Create Awesome Dashboards with the Lightning Report Builder

Our Salesforce Admins webinar, Master the New Lightning Report Builder with Marc Baizman and Liz Skaates is all about how #AwesomeAdmins can create “One Report to Rule Them All.” Marc and Liz dove deep into all the ways that Admins can use these features efficiently and effectively to work smarter, not harder, and present the most valuable data. Follow along with the recap to master the tips and tricks of building reports and dashboards in Lightning Experience.

Watch the recording below:

You can also view the slides on Slideshare.

There are many awesome features of the new Lightning Report Builder that you can take advantage of today. With the new Lightning Report Builder, tabular and matrix formats are much more flexible to switch between. Also, you can save to folders and subfolders, or you can run the report without saving. And, to make it easy, you can add your report chart to a dashboard directly from the report.

Building Reports and Dashboards:

Marc and Liz set up a scenario with the fictional company “SwagCo” that uses Salesforce to manage it’s sales processes. The fictional VP of Sales has a few specific questions he needs answered, and #AwesomeAdmin, Liz, is going to show us how she will build one report to create a dashboard that answers all his questions.

Liz then maps out a four-step plan to help build the best reports and dashboards for the given scenario:
The first step is to determine what data is relevant for the report. For this particular scenario, Liz deduces that Marc needs to see a report that pertains to opportunities. From there, the next step is to determine what information should go into the columns and any filters. Then, she can move on to step two.

Step two is to ask yourself questions that will allow you to choose the right format to display all of the necessary calculations from step one. It requires breaking down the information you have and need to provide, and introducing any display considerations that will make this information easier for the end-viewer to digest and get their questions addressed. Liz determines that they just need a list of all the records that meet her and Marc’s criteria. From here, Liz moves on to step three.

Step three is to calculate answers on groups of records. Liz shows this helpful matrix, as an easy way to correlate the questions asked of her with the calculations, and how they can best be displayed. Take a look:

Then, Liz zooms into the report formula. It may look a little daunting to some users, but don’t worry! There is also a “resources” section at the end of the recording where you can learn more about report formulas and how to use them.

Next, step four is to ask yourself, “how are the answers best visualized?” To answer the questions asked of you by the person requesting a report, you want to choose the best way to display the data on a dashboard.

And now, to pull all four steps together, Liz switches over to her demo. She walks through all four steps, including creating a beautiful dashboard for Marc, and subscribing him to it! You can watch that part below:

Marc’s pro tip about creating reports and dashboards with the new Lightning Report Builder: if you don’t know how your manager wants the dashboards to look, go ahead and create a bunch of different visualizations and then sit down with that manger, show them the options, and trim down and edit from there.

In summary, ‘One Report to Rule Them All’ is a best practice #AwesomeAdmins can use to build dashboards. Use the one report with all the relevant fields and summaries, and add multiple charts using that same source report to a single dashboard. That way, when leadership asks for ‘quick’ changes to the dashboard, you can make those updates in one report and have them reflected in all your charts.

Don’t forget: if you need resources from this webinar, you can find that slide right here: