Quick Implementation Tips: Reports and Views

Having helped implement a number of SalesForce systems for customers, I have learned some best practices/tips that can make an implementation go much easier.  This is the second post about this topic.  You can read the first one here about profiles and standard settings.

In this post I will review the report and view changes I usually make.

First, with Dashboards (under DASHBOARDS), I often remove the Company Performance Dashboard as it contains metrics that aren't relevant to the company in question.  Instead I will often create a custom dashboard towards the end of their implementation.  Also, don't forget to update the Home Page Dashboard too.

Second, with reports (under REPORTS), I often set all the default report folders to not be visible if I don't think they will have a use for the client.  This is done by clicking on the report folder and clicking 'Share' and then removing access.  I do this because many of the reports, like dashboards, don't contain the relevant fields or terms (and since they are standard reports you can't save changes).  So i just remove them.  And additional benefit of hiding the folders is that I can make new folders with appropriate permissions and save a "Report Clean-up Project" in a year.

Third, with views (under any OBJECT), I often create views (by clicking 'Create New View') that will be relevant to the customer based on the data they have.  This is because otherwise they have no easy way to access the data they are expecting to see with ease.

Finally, within a page layout, I often will update the related list fields so that they are more appropriately.  For example, most customers don't initially use 'Campaigns', but the 'Campaigns Related List' always shows on Leads and Contacts.  So I will remove that or alter the columns as appropriate.

That's all.  Nothing too fancy but just some configurations to make things easier for the users.