Part 3 will cover creating Salesforce Custom Links, naming your link, and directing your Salesforce Custom Links to the information you want to see.
Creating Salesforce Custom Links:
Now we can create our Salesforce Custom Link. Navigate to Setup | App Setup | Customize | Accounts | Buttons and Links. In the “Custom Buttons and Links” section, click the “New” button and immediately paste your report ID into the “Editor” field (the large box above the “Check Syntax” button) so you do not accidentally copy over it.
Name your Salesforce Custom Links:
Enter a name for the link in the “Label” field (like “Contact Roles for all Associated Opportunities) and a description (you may want to use the description from the report). Leave the “Display Type” as a “Detail Page Link”, choose the “Behavior” and leave the “Content Source” as “URL”.
Directing your Salesforce Custom Links to the information you want to see:
Now we can finish the link. Click to the right of the link that you pasted in the editor ensuring there are no spaces after the last digit. Then type in “?pv0=” without the quotes so your link looks like this “/00OF000000407ps?pv0=”. In the “Select Field Type” picklist above the editor, leave “Account” there and choose “Account ID” from the “Insert Field” picklist. You will notice that the merge field is automatically populated below like this: “/00OF000000407ps?pv0={!Account.Id}”. Ensure that there are no spaces in the string or the link will not work.
By typing in “?pv0=”, we have told the link to go to the report and insert the “Account ID” into the advanced filter we created in the report (since it was left blank). The merge field pulls the Account ID from the Account record where the link is clicked. If your report has additional filters that also need merge fields, you can use “&pv1=” if your filter is in the second position, “&pv2=” if your filter is in the third position, etc. Just insert another merge field after each = and ensure you have no spaces.
In part 4, we’ll cover checking and testing your Salesforce Custom Links and how to use them with Salesforce Custom Reports.
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