Posted by Madhu Satrasala, Senior Consultant
A report type defines the set of records and fields available to a report based on the relationships between a primary object and its related objects. Choosing the right report type is one of the most important steps in creating a report.
Salesforce provides a collection of standard report types. There are times when the report types provided by Salesforce do not meet the user’s requirements. For example, the user wants a report of all Accounts that may or may not have Contacts (or) the user wants to display additional fields not available through the standard report types, etc. In these cases, creating a custom report type is the way to go.
Business Requirement:
End user would like a report of all Awards that may or may not have Progress Reports.
Solution:
Create a custom report type and use it to create the new report.
Step 1: Open Report Types
You’ll find it by searching using the Quick Find box within the Setup menu or by navigating to Create->Report Types.
Step 2: Create new report type
Click “New Custom Report Type” button.
Step 3: Define the new custom report type
Select the Primary object for the custom report type. For an example, Awards will be the primary object:
Enter the values for Report Type Label, Report Type Name, Description and Store in Category fields. Provide a meaningful description so users have a good idea about what information is available for reports. Store in Category field determines in which folder the report type is stored.
Finally, set the Deployment status to “In Development.” Note: Set the Deployment status to “Deployed” only when the report type is ready for all users.
Step 4: Define reports record set
Add child/related objects to the report type. This enables reports to pull data from more than just the primary object.
Click the box under the Primary Object and select the related object. For this example, select “Progress Reports’”as the related object. This will enable the reports to display not only Awards data but also data from the related Progress Reports.
Since we want all Awards with or without Progress Reports, choose the second option (“A” records may or may not have related “B” records) for A to B Relationship criteria.
Click “Save” when done.
Step 4: Select the fields available for reports
Click “Edit Layout” button. Select the fields available for reports when created and run from this custom report type.
Fields visible for the reports via this report type are in the left-hand box and the fields available to the report type are listed in the right-hand box. Drag and drop fields from the right-side box to the section on the left to make them visible. You can add/remove fields from sections, rearrange the fields on a section and also rearrange the sections themselves.
Click on “Add fields related via lookup” link to add fields related to the object selected in the View drop-down list.
For our example, select Awards Fields from the View drop-down list and Click “Add fields related via lookup.” Add the Employee Number and Full Name of the Awards’ created user.
Click “Ok” and “Save” to save the field layout properties. We just created a new custom report type and is available to create reports.
Step 5: Create report based on the custom report type
From the Reports tab, Click “New Report.”
Select “Awards with/without Progress Reports” for the report type and click “Create” to create a new report. You can see the report type we just created under the “Other Reports” folder.
Customize the report, then save and run. Here’s a sample report based on the custom report type we created.
Step 5: Enable report type access to all users
Finally, update the Deployment status of the customer report type to “Deployed” for end-users to have access to the custom report type.
Things to remember:
- Custom Report Types are created by a System Administrator, or by a User whose Profile includes the “Manage Custom Report Types” permission.
- When you delete a custom report type, any reports based on it are also deleted. Any dashboard components created from a report based on a deleted custom report type display an error message when viewed.
- The visibility of custom report types in the report wizard is controlled by user’s access to the objects in the report type.