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Data is always talking and changing, it's your job to listen and listen well. Data is the fundamental language of Salesforce. When reporting and dashboards are properly configured and used, the Salesforce cloud fosters effective management, optimal resource utilization, proactive finances, and other good behaviors that are vital for businesses.

Much like your car's dashboard, a Salesforce dashboard visually provides information- quickly and easily. Dashboards can be created for anything that you are tracking in Salesforce. They can even be customized for different business units or job roles. In this post, we’ll explain some basics of Dashboards in Salesforce and then review some common elements in a Sales dashboard.

![](/uploads/screenshot-2021-05-30-at-13-19-07.png "salesforce dashboard")

## **Understanding Salesforce Dashboards**

The first step in building or customizing your dashboards is to understand your goals. So first answer the following questions. And if you’re not building the dashboard for yourself, make sure to ask the people that will use it for their input.

- What is the purpose of the dashboard?
  - Putting together dashboards for no reason essentially dooms them to go unused. Before starting this process make sure you’re clear on why you’re creating the dashboard.
- Who needs to see it?
  - This helps set up the correct sharing in the dashboard folder but also can help you when you’re deciding exactly how to filter a report.
- How often will it be used?
- Designing dashboards around metrics that are needed in regular meetings can be one way to ensure they are used. If your team has a status call ask if you can sit in and see what metrics are already being shared.
- What time period is relevant for the reports?
- A lot of dashboards will have some reports about the present state and some historical metrics. Make sure you clarify what time period may be relevant for any historical data. Too short of a period and you may not have any data, too much of a period and there may be too much to easily analyze.
- What business questions will it answer?
  - This is really the key way to think about all the components on the dashboard. List out the questions that people want to be answered and then figure out the right data to support it.

After you answer these questions we recommend drawing a mockup of a dashboard. A spreadsheet, whiteboard, or a piece of paper and pencil all work well as easy ways to mock-up dashboard ideas.

![](/uploads/screenshot-2021-05-30-at-13-19-24.png)

## **Example: Setting up a Sales dashboard**

Sales dashboards can vary drastically from one organization to another. If you’re a field sales organization you may be measuring meetings set, if you’re doing inside sales you may care more about calls, emails, and converting leads. We’ve probably set up thousands of dashboards at this point and rarely see two dashboards that look similar.

To streamline what you want on your dashboard, consider the following:

- Which metrics come up often in your reports?
- In your meetings with the team, do workers consider one metric as more important than another?
- Do you have multiple teams?
- What do you consider as your key performance indicator?

You may also consider including the following in your dashboard;

- Individual salesperson performance
- Product performance

Here are some ideas for dashboard components that can help your sales and marketing team.

### **Won Opportunities**

Won Opportunities can be displayed in a number of ways and is always one of the metrics used for sales results. You can add it as a simple revenue figure for a certain period of time (e.g. Won opportunities this quarter), you can list out the biggest deals you’ve won recently, or show a trend report of closed deals over time. This is also a good report for grouping by salesperson, region, or product line to show variations between groups.

### **Open Opportunities**

AKA the Sales Pipeline, this is another very common metric for a sales dashboard. If you group open opportunities by stage you can easily create a pipeline chart, or group by close date and sum the revenue to create a forecasted revenue chart.

### **Opportunities past due**

Particularly for salespeople that handle a large volume of deals, past-due opportunities are a possibility. Your aim should be to keep this as minimal as possible so that you can use the close dates for forecasting.

### **Open activities**

This includes your to-do list, open tasks, and routines. These could include activities that ensure the smooth running of day-to-day business. It helps stay proactive in your sales efforts and schedule your time more effectively.

### **Leads via their source**

Having an understanding of where customers are coming from is vital. For instance, does your clientele come from referrals, sign-ups, conferences, meetings, or personal conversions? Gaining this information is vital to classifying which leads come first and how you should handle them.

### **Sales Forecast**

Adding forecast categories to an Opportunity report helps businesses to know the sales forecast per time. It also helps to track the current progress and where they want to be. This does require that you set up one of Salesforce’s forecasting tools and have reps and managers fill out the forecasts.

### **Sales Leadership Charts**

This fosters healthy competitiveness or competition amongst employees in the display of the current top sales personnel. In addition to this, it makes day-to-day activities less boring. The purpose of a leaderboard dashboard is to focus on sales performance that keeps managers and their teams closer.

### **Conclusion**

[Salesforce dashboards](https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/reports_dashboards/reports_dashboards_visualizing_data#:~:text=Salesforce%20dashboards%20allow%20you%20to,and%20displayed%20for%20each%20component.) help in the daily activities of any business- from low-level businesses to top-tier management. A downside of the dashboards is that they are almost always based on available data from the database. On the market, you will find numerous software that provides consistent and reliable solutions to data management. They ensure that there is data in the desired destination per time. Furthermore, they expose weak points and how to turn them into strengths effectively. By taking advantage of this, you can make informed decisions and more sales.

With the dashboards reports are always connected. If you want to explore more on this topic please visit the [“Salesforce reports can help your marketing and sales team” blog post.](https://cloudanswers.com/blog/salesforce-reports-can-help-your-business/)

If you would look for the tool that is sending unlimited reports outside Salesforce, check the [Report Sender app on AppExchange](https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000EJdlFUAT).


Salesforce dashboard visually provides information- quickly and easily. Dashboards can be created for anything that you are tracking in Salesforce. They can be customized for different business units or job roles. I

getting-familiar-with-salesforce-dashboards

Getting familiar with Salesforce dashboards


Since Salesforce came into the scene, it has helped businesses measure their growth and other key metrics. Shared reporting has also helped to create a sense of unity amongst team members. If you’re not in on it yet, this article will show you reporting basics that could help your team.

