouping based on lead source, she clicks the Lead Source drop-down, then Group Rows by This Field, as shown in Figure 8-8 (numbers 1 and 2, respectively).
Figure 8-8Grouping by a field
- 4.
When done, she clicks the Save button.
- 5.
She names the report “Leads grouped by source” and saves it in the Unfiled Public Reports folder.
- 6.
When done, she clicks the Save button.
Matrix Report Format
The matrix report is the most complex report format. Use this report to summarize data in a grid. You can group records by both columns and rows. Let us start with a business use case.
- 1.
Pamela navigates to the Reports tab and clicks Leads grouped by source, then she clicks the Edit button.
- 2.She then applies column grouping based on the lead owner by clicking the drop-down Lead Owner and selecting Group Columns by This Field, as shown in Figure 8-9 (numbers 1 and 2, respectively).
Figure 8-9Grouping by a field
- 3.
When done , she clicks the Save button.
Now the report automatically changes the format from summary to matrix (Figure 8-10).
Figure 8-10Matrix report
- 4.
Pamela clicks the Detail Rows toggle to hide report details.
Joined Report Format
Use the joined report format to combine multiple views of related information in a single report. For example, you may want to display a comparison between sales data in the current quarter of this year with data from the last fiscal year.
Dashboard Components and Its Types
The dashboard is a graphical representation of a report. It shows data from the source report graphically as a metric chart, gauge, donut chart, and so on, and is created using Visualforce. Dashboard components provide a preview of key metrics and performance meters of your organization.
Business users can see all the details on a dashboard, regardless of the type of access they have to the records. But, as soon as they drill down to reports, users only see the records to which they have access.
Creating a Dashboard
A dynamic dashboard displays data on the dashboard based on the logged-in user. Dashboards can be created from summary and matrix reports only. When using Lightning Experience, you can even use a joined report as a source for a dashboard. You can also use a tabular report as a source if you put a limit on the number of rows it returns. Let’s revisit Pamela.
- 1.
Pamela navigates to the Dashboards tab and clicks the New Dashboard button.
- 2.She is redirected to a page where she has to enter the dashboard name. In this case, Pamela types Lead Dashboard and selects a folder to store the dashboard. She then clicks Create, as shown in Figure 8-11.
Figure 8-11Creating a new dashboard
- 3.
Next, Pamela clicks + Component to insert a component onto the dashboard.
- 4.She receives a prompt to select the report, so she selects Leads group by source, as shown in Figure 8-12.
Figure 8-12Selecting a report
- 5.
When done, she clicks the Select button.
- 6.Next, she adds the component—in this case, she clicks the funnel chart icon—and configures it, as shown in Figure 8-13.
Figure 8-13Adding a component
- 7.
She can add multiple components to her dashboard. Each component shows data from one report. Pamela adds one more component—a donut chart—to her dashboard. She uses the drag-and-drop feature to reposition her components.
- 8.
When done, she clicks the Save button.
Making a Dashboard Dynamic
To make her dashboard dynamic, Pamela must go back to the dashboard she just created and perform the following steps.
- 1.
She navigates to the Dashboard tab and opens Lead Dashboard.
- 2.
She clicks the Edit button.
- 3.Next, she clicks Properties and goes to the View Dashboard As section. There are three possible options provided by Salesforce:
- a.
Me: By using this setting, the dashboard runs as you. Everyone in the org sees the data on the dashboard per your access.
- b.
Another person: By using this setting, everyone in the org sees the same data on the dashboard.
- c.
The dashboard viewer: By using this setting, users see data based only on their own access level. If you select this option, you can’t schedule dashboard.
- a.
Viewing the dashboard as
- 4.
When done, she clicks the Save button.
Points to Remember
- 1.
Your accounts, contacts, and leads aren’t notified when you use Salesforce to view their social network profiles.
- 2.
Salesforce doesn’t import, or store, your social information. Each time you select a social profile or a YouTube video, Salesforce retrieves the information you want to see directly from the social network in real time.
- 3.
System administrators or users who have Run Reports and Manage Dashboards permission can create dashboards.
- 4.
If you can’t see the Add Formula option in the Fields section of the report builder, change your report format to summary, matrix, or joined. Formulas don’t show up for tabular reports.
- 5.
You can have 20 filter fields and up to five formula fields per report.
- 6.
By default, reports timeout after ten minutes. You can contact Salesforce.com support to extend the timeout limit to 20 minutes for tabular, summary, and matrix reports. But, note that an extension of the timeout limit is not available for joined reports. Joined reports continue to timeout every ten minutes.
- 7.
The maximum number of source report columns you can map to target fields is 100.
Hands-on Exercises
- 1.What are the components of the dashboard that use grand totals? Select two options.
- a.
Metric
- b.
Table
- c.
Gauge
- d.
Chart
- a.
- 2.Which report type is used to group rows of data and show their subtotals?
- a.
Summary
- b.
Matrix
- c.
Tabular
- d.
Detailed
- a.
- 3.Which report type is used to group rows and columns of data and show their subtotals?
- a.
Summary
- b.
Matrix
- c.
Tabular
- d.
Detailed
- a.
- 4.
Dennis Williams, a system administrator at GoC, has received a requirement to create a report that shows leads created from social media as a source, their current stage, and who owns the lead. How would you instruct Dennis to meet this requirement?
- 5.
Dennis Williams receives a requirement to show opportunities from the last, and current, fiscal year by opportunity owner. How would you instruct Dennis to meet this requirement?
Summary
In this chapter, we discussed the social features of Salesforce for accounts, contacts, and leads. We also went through the reporting concepts in Salesforce, including custom report types and different report formats. Last, we examined the dashboard and dynamic dashboard concepts.
After reading this book, you should have gained a good understanding of Salesforce fundamentals and, as a result, should feel confident enough to take the Platform App Builder certification exam. Before you take the exam, make sure to complete this Trailmix on Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/users/strailhead/trailmixes/prepare-for-your-salesforce-platform-app-builder-credential. Good luck!