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Scheduling reports in Salesforce can help automate your project tracking. Scheduled reports are useful for reviewing projects in meetings, on the go, or at times when you aren’t able to login to Salesforce and run the report yourself.
In the course of managing projects in Salesforce, you may often access the same reports, like project health status or used time against budgeted time. This data is used to drive decisions in your business, so it’s important to ensure that your reports are showing the most up-to-date information.
When you schedule a report, not only does the report update in your organization, it can also be emailed directly to you as well as other members of your team. The report can be run automatically at regular intervals, and since the report is sent to in an HTML format to users, you don’t have to log in to Salesforce to see the data.
Salesforce has an excellent reporting module that allows you to report on almost anything. You can create several different types of reports:
- Simple tabular reports which just display data in rows and columns
- Summary reports will display data in rows and columns and summarize data for you such as hours worked or grouped by owner
- Matrix reports summarize information by row and column and are excellent for reporting activity
- Joined reports allow you to add data from different modules into one report giving you a broad overview of information in Salesforce. You could use a joined report to show projects, their phases, tasks, and activity. Joined reports are not available to be scheduled.
Setting Up a Salesforce Scheduled Report
The first step in scheduling a report is creating the report itself. Navigate to the Reports module and click on New Report.
Select the module you wish to report on. In this example, we will create a simple project report that will show all projects owned by my team.
The report creation page will be displayed. Drag and drop the fields you would like included in the report and add in any filters. Then save and run the report.
Ensure you have saved the report in a public folder. If the report is saved in your personal reports folder, you will be unable to send it to other users.
We are now ready to setup a schedule to send out this report
From the report display page, click on the Run Report drop down, and click on Schedule Future Runs.
The Schedule Report page will be displayed. On this page you setup your report schedule, add recipients and select a report frequency.
First, you select a running user. Remember, sending a report as the running user will allow anyone who receives this report to view all of the data, including information they may ordinarily be able to see based on their permission sets. By default, the running user defaults to the logged in user.
Then select who will receive the report. You can check the radio button for either “To Me” or “To Me and Others”.
When you select “To me and Others” , you are given the option to select individual users, roles, and public groups of users. Select the user, group, or role, from the list and click the arrow button to move it to the ‘Send Email To’ column.
Now, in the Schedule Report section, you set the frequency of the scheduled report, from Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. Click the radio button beside the frequency to select it.
- If you choose Daily you will also have to decide whether you want it every day or every weekday. If you select every day you will also receive the report on the weekends.
- If you select weekly you will pick the day of the week you want to receive the report. In our case we will choose weekly, Monday.
- The final option is monthly. With a monthly schedule, you can select which day of the month you want to receive the report. You can choose from either a certain date, such as the 15th, or a specific schedule, such as the 2nd Monday of each month.
Then set the time frame for the report to run. Pick a start and end date for the report. If you leave the start date as today, it will send the report on the next scheduled day. You must also select an end date. If you want a report to run indefinitely, choose an end date in the future, and continue to extend the end date.
To cancel a report, delete the schedule.
You can also select a preferred start time. A list of available times will be displayed and you can select whichever one works for you. The report will be sent within 30 minutes of the preferred start time. Time options and exact report send time will depend on job queue activity.
After selecting to save report modifications or discard them, click Save Report Schedule.
All settings and recipients can be changed at any time by simply restarting this process and selecting the schedule future runs tab. A new button will appear giving you the option to unschedule the report.
Users in Different Time Zones
If you have users in multiple time zones, you may need to consider when the report will be sent. When selecting a scheduled time for your report, Salesforce will schedule the report to send at that time in the time zone of the person who scheduled the report. For example if a user in Australia set up the report to send at 7am on Monday, it will be received by users in the USA on Sunday night.
Limitations on Schedules Reports
Some limitations on scheduling reports are:
- An organization is limited to 200 scheduled reports
- Report charts will not be included in the report. (To include charts, you need to schedule a dashboard rather than a report.)
- The maximum size for reports is 10MB. You may need to limit the data in large reports to only critical fields with a link to the project if users need to see more information.
Scheduling reports is a useful feature of Salesforce and will help you manage your Cloud Coach projects more effectively, particularly during meetings where the information will be right at your fingertips, or if your sales team is on the road. Try setting up a report schedule today.
Additional Reading:
Project Reporting in Cloud Coach
Creating Salesforce Reports Using Your Cloud Coach Objects
Dig into Cloud Coach Project Details with Matrix Reports
AUTHOR
Brandi Johnson
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