## **What is a Report?**

We know that information helps a business to thrive. That’s why presenting information in an accessible format is vital. When data is presented in an easy and clear format, the essential details become hard to miss. Presenting a data set with ease is precisely what a report does.

A Salesforce report is a document that contains organized data from Salesforce. Salesforce has several options for formatting tabular data within the report. Salesforce reports can also include charts or graphs that summarize the report data.

There are many reporting tools out there, Salesforce even has multiple options like Einstein Analytics and Tableau. For this article, we’ll be mostly talking about the capabilities of Salesforce’s built-in reporting tool.

## **What are the standard reports in Salesforce?**

When presenting data in the form of a Salesforce report, you want to be sure that you’re using the best format for your business. There are four types of Salesforce reports, and each performs distinct functions and is more suited for different forms. Before you decide which works best for you, determine what you’re trying to communicate through your reports. These four enable you to pull, send, and review data. Below, we discuss the types of reports in Salesforce in detail.

### **Tabular**

The tabular format is the simplest and basic form of salesforce reporting. This will be the default format when creating a report in Lightning Experience. It is essentially a display of records in a tabular form. These are most effective when you want to export the data. However, don’t consider them for data manipulation like calculations or groups of data.

### **Summary**

Summary reports are most suitable for grouping rows of data. That means you can group data according to any field and proceed to calculations: totals, maximums, minimums, averages, or custom formulas. If you want to specify the accounts that bring more revenue, what services and products clients purchase more, the summary reports are the best option.

**Matrix**

This report type is very much like the summary option. However, while a summary report is done according to rows, matrix reports function according to rows and columns. It is better to use them for more complex data since you can use them to determine several totals. They are effective for large data or huge amounts of complex information.

### **Joined**

Joined reports are best for comparison. They help create separate reports and then compare individual datum. Although they are not common, they are most effective for learning the differences between accounts.

## **How to use reports in Salesforce**

Effective report management includes careful attention to details, data quality, security, and more. So to use reports in Salesforce, make sure you’re providing answers to questions and offer solutions. How?

![](/uploads/hpw-to-use-reports-in-salesforce.png)

## **How to create Salesforce reports**

1. Login to Salesforce

   ![](/uploads/login.png)

2\. Select the reports tab. If you don’t see it, use the app launcher to search for it.

![](/uploads/report-tab.png)

3\. Click New Report

![](/uploads/new-report.png)

4\. Choose the Report Type. This is a critical step because the report type determines the objects and fields that will be available in your report. If you don’t see the right option, look into creating a [Custom Report Type](https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sf.reports_defining_report_types.htm&type=5).

![](/uploads/report-type.png)

5\. Click on Continue to go to the report builder.

Now you will be in edit mode, with a preview. The edit mode allows you to add and remove fields, elements, group rows, and columns. You can also filter report data and show or hide a chart or tailor the report according to your needs.

6\. To add new columns, click on the “Add column” feature. Search and select field status - either scroll or type in the desired field. You can also expand or contrast the Fields pane. Then drag-and-drop or double-click a field.

![](/uploads/add-column.png)

7\. For record grouping, choose the element “Add group” and select the field to group by. Or from the preview window, find the rows you want to group and select “Group Rows”. You now have a Summary report.

![](/uploads/add-group.png)

8\. After you’ve grouped by rows or columns you can choose any numeric fields to be able to aggregate them. Just click the drop-down next to a field and click Summarize then choose Sum/Average/Max/Min.

9\. To be sure that you’re viewing the desired data by updating your filters: Click on filters. Change the default filters if needed. Often you’ll want to change the date filter and the “Show Me” filter. Add any additional filters needed.

![](/uploads/filters.png)

10\. Save and name your report.

![](/uploads/save.png)

11\. Folders determine who can see the report, so put it in the correct folder. Private reports are only visible to the user that saved them. Public reports are visible to anyone that can run reports. Keep in mind that reports always respect user permissions so people cannot see data in a report that they can’t see normally.

## **Sharing Salesforce reports**

Now that you have a fancy new report, how do you make it available to the people that need it? Well, that depends a lot on how the report will be used, so here are some of your options:

- **Setup the report to be sent on a schedule**: One of the best ways to make sure a report is used is to automatically send it to the right people. If you just want to send it to yourself, click the Subscribe button and choose your schedule. If you want to send it to other people you’ll have to do it manually or use an AppExchange app like the [CloudAnswers Report Sender](https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000000pvspEAA). Our app lets you schedule the report to be delivered to any email address on a schedule you choose.
- **Send people a link to the report**: The easiest way to share, just to email someone a link to the report and they can open it as long as they have a login to Salesforce, access to the report folder, and access to the objects and fields that are used in the report.
- **Put it on a dashboard**: Dashboards are a great way to gather multiple report charts into one organized view. Put several reports together into a dashboard that people can explore and drill into the reports.

## **What Now?**

- Need help with reporting? Contact Us
- Want to check out Report Sender? [See it on the AppExchange](https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000000pvspEAA)

Want to learn more about reporting? [Check out Trailhead](https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/lex_implementation_reports_dashboards)

Check also: [Salesforce reporting tips and best practices](https://cloudanswers.com/blog/salesforce-reporting-tips-and-best-practices/)


A Salesforce report is a document that contains organized data from Salesforce. Salesforce has several options for formatting tabular data within the report. Reports can include charts, graphs that summarize the report data.

salesforce-reports-can-help-your-business

Salesforce reports can help your business

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