Visualize your List Views with List View Charts

List Views are handy for looking at subsets of data, you can enhance your list view by adding a chart to help visualize the data.

List View Filters

First create a view of information filtered by data important to you and then add a chart.

Create a New List View

Actions you can take for list views are available in the List View Controls menu (icon to access List View Controls).

Create the List View and Add Filters

• Under List View Controls, select New. 
• Give your list a name.
• Choose who can see this list view.
• Click Save. The Filters panel appears.
• Click Show me, then select All objects to see all records not just those owned by you.
• Add any additional filters desired.  In this example, we are filtering by Accounts with Total Gifts of 1,000 or more.

• Click Done.

Select the List View Fields to Display

• From the List View Controls menu, Select Fields to Display.
• Use the arrows to add, remove, and reorder your visible fields.
• Click Save

For more information see this help article.

List View Chart

• Once you have your new List View created, you can create a Chart to visualize the data.
• From the  Opportunities tab, select the the new List View you created.
• Click list view charts icon.

• In the Charts panel that appears, click list view charts gear icon and select New Chart.

• Give the Chart a name and complete the other parameters and click Save.
• Chart Type: Horizontal Bar
• Aggregate Type: Sum
• Aggregate Field: Total Gifts
• Grouping Field: Billing State/Province

• Chart now is available when you select the list view

Try it on your own in this Trailhead module! 


https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=customviews_listview_chart_create_lex.htm&type=5

Helpful Date Calculations

Calculating a person's age from their birth date

Nonprofits, especially those dealing with minors, often need to know the age of their constituents.  Instead of having an Age field that is manually updated each year, we can calculate the person's age from the birth date they've given us.

The helpful formula below was taken from Saleforce's Knowledge Article Number 000230455.

First it checks to make sure that there is a value in the Birthdate field.  If there is, it then checks to take into account the person's birthday happened this year or still needs to come.

Since either the birthday can be in a leap year or today can be Feb 29 of a leap year, we need to make sure to compare the days, in a leap year, therefore we are comparing in the year 2000, which was a leap year.

The formula shown, calculates the age of the Contact by looking at the standard Salesforce Birthdate field.  

IF( NOT( ISBLANK( Birthdate ) ) ,

  IF( DATE( 2000 , MONTH( Birthdate ) , DAY( Birthdate ) ) <= DATE( 2000 , MONTH( TODAY() ) , DAY( TODAY() ) ),

     YEAR (Today()) - YEAR ( Birthdate ),

     YEAR (Today()) - YEAR ( Birthdate ) -1 ),

  null)

A more simple formula not taking into account the Leap Year would be:

IF( NOT( ISBLANK( Birthdate ) ) ,

IF(TODAY() >= DATE(YEAR(TODAY()), MONTH( Birthdate), DAY(Birthdate)), 

YEAR(TODAY()) - YEAR(Birthdate), 

YEAR(TODAY()) - YEAR(Birthdate) - 1),

 null)

Adding Years, Months or Days to a Date

These helpful formulas were republished from Salesforce's Example Date Formula document.

Adding Years to a Date

When adding years to a date you need to check that the future date is valid. That is, adding five years to February 29 (a leap year) results in an invalid date. The following formula adds num_years to date by checking if the date is February 29 and if the future date is not in a leap year.  If these conditions hold true, the formula returns March 1 in the future year. Otherwise, the formula sets the Date to the same month and day num_years in the future.  

The IF statement is checking for the leap year condition.  Replace the date in the formula with the date field to which you want to add the years.   Replace the num_years reference with the actual number of years you want to add.

IF(
  AND(
    MONTH( date ) = 2,
    DAY( date ) = 29,
    NOT( 
      OR( 
        MOD( YEAR( date ), 400 ) = 0, 
        AND( 
          MOD( YEAR( date ), 4 ) = 0,
          MOD( YEAR( date ), 100 ) != 0
        )
      )
    ) 
  ),
  DATE( YEAR( date ) + num_years, 3, 1),
  DATE( YEAR( date ) + num_years, MONTH( date ), DAY( date ) )
)

Adding Months to a Date

Adding months to a date is slightly more complicated as months vary in length and the cycle of months restart with each year. Therefore, a valid day in one month (January 31) might not be valid in another month (February 31). A simple solution is to approximate each month’s length as 365/12 days:

date + ( ( 365 / 12 ) * Number_months )

While this formula is a good estimate, it doesn’t return an exact date. For example, if you add two months to April 30 using this method, the formula will return June 29 instead of June 30. Returning an exact date depends on your organization’s preference. For example, when you add one month to January 31, should it return February 28 (the last day of the next month) or March 2 (30 days after January 31)?

This formula does the following:

• Returns March 1 if the future month is a February and the day is greater than 28. This portion of the formula performs the same for both leap and non-leap years.

• Returns the first day of the next month if the future month is April, June, September, or November and the day is greater than 30.

• Otherwise, it returns the correct date in the future month.

This example formula adds two months to a given date. You can modify the conditions on this formula if you prefer different behaviors for dates at the end of the month.

