How do I create a custom report?

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Overview

What is a custom report?
A custom report is a report you customize to meet your unique business needs.  Select the information you want to see in a report, as well as designate how you would like it represented.  A report building wizard makes it very simple to create customized reports designed specifically to give you the data you need.

Create a custom report

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the steps of how you create a custom report.

1. Click the Reports tab.
2. Click the Create New Custom Report button.
3. Select the data you want to use for the report and click Next.
4. Select the type of report that will work best for your analysis and click Next.  We'll walk you through the steps for creating a tabular report, but here is a summary of the different types of reports:
   
   • Tabular – This report provides a simple listing of your data without any subtotals. For example, you'll use this type for contact mailing lists and activity reports.
   • Summary – This report provides a view of your data and allows you to group and subtotal the data. For example, you would use this type of report to show a record count of contacts by contact owner.
   • Matrix – This report lets you summarize data in a grid. Use this type of report for comparing related totals, especially if you have large amounts of data to summarize and you need to compare values in several different fields, or you want to look at data by date and by person or geography.
5. Select the columns to include in the report and click Next. You’ll see that several columns are already selected.
6. Select the information to summarize.
7. Use the side arrows to change how the columns on your report are ordered, from left to right. Click Next when you’re done.
8. For the last step, you can add filters to include only the information you want on your report.
9. Click Run Report to see your report results.
10. Click Save As to save and name your report so you can easily find the report again.

NOTE: You can always go back and change the setup of your report by clicking the Customize button.

See your custom report

To see your report, click on the Reports tab. In the My Personal Custom Reports section, you’ll see your new report. To quickly run the report, just click on the link.

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How do I add a field to a report?

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Overview

What is a field?
Fields are where you store specific information in Salesforce CRM. For a contact, for example, you would have different fields for the contact’s name, title, address, number of years at the company, or any other information you wish to track.  Salesforce CRM lets you easily customize which fields you want to see on your reports.

Add a field to a report

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through how to add a field to show the number of hours you spend on tasks and appointments to a pre-built Salesforce CRM report.

1. Click on the Reports tab.
2. Click on the Tasks and Appointments report.
3. Click on the Customize button.
4. Navigate to the Select Columns step using the Jump to Step menu.
5. Find the checkbox for Duration (hours) and select it to include the column on your report.  Click the Run Report button.
6. Try clicking on the Duration (hours) header to sort the report and see which tasks and activities you've spent the most time on.
7. Click Save As to save the report under a new name so you can access it later. For this tutorial, you can call the report Time Spent on Meetings / Tasks.

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