Simplify Editing Process for Drill-Down Columns/Filters in Report Builder

Related products: CS Reports & Dashboards

Two of the biggest headaches in GS administration are adding columns to the drill-downs in Report Builder, and adding filters.





Biggest headache is that if I change any of my "By" fields, the columns shown on drill-downs reset themselves.  So I then have to set the columns manually again.  As an example of why this is an issue, we have CSR teams and we just changed our dashboards from showing the Team # to the Team Name.  These are both fields on the same object, so there is no reason we needed to change the columns displayed on the drill-down; yet since I was changing the "By" field, these reset and I had to go manually set them again.  I had to do this to 10 reports; what should have taken me 5 minutes took about 30 because I had to set the columns back to what they were before 10 times.





What would be REALLY great would be the ability to set/edit these for multiple reports at once.  We have the same set of columns displayed on many of our reports, yet if we want to add/change a column, we have to go into EVERY.  SINGLE.  REPORT.  that uses those columns and change them.  It would be ideal to be able to create "column sets" based on the base object type for a report, and then apply these sets to multiple reports.  It could be done through Report Builder, or, even better, through an interface that lists all reports for an object type and allows you to apply the column list to some or all of these reports (much like Dashboard Permissions).  This way, we make the change once, and all associated reports update automatically.  Would make it much easier for us to administer, as well as provide consistency between reports when updates are made.





The latter idea would also be really useful with report filters as well.  We have many reports that have identical filters so we can use them as global dashboard filters.  It would be great to be able to edit these en masse for all reports that use the same filter set, rather than have to go in and edit each and every one individually.  I've even resorted to updating the filters by updating the underlying data in the Salesforce table where this data is stored because it is quicker to copy and paste and upload than to do it manually.





So mass report-editing for these two components (drill-down columns and filters) would be ideal; being able to create column/filter sets and apply them to individual reports (so that the reports update when the set is updated) would at least be a step in the right direction.
Hey Sean, First of all great detail in explaining your pain. I totally understand it.





As I see there are 2 issues, one of which you should be able to resolve now.


1. Mass edit report based on the same source object (great idea, will work on it and come back to you for suggestions)


2. Editing Global Dashboard filters (We have provided this in our latest release where the GS Admin can change promoted global filters and also unlock certain filters which can be changed individually by CSMs or end users for their own purposes on their homepage.)





Thanks for taking time out to suggest this idea.
We have this pain too, although I want to add one additional detail.  At times, we would like to REORDER the filters so that we can do advanced logic and /or display the filters in a logical order on our Dashboards.  The only way to do this today is to delete all the filters and re-add them.  Not a huge deal for 1 report, but in many cases we have 20 reports on a single dashboard that we need to adjust to get in that one additional set of filter logic.  Thanks!
Just coming across this post and wanted to echo pretty much everything Sean said above. About my only adjustment would be that I'd actually just like to be able to create a totally separate report and point the drill down to that. That way all of my different reports focused on opportunities could all have the same "opportunity detail" view. As Sean said... currently when I need to go and add a field I do it on the Current month, current quarter, current quarter at risk, current quarter with upside, Named accounts, scale accounts... It gets old fast. 🙂
+1 This makes me HATE report building.
I consider the fact that the column order resets itself to be a bug. 

Please please please.  @CSOpsManagers