Reports & Dashboards Specialist Superbadge- 2

Creating a custom report type...

Custom report type

It's Dashboard night!  Technically, dashboard night- round 1....
I wanted to create the 6 source reports for the Reports & Dashboards Specialist Superbadge, so I started by setting up the custom report type required for the "Contacts by Hobbies and Ratings" and "Contacts Without Hobbies" reports.  Don't start by doing this!
Read the requirements slowly for the "Contacts Without Hobbies" report, and you will see three new fields that need to be created.  Create the fields - then create the custom report type.  If you, like me, skipped directly to the custom report, you will

Adding fields to the custom report

need to:
1) edit the "field layout properties"
2) drag and drop the new fields to the "Accounts" section.

You do not have to create all of the reports before starting on dashboards, but I found it quicker to get into the "reports" groove and knock all of them out instead of bouncing from topic to topic.

Hint: For the "% Open Opps" field, it is a little tricky to avoid #ERROR messages because not all accounts have closed/won opportunities.  For a easy work around, reference Common Formula Errors from help.Salesforce.com.  The trick is to use an IF statement with NULL as a return value.

Report: Contacts by Hobbies and Ratings
I used a technique with this report that was quite handy with the remaining 5 reports required to pass Challenge #2: Add the required fields to the report, for example: "Hobby: Hobbies Name."  Next, bucket the field to create the required grouping.  Then remove the original field from the report, leaving the bucket with the correct header.  Be very careful with syntax.  I originally titled the "Hobby Type" bucket as "Hobby Types."  I had to rename in order to pass Challenge 5.

Report: Contacts Without Hobbies
This report took the most amount of time to craft, primarily due to the "Account Value" field and the necessity to exclude any contacts that have shared hobby preferences.  I used the Open Opp Value field and bucketed it, using the name "Account Value" and the stated categories.  Excluding hobbies was tricky since new hobbies could be added at anytime.  I added a cross-object filter so only contacts without hobbies were included.

Report: Remaining Opportunity Reports
Remember to use the opportunity date range from the "pre-work and notes section"!
In order to group the close dates by month, select "group by this date" then click on "group dates by" and select month.

help.Salesforce.com  Combination Chart Examples

Dashboard time!  Once the Sales Manager dashboard was created, I cloned it to create the Sales Reps dashboard.  To ensure that Sales Reps could only  view their own data, I made both dashboards dynamic, and placed them in a "General Dashboards" folder.

Two tricky items:

Setting a row limit

• To plot the additional values/line on the "Closed Won Opportunities - Number of deals and amount" chart, reference this article from help.Salesforce.com.
• The "Account Value- Top 10 states" tabular report will need a row limit added as well as dashboard settings.  Reference: Use a Tabular Report in a Dashboard
• Whew! Done!

Me on vacation!