8 Business Analysis Using Reports and Dashboards

So far, we have covered the basic objects that are used to conduct business in Salesforce. Now, we will look at reports and dashboards.

Salesforce is a great tool for capturing the data needed to drive various business processes, but what good is the data if it isn't actionable? This is where reports and dashboards come in. They allow you to understand and act on your data.

To understand the data, you will need to learn how to create reports and how to use them. This underlying data is a combined visual output called a dashboard.

To help us learn all this, we will cover the following topics in detail:

• Using reports and how to create a report:
  • Using grouping to create various report types
  • Adding a chart to a report
  • Saving and running a report
• Using dashboards and how to create a dashboard using dashboard components

With the help of these topics, you will be able to create reports of various types in order to analyze data. You will...

Technical requirements

For this chapter, make sure to log into your development organization and follow along.

Creating reports to understand data

Reports help you analyze data and come up with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that help drive business decisions. Reports can be created and run on any of the objects that we’ve covered. Reports can also be created and run for custom objects (we will cover custom objects in Chapter 13, Using Data Modeling to Configure Objects for Your Business

Business use case

You are a Salesforce Admin for XYZ Widgets. Your users have asked for a report that shows how many contacts are associated with each business account, as well as a dashboard to show this. This information will help users make sure there is at least one primary contact associated with each account. Let’s see how we can go about this.

Creating a report

Let’s take a look at how to create a report in Salesforce:

1. On the Salesforce home page, click on the Reports tab (1)to start the process and click on New Report (2):

Figure 8.1...

Using grouping to create report types

There are several report types that can be created using grouping levels within reports. A grouping level is a way to summarize data using one or more fields.

Let's use our previous example of a report that shows all accounts created this year. From this, we can infer the following:

• A report with no grouping levels is called a tabular report. If we ran the report in our example with no grouping, it would return a list of records.
• If we added one grouping level – let's say, by calendar month – the report would return the set of records grouped by the creation month. This type of report is called a summary report since it is summarizing the data by a specific field; in this case, the created date field.
• Finally, we can group a report with two fields. Let's say we wanted to group our report by calendar month and billing state. This will give us a Matrix report since there are two levels of grouping.

We saw the tabular report...

Adding a chart to a report

Adding a chart to a report helps our users better understand the reports, as we can see the grouping being done in a visual manner.

In the following screenshot, you can see that the chart is automatically generated (1) when you click on the button for adding a chart. The button then highlights to blue, as seen below:

Figure 8.7: Automatically generated report and Save button

As shown in the preceding screenshot, we now have a Matrix report with a chart in preview mode. Click on the Save button (2) to save this report.

Saving and running a report

The final stage here, after creating a report and its data, is saving it and then running it to see how it appears. Let’s learn how to do this.

In the following screenshot, you can see the page that comes up when you click on Save. Here, you can enter a name for your report (1):

Figure 8.8: Save Report page and Save button

I chose to save this report in the Public...

Summary

In this chapter, we learned what a report is and how to create a report to help the business understand and take action on its data. We learned how to add columns, filters, groupings, and charts to customize the report’s output and make it more useful. We also learned how to take a report and make it the underlying data source for a dashboard component.

Reports allow us to gain an understanding of what dashboards are and how to create dashboards in order to help the business visualize and act on data.

In the next chapter, we will look at Salesforce Administration, starting with its setup and configuration!

Questions

1. What type of report has no grouping?
2. What type of report has only a row grouping?
3. What type of report has both a row grouping and a column grouping?
4. How do you add a chart to a report?
5. How does a report relate to a dashboard?
6. How many components can you add to a dashboard?
7. What does KPI stand for?

Summary

In this chapter, we learned what a report is and how to create a report to help the business understand and take action on data. We learned how to add columns, filters, groupings, and charts to customize the report's output and make it more useful. We also learned how to take a report and make it the underlying data source for a dashboard component.

Reports allow us to gain an understanding of what dashboards are and how to create dashboards in order to help the business visualize and act on data.

In the next chapter, we will look at Salesforce Administration, starting with its setup and configuration!