Part 2 will cover adding filters to your Salesforce Custom Report, saving it, and getting it ready for Salesforce Custom Links.
Adding filters to your Salesforce Custom Report:
Once you have the Salesforce Custom Report looking the way you like it, but before saving it, open a new tab in your browser and navigate to an Account that has Opportunities with Contact Roles. When viewing the Account, copy the Salesforce ID from the URL (the URL will look like this without the quotes: “https://na10.salesforce.com/001F000000fAJl1”. The Salesforce ID is the string of text after the slash / like this: “001F000000fAJl1”).
Back at your report; use the “Add” button in the “Filters” section to add an advanced filter. For the “Field” value, select “Account ID”. Leave the “Operator” (middle picklist) at “equals” and paste your Account ID from above into the Value (third field). Click OK and then run the report. You are now seeing the report as if it was run from the Account where the Custom Link you will be creating will be placed.
Save your Salesforce Custom Report and getting it ready for Salesforce Custom Links:
If everything looks good, go ahead and save the report. You may want to add “Dynamic” (or “DYN” if you are short on characters) to the report name so you can easily spot reports that are used in Custom Links. To ensure that the report does not get modified, be sure to save it in a folder that has “Read Only” access. Otherwise, your users may inadvertently save over this report and possibly break your link. You also need to ensure that you save it in a folder that your users can access.
Once saved, open the report or use the “Save & Return to Report” button. Now we need to adjust the advanced filter we created so the report will work with our Custom Link. Customize the report and hover your mouse over the “Account ID equals 001F000000fAJl1” filter and click the “Edit” link that pops out. Clear the ID from the right field so it just shows “Account ID equals”, click OK, run the report, save it and return to the report one more time.
The report should now be showing no records (unless you have managed to create Opportunities without associating them to Accounts) which is what we want. Now we need to copy the ID of the report from the URL but we need to add the slash /. The URL will look like this without the quotes: “https://na10.salesforce.com/00OF000000407ps”. You only need to copy the last section like this without the quotes: “/00OF000000407ps”.
In part 3, we’ll cover creating Salesforce Custom Links, naming your link, and directing your Salesforce Custom Links to the information you want to see.
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