This is the second “Tip and Trick” from my “Dreamforce 2 You” presentation. This tip came out of two questions and comments that I have heard a lot.
- How can I see my Accounts without Opportunities?
- There are too many fields to select for reports and I don’t want my users seeing all the fields
Both of these items can be fixed by creating a Custom Report Type. Let’s start from the beginning; To create a custom report type you will need to go to Setup>Create>Report Types and then follow the wizard.
- To see Accounts without Opportunities you will need to use Accounts as the Primary Object and Opportunities as the “B” Object. On the “B” object, make sure you select the second option – “A” records may or may not have related “B” records. This will allow you to see all accounts regardless if they have an opportunity or not. Something else I like to do with a parent-child outer join (what you just created) is add a Roll-up Summary field to count the number of child records, then use that field as criteria for your report, i.e.: Show me all Accounts where “Count of Opportunities = 0.”
- To solve the problem of too many fields, follow the steps above. Instead of using the outer join, recreate the standard report. Use Opportunities and click “Save”. This will take you to the next screen where you will see the section named, “Fields Available for Reports”. Click on the “Edit” button and now you can start taking fields away.
Make sure your users have access to the new report type and now the user experience is much better! No need to feel overwhelmed or worried with your users creating a report, you are in control of what they see and have access to! Training is much easier, and you get to keep your secrets!
