Salesforce: Report Sharing, Scheduling, & Notification

Sharing and Notifications

Folder Sharing

Folder Sharing in Salesforce allows you to restrict access to reports and dashboards by users, roles, roles and their subordinates, and public and private groups.

With enhanced folder sharing, you can control who sees what. Each user, group, or role can have its own level of access to a single report and dashboard folder. Viewers can see the data; Editors can determine what data is shown; and Managers can control access.

• • [1] With Viewer access you can see the data in a report or dashboard, but you can’t make any changes, except by cloning it into a new report or dashboard. All users have at least Viewer access to report and dashboard folders that have been shared with them. (Some users may have administrative user permissions that give them greater access.)

  • [2] When you are an Editor on a folder, you can view and modify the reports and dashboards it contains, and move them to and from any other folders you have Editor or Manager access to.

  • [3] With Manager access, you have the keys to the kingdom. You can do everything Viewers and Editors can do, plus control other users’ access to the folder, change the folder's properties, or delete the folder.

Note

Folder sharing is enabled by default in new Developer Edition (DE) orgs, including any Trailhead Playground DE orgs you create here in Trailhead. If your DE organization was created before Summer ‘13, you’ll need to enable this feature, following the instructions here.

If you go back to the old folder sharing model, existing report and dashboard folders go back to the state they were in before.

• • If a folder existed before analytics folder sharing was enabled, its properties and sharing settings are rolled back to their previous state.

  • If a folder was created while enhanced analytics folder sharing was in effect, it is hidden from the folder list and all its sharing settings are removed. Administrative user permissions are still in effect.

Subscribe to Get Report Notifications

A watched pot never boils, and an excessively refreshed report never seems to yield new data. Why click the Run Report button over and over again when you can subscribe to receive a personal notification? Choose a time to run the report to check against conditions you specify. If those conditions are met at runtime, you’ll get an alert via the method of your choice. It’s like having a personal reporting assistant on demand.

Let’s practice setting up a notification.

• 1. Go to the Reports tab and open one of the reports you’ve created earlier in this module. If you haven’t created a report yet, do so now by following the instructions in Using the Report Builder.

  2. From the Report Run page, click Subscribe.

  3. On the Report Subscription page, choose whether to be notified every time conditions are met or only the first time.

  4. Specify each condition in three parts: aggregate, operator, value. For example, trigger notifications whenever the sum of amount is less than $1 million.

     1. • Aggregate is the metric that’s the basis of your condition. It can be Record Count, Average Amount, Smallest Amount, Largest Amount, or Sum of Amount.

        • Operator is the basis of comparison, such as Equal, Not Equal, Greater Than, and so on.

        • Value is the number that you want the aggregate compared to.

  5. Your conditions are evaluated when the report is run, and notifications are sent if all conditions are met (up to five conditions per report).

  6. Schedule how often (every weekday, daily, or weekly) and when to evaluate for your conditions.

  7. For example, run the report every weekday at 7 a.m.

  8. Select one or more notification types.

     1. • Send a Salesforce1 in-app notification

        • Post to Chatter

        • Send an email notification

        • Execute a custom Apex action, such as creating tasks or escalating cases

  9. Make sure the subscription is active if you’re ready to start receiving notifications.

  10. Click Save to schedule the notifications.

Chatter

One of the key benefits of reports and dashboards in Salesforce is the integration with Chatter, allowing you to have collaboration in context with your data. You can follow any report or dashboard by clicking on the Follow icon in the feed.

If you don’t see the option to follow a report or dashboard, you may need to enable Feed Tracking. From Setup, enter Feed Tracking in the Quick Find box and click Feed Tracking and then select Reports. Select Enable Feed Tracking, and optionally select fields to track, if you’d like to see updates in your feed when those fields change.

Repeat the same steps to enable Feed Tracking for dashboards. From Setup, enter Feed Tracking in the Quick Find box and click Feed Tracking and then select Dashboard. Select Enable Feed Tracking, and select any fields you want to track.

In addition, you can post a snapshot of a dashboard component at a specific point in time to the Chatter feed, and everyone following the dashboard will get an update in their feed. For example, post a snapshot of a regional sales chart to let your team know that sales are down in the Midwest.

You can also post a snapshot of a dashboard component to a particular user or group. For example, post a snapshot of a leaderboard component in your team Chatter group to showcase top performers.

In order to post a snapshot, you must have the appropriate setting enabled in Setup. From Setup, enter Reports and Dashboard Settings in the Quick Find box and click Reports and Dashboard Settings. Select the Enable Dashboard Component Snapshots checkbox, and click Save.

Now that you’ve done that, let’s walk through how you post a snapshot of a dashboard to Chatter:

• 1. Hover over a component to display the Hover menu icon for dashboard components menu.

• 1. Choose where you want your snapshot to appear.

     1. • To show it in a dashboard, click Post Snapshot to Dashboard Feed.

        • To show it to a user or group, click Post Snapshot to User or Group Feed.

  2. Write a comment in the text box and click OK. If you’re posting a filtered component, you may want to mention that in your comment.

The snapshot and comment immediately appear in the dashboard feed.

Scheduled Reports

A good report is like a trusted advisor: You won’t make a big decision without checking in for guidance, and you like to check in on a regular basis. For example, our Account Executive may look at a report of her closed opportunities on a weekly, monthly, or even daily basis, so she can stay on top of her monthly and quarterly quotas. She needs that report to determine if she’s on track, and she may take action or change what she’s doing based on the data she sees. When she’s accessing this important report, she can view it directly in Salesforce, or she can have it sent to her on a schedule.

Scheduling a report provides the following benefits:

• • Get the latest report data without having to run the report.

  • Get the data automatically at regular intervals you specify, through scheduling on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

  • Get the report sent to you in HTML format, with a link for easy access to the source report in your org.

Check out this short video on tips for scheduling reports.