Reports & Dashboards Organization/Structure

[jarrod_k]

We are currently looking for best practices on how to organize our Dashboards & Reports so that it doesn't get out of control as more users come on board.

Does anyone have any thoughts/suggestions on how they have organized their Dashboards & Reports??

Thank you for any insight you can provide! 

[Stevemo]

One thing I've done here (after dealing with a pile of "out of control" Reports and Dashboards) is that I have leveraged the "My..." Filters when building Reports, and the "Running User" filter when building Dashboards. 

We have 140 Users on our SFDC.Org, and I created a "Personal" Dashboard the displays a users YTD Wins, YTD Revenue, CFQ Wins, CFQ Pipeline, etc., etc...  The Dashboard is a 3x3, and is fed by 6 Reports.

So rather than having to manage 840 seperate reports (6 Reports x 140 Users/Dashboards).  I used the "My Opportunities" filter on the Report Bulider, and the Running User Filter on the Dashboard.  So all I had to do was clone my template Dashboard and change the Running User to "John Doe", now the Dashboard reflects John Doe's pipeline, clone that, change the Running User to "Joe Schmoe", wash, rinse, repeat... 

Message Edited by Stevemo on 02-20-2009 10:17 AM

[jarrod_k]

Wow, great idea!  I never thought of that.  Thanks!

Now as far as Privs and organizing the Dashboards/Reports, did you use groups to show people only what they NEED to see?? 

[Stevemo]

We don't use Groups that much in our Org, we primarily use the Role Hierarchy.  Also, our Org is very transparent, we actually want everyone to be able to see everything that is going on within an account, so that they don't blindly step on anyone's toes because they could not see that there was already an active opportunity, and that a contact had already been called the day before, etc...

[jarrod_k]

So do you don't do any organizing of dashboards/reports by Roles?  Thanks!

[Stevemo]

We do some Role based organizing (both reports, and folders) but not a lot. 

Another thing that I've done is created a custom(picklist)field on the User Object to identify which Business Unit they are aligned with.  On the reporting side this allows me to build reports that show Opportunity Pipeline and Forecast for an entire BU without having to use Owner Role Name = A, B, C, D... 

It's a little bit frustrating that the User Object has fields for Dept., Division, etc... but yet these are inaccessible when running a report, but for some reason you do have access to any custom field that you add to the User Object (go figure?).