Custom Report Types

You have already been introduced to the concept of report types. You have used default Force Platform report types with the reports you created in the previous section. You can also create your own custom report types. These custom report types connect more than a pair of related objects. Custom report types can include data normally not included. You can enlarge the scope of your Force Platform reports without sacrificing any of the power and functionality that you have already discovered.

A Custom Report Type links up to four levels of an object hierarchy. In addition, each level in the custom report type includes fields from up to a total of 20 related objects across all the levels of the Custom Report Type.

So far, you have used objects with a fairly simple set of relationships, reducing the complexity of the model while still learning some of the basics of the Force Platform. To understand more about Custom Report Types, you need to add a more complex object to your Force Platform database.

The recruiting application you have been building has left out a critical component of the recruiting process—the interview. The script file you were directed to run at the start of this chapter created and populated a new object in your application for connecting interviewers and job applications, the Interview object. The Intervier object has a lookup relationship to both the Job Application object and the User object. The Custom Report Object combines the Job Application object with the Interview object, bringing in fields from objects that are related to these objects.

Defining a Custom Report Type

You can create a Custom Report Type that incorporates the Job Application, the Interview object, and a couple of related objects.

1.	To create a Custom Report Type, click Setup Create Report Types. A page with a basic explanation of how Custom Report Types work displays. Click Continue to go to a list view for Custom Report Types, and New Custom Report Type to bring up the page shown in below. This page prompts you for the Primary Object for the Custom Report Type. The primary object is the object at the top of the Custom Report Type hierarchy, the object that drives the entire record type. Figure 100. Defining a Custom Report Type [View full size image]
2.	Select the Positions object as the Primary Object. Note that the object is referred to here by its plural name. The Positions object is the parent in a lookup relationship with Job Applications, which is, in turn, the parent of Interviews, making it the primary object for this Custom Report Type.
3.	Give the Custom Report Type a Report Type Label of Interviews, Positions and Candidates, and accept the default for the Report Type Name. Add a description that explains the purpose of the Custom Report Type and select the Other Reports category for storage.
4.	Mark the Custom Report Type as Deployed to allow the Custom Report Type to be used for reports by standard users. If you leave the default of In Development, the Custom Report Type only displays to administrators and their delegates.
5.	Click Next to bring up the page shown, in its completed state, in the following figure. This page begins with the primary object, a diagram to the right of the object indicating that all of the records in the object are used, and a box below the object you can click to bring up a list of related objects. Figure 101. Objects in a Custom Report Type [View full size image]
6.	Click the box to bring up a list of related objects and a choice as to how to combine the objects.
7.	Select the Job Applications object. This action changes the diagram in the center of the page to show the records for the Custom Report Type as the intersection between the Job Applications object and the Positions. The diagram is more than just a pretty picture. The current state of the diagram represents the standard use of related objects by the Force Platform report system. In order for a Position record to be included in the record set of the Custom Report Type, there must be at least one Interviewer record associated with it. In relational terms, this linkage is called an inner join. This type of selection is appropriate for this relationship since you do not want to see any positions that do not have at least one application. But the story is a little bit different for the next object in the Custom Report Type.
8.	Click the box below Job Applications to bring up a list of related objects.
9.	Select Interviews, which was added to your organization as part of the initialization process described at the start of this chapter. Assigning interviews is one of the later steps in the recruiting process, so there may be positions with a lot of applications, but no interview scheduled yet. If you used the standard inner join, this report type will not include any job applications that do not have associated interviews, and also rejecting the associated positions. This is not what you want. In relational terms, you want to use an outer join to link Job Applications and Interviews, which will include Job Applications in the report whether they have associated Interviews or not.
10.	To retrieve all Job Application records, click the lower choice in the B to C relationship radio group labeled “B” records may or may not have related "C" records.. A Job Application record may or may not have related “C” records (the Interviewer records, in this case). Notice that clicking on this lower choice changes the diagram to increase the section shaded.
11.	Click Save to save the Custom Report Type. You have defined the basic Custom Report Type, combining Positions with Job Applications with Interviews, while allowing Job Applications to be listed even if they do not yet have any associated interviews. The final step in creating your new Custom Report Type is to make fields from related objects—in this case the Candidate object, which is related to the Job Application object—available to report designers.
12.	Click Edit Layout in the section at the bottom of the page. This familiar looking page lets you adjust the page layout shown to users of the Custom Report Type when they are building reports. Start by getting rid of the fields that your users do not need in the reports this report type supports.
13.	Drag and drop the Created By, Created Date, Last Activity... and the two Last Modified... fields from all three objects to the box in the lower right, removing them from their respective sections. Select multiple objects to move with the Control-Click keyboard combination.
14.	Remove the Owner field from the Interviews section in the same way.
15.	Double click the checked field in the Job Applications section to bring up the properties for that field. Uncheck the checkbox to prevent this field from being checked for inclusion in the report by default, and click OK. You can also change the label displayed for a field in a report through the same method. As with custom summary fields above, you might sometimes create a custom report type to duplicate standard report types to change the labels for the fields. The reports you want to base on this Custom Report Type might also require include data from the Candidate object related to the Job Application object. For ease of understanding, create another section in this page to hold the Candidate fields.
16.	Click Create New Section to create a new section with the name of Candidates. Drag the section to reside between the Positions and the Job Applications section.
17.	Use the box that received the fields you removed from the existing page sections to add fields to the Candidates section. In the box on the lower right, select the Job Applications object, and click the Add fields related via lookup link below the picklist to bring up a dialog with a list of objects related to Job Applications. Select the Candidates object.
18.	In the list of Candidate fields, select the Candidate ID, Email, First Name, Last Name, Mobile, and Phone fields. Click OK. These fields will automatically be added to the Job Applications section of the layout—you will recognize them by the magnifying glass lookup icon. Tip The reports for this Custom Report Type might not require all of these fields, but the report type is used for additional reports that might want access to some of these fields in the future. You can also define a field as ‘checked’ for inclusion in a report by default, saving users the time of checking frequently used report fields. Set this attribute by double-clicking on a field in the field layout and selecting Checked by Default.
19.	Select the fields just added from the Candidate object and drag them to the Candidates section.
20.	Click Save to save the new page layout and return to the detail page for the report type.

You have successfully created your first custom report type that you can use immediately to create a new report.

Using a Custom Report Type

You can use the newly created Custom Report Type as the basis of a matrix report.

1.	Return to the reporting tab of the Force Platform environment. Create a new matrix report based on the Custom Report Type you just created by clicking Create New Custom Report Other Reports Interviews, positions and candidates Matrix report Next.
2.	Set the Row Headings to Job Description and Candidate: Candidate ID and the Column Heading to Interviewer: Full Name and click Next.
3.	Since the number of records is automatically included in the cells and totals of the matrix report, you do not need to select any summary fields. Click Next.
4.	Deselect Position ID and Interviewer ID in the report columns page. Select Candidate: First Name, Candididate: Last Name, Candidate: Phone, and Candidate: Email for the report columns. You do not need to select the Job Description, Candidate ID or the Full Name of the Interviewer object since these are already included in the headings. Click Next.
5.	Leave the ordering of the columns as is and click Next.
6.	Change the View selection to All positions and remove the Start Data and End Date values to allow for all records to be displayed. Add a selection condition to only include Positions with a Status of Open. Uncheck the Show report details checkbox at the bottom of the page to initially display only the summary information. Click Run Report to display the report shown in the figure below[

Figure 102. Report created from a Custom Report Type

[View full size image]

This report provides a nice concise display, highlighting the open jobs with applications pending. If someone wants to get a detailed look at the candidate, they click the Candidate ID link. To simply see the basic information about the candidate, the user chooses Show Details to reveal the candidate’s name and contact information.

This section has introduced you to the concepts behind an implementation of custom report types. Custom report types can give you and your users a vastly more robust foundation for your Force Platform reports.

Since the introduction of the Force Platform reporting system with your first standard report, you have seen how the same system can support increasingly flexible and sophisticated reports. But one of the nicest things about Force Platform reports is that the development and user interface remains pretty much the same, even with this greatly enlarged scope of functionality and coverage. You still define reports with a simple wizard, you still modify reports at runtime or save them in a specific format, and all reports still include the ability to both isolate key groups of data, and to drill down to the detail level of individual records.

The next section broadens the footprint of Force Platform reports by giving you the ability to create objects with built-in analytical calculations, to enlarge the range of how you can manipulate data and increase the performance of reports.