Salesforce Report Builder Basics

00:04hi my name is Dan Ervin and I'm a Salesforce consultant with Luxent in this quick hit video I'm going to be providing an introduction to the Salesforce report builder for users who are new to Salesforce reporting we will be touching on basic information for running and creating reports the report builder structure and constructing a report let's get started first I want to mention some basic information regarding reporting within Salesforce probably the most relevant is that you are only able to run reports within Salesforce if your administrator has assigned you the run reports permission further you will need to create and customize reports permission in order to create new reports when running reports you can report on any field that you see within your day-to-day usage of Salesforce so let's begin creating a report so we can dive into the report builder first select reports on the navigation bar if you do not see reports you can access it by selecting the plus symbol

01:07and then selecting reports from the list next select the new report button at the top of the page we will now select a report type report types tell Salesforce what types of information you want to report on the different types of information are called objects example of this would be accounts contacts leads or several others for now we'll just select accounts and they create you should now see the report builder the report builder displays three main sections on the left side we see the field list the field list displays all fields that are available for the report type you selected on the previous screen if you don't see a field you need your administrator may have restricted you from seeing the field within Salesforce or there may be a different report type that would better suit your needs along the top we see our filters section the filter section allows us to restrict the data display by specific criteria we have chosen along the bottom we see the preview pane please note that the preview pane only displays a small sample set of data for you to customize your report do not rely on it to give you complete results

02:23now let's take a look at functionality first you will see that there are columns in our preview pane by default these are determined by the report type we selected when creating the report next you will see that the fields on the field list are set write it in two categories however i would suggest using the quick find feature located at the top of the filter list let's search for created by to find out who created the account the report builder has drag-and-drop functionality so to add or remove a column you can simply click and hold drag to its intended destination and drop this works for reordering your columns on the preview pane as well you can drag and drop any number of columns into your report as needed

03:13now if you expect to see accounts listed in the preview pane and it displays no records take a look at the filter section there may be a date or owner filter set by default that is keeping the records from displaying let's take a look at filters an example of filter criteria may be that we only want to see accounts with a name that contains the letter A to accomplish this we would drag and drop the account name field into the filter section select contains and enter the letter A when we select ok the preview pane adjusts to meet the new filter criteria let's review report formats in our preview pane section tabular reports resemble spreadsheets that you are undoubtedly familiar with a tabular report is designed to display information in a list form with no grouping a summary report is designed to group your report data into segments for making comparisons or simply more organized viewing let's set this report to a summary report format you can see that blue drop zones have

04:20now been created by dragging and dropping a field into these drop zones the summary report format adjusts automatically to these grouped fields also note that you can stack multiple group levels in order to segment data when necessary finally to save your report select the Save button in the top left you will be asked to name your report and select a folder location reports for personal use can be saved in my personal custom reports if the report will be viewed by others you will need to save the report in a folder that other users have access to this concludes the quick hit video for the Salesforce report builder thanks for watching you