  DATE(YEAR( date ) + FLOOR( ( MONTH ( date ) + 2 - 1 ) / 12 ),
  MOD( MONTH ( date ) + 2 - 1 + 
    IF( DAY ( date ) > CASE( MOD( MONTH( date ) + 2 - 1, 12 ) + 1, 
      2, 28,
      4, 30,
      6, 30,
      9, 30, 
      11, 30,
      31 ), 1, 0 ), 12 ) + 1,
    IF( DAY( date ) > CASE( MOD( MONTH( date ) + 2 - 1, 12 ) + 1,
      2, 28, 
      4, 30, 
      6, 30, 
      9, 30, 
      11, 30, 
      31 ), 
    1, DAY( date )
  )
)




Adding Days to a Date

If you want to add a certain number of days to a date, add that number to the date directly. For example, to add five days to a date, the formula is date + 5.

date + Number_days 

Reports and Cross Filters

A colleague of mine reminded me today of an under-used feature of Salesforce Reporting, Cross Object Filters so I thought I'd write a quick blog about them.

What are they and when might I need to use them?

What are they?

Cross filters are used to further limit your results by including or excluding records from related objects and their fields. You can apply cross filters by themselves, or in combination with report field filters.

Sample Use Case

We want to add Contacts to a campaign who have made a donation of  over $100's in the past year excluding in honor/in memory of donations.

Why is this a good Use Case?  We need to base our report on Contacts in order to take advantage of the Add to Campaign button from a report but we need to limit our data by information only found on the opportunity record such as the in honor/in memory of indicator.

How do we do it?

In this case we'll want to create a report based on Contacts and Accounts but we will leverage the cross filter using the WITH condition to show Contacts WITH opportunities in the last year over $100 that are not of type in honor/in memory. 

First we'll create the report based on  Contacts and Accounts

Next we'll add any filters we want to use from the Contact or Account object.  In my example I'm excluding anyone who has the indicator on their contact record of Do Not Contact.

Now we will add our cross filter.  I am cross-filtering on the opportunity object and selecting any contacts that have opportunities that are not of type Honor or Memorial. 

I'll start by choosing Add Cross Filter from the filters drop-down.

This will  bring up the Cross Filter screen where I can choose my "Show Me" options.  I want to see Contacts WITH Opportunities so I'll choose With from the drop-down and Opportunities as the Secondary Object and click Apply.

Next I'll click on the Add Opportunities Filter to add my filter to exclude tribute type gifts.

I search for my opportunity field, in this case Tribute Type, choose the Operator of not equal to and choose the values that I don't want included (Honor and Memorial).  Then click Apply.  We can add additional filters like gift amount if desired by repeating this process.

Now my report contains filters from the Contact object (top) and Cross filters from my Cross filter object (bottom).

At the time of this blog posting, the Add to Campaign button feature is not available in Lightning.  To see the Add to Campaign button.  Switch to Classic view and Run the report.

Note:  When I run the report, I can only display fields from the Report Type objects (Contacts and Accounts).  Fields from the Cross Filter object are not available to add to the display results.

For more information on cross-filters see these awesome resources.

• This Salesforce video shows how to use cross-filters (lightning experience)
• This documentation explains how to use them and the types of cross filters.

Working with tasks

Summer '18 release delivers some important new lightning Task features.

Now, in lightning, list view columns are sortable.

 There are three ways to work with tasks.

• Table View
• Kanban View
• Split View

Table View
Table View is the view that most people are use to seeing and lists the records in a table format.

Kanban View
Kanban View displays the tasks in a Kanban card format based on the status of the task.  Tasks can be rearranged quickly from one status to another by simply dragging them to the new section.  It is a great visual view to see how tasks are progressing.

Spit View
Split View allows you to see the tasks in the list view and additional information about the selected one.  Staff can click on tasks in the list and quickly see the details of the task.  Buttons at the top of the task make editing key information on the task a snap!

Hop easily from the various views using the Display as drop-down

Working with Salesforce Calendars

Use Calendars to Quickly View Important Information

• Add the Calendar Tab to your Lightning App for quick reference
• Create List Views on objects to filter data to display on your calendar
• By default, your calendar will display events only but you can create various calendars to display important information such as Tasks or Campaigns
• You can control the colors of each calendar by clicking on the drop-down to the right of the calendar name

Adding Calendars to your calendar tab - Tasks

• From the calendar page, click on the gear icon to the right of My Calendars and choose New Calendar

• To add a calendar showing the tasks assigned to you, choose Task as the object.

• At the next screen give the calendar a name My Tasks.  choose Due Date Only (Date) as the Field for Start.  Leave the Field for End blank.  In the Field Name to display choose the Subject field.  Save the new calendar.

Adding Calendars to your calendar tab - Campaigns

• From the calendar page, click on the gear icon to the right of My Calendars and choose New Calendar
• Choose Campaign as the object.
• Choose Start Date as the Field for Start 
• Choose End Data as the Field for End
• Optional:  *Choose a filter to apply
• Choose Name as the Field Name to Display
• Save the New Calendar

*In the example below, I want to display all the training campaigns.  I have setup my Salesforce instance so that all training campaigns use the campaign record type of Training.  I then setup a list view on the Campaign object called Training Campaign that filters for only Campaigns of record type Training.

For more information about Calendars see: https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/summer16/release-notes/rn_sales_activities_calendar_create.htm