Cleanup on Org 13!

We've got a cleanup on Org 13! Lot of reports here...

Spring is just around the corner and a great time to set up some "Spring Cleaning Best Practices."

So when's the last time you looked at how many reports are currently in your Org? How many of those reports contain outdated fields? Some may even be for objects your business is no longer utilizing. Many times when unchecked, reports can run rampant in an Organization. Too often there are multiple versions of the same report, where the only difference is the name of the Opportunity being referenced.

The cleanup solution is simple. Quarterly report cleanup and FILTER DASHBOARDS! As a follow up to my object migration (from a lookup to a master-detail relationship), all of the reports on the old object are really no longer valid. The data is old, I've moved details to a new object and am in the process of creating new report templates. So how can I prevent users from accidentally using old, outdated reports?

Remove access to the old object. This process is like a band-aid. Just pull it off quickly and it will hurt less than pulling off a piece at a time. Through each step of the transition, I've warned users that the old object is going to be deleted and that any reports referencing that object will no longer be accessible. People will hear what you're saying, but not fully understand it until that report in their custom folder stops working.

The moment you turn off access to an object, prepare for the emails and calls to start rolling in. Gently remind your users about the plan and direct them to the shiny new templates you've prepared for their usage! You want to plan this out ahead of time and always have new reports set up so that your users can access data as quickly as they always have in the past. My next step was to go through custom report types and label all of the old object reports with DELETE. This allows me to easily locate these reports and remove them from the system. You could remove the report type completely at this point, but I want to reference these old reports when building my new templates, so that the look and feel of the reports is the same for my users. Once that is done, then I'll go back and remove the custom report types.

By making my new object a master-detail relationship, I now have the ability to roll up a number of fields into new Roll-Up Summary fields! This is also allowing me to eliminate a number of reports used to track the same data when the relationship was just a lookup. As an Administrator, you also have the ability to run a report to show all reports in your Org, the name of the report and most important - the Last Run date. This can be very helpful in identifying reports that are likely out of date or not in use. Caution: Keep in mind reports that you run quarterly or just once a year. I would suggest any critical reports be put into a folder for management. I use the same best practice for any report I use in Conga templates. Unlike Dashboards, there's no alert/warning if you try to delete a critical Conga template report. As an additional best practice, I list all reports used in management presentations in the notes section of each PowerPoint slide. Periodically, I will access reports from a presentation to ensure that all are in the appropriate folder before I start working on a report cleanup project. Also remember that once you've opened a report to review, the Last Run date is going to update. I will usually export this data to Excel and keep one SF window up with the report list so I can work my way down. (Hold the Shift key and click on a link to open up a new SF window)

It feels great to delete hundreds of outdated reports, doesn't it? Goodbye clutter. Hello organized reports! The final step in my spring cleaning project this week is to take all of the old reports (relating to custom objects & accounts) and set up those templates on a Dashboard where I've defined Opportunity names to filter by. Note: this won't work for all Orgs, especially if you have 100 active opportunities at one time that you want to report on. I'm using it for deals that have hit a specific stage in our tracking process, so at most I would have 30-40 Opp names to type in as filter options on the Dashboard. A small price to pay to have all needed reports in one place and at the same time allow my users access to the deal info without having to spin up yet another report. Basically I'm stopping the report mayhem at this point and taking control over the reports we need for our tracking purposes. It really comes down to only a handful of reports that are really needed for each deal. Other data that is needed on a frequent basis, I've rolled into Conga templates for easy access and review. I'll still allow users to customize and save off their own versions of reports in their own personal folders, but I'll be controlling all Dashboard reports moving forward. That makes a quarterly review of reports much easier to manage and keep track of in the future!