More/Fewer Related List Records
The User Experience (UX) in Salesforce is about as important as the data being entered into the Org. If the UX is poor, you face adoption issues and incomplete records. Your reports and analysis suffer because you're working with incomplete data. The goal for Admins is to create an efficient Org (automating where you can) that helps an individual navigate the system as quickly as possible.
You can (and should) improve Page Layout organization and utilize the Mini Page Layout. This allows the Admin to select the fields that will display in a pop-out when a User hovers over a record link - a very convenient feature when trying to reference a detail from the Recent Items List. Why waste a click and wait for page refreshes when you don't have to?
By spending time with your Users, you can uncover what field detail he/she needs to reference on a regular basis. This is also great detail to utilize when editing the fields and order of those fields that appear under the Related List sections in the Page Layout. What is important to you, may not be important to your end Users. I always recommend designing for the end User in mind - not what is most convenient for you as the Admin. (You can create additional record types to use, but this is another area that will require attention over time - probably just easier to click on the record and gather the detail that you need). The display order is critical as well - should the list be alpha sorted? By created date? Or by another date field? Ask your Users what data he/she is looking for when going to that related list. How does he/she plan to use the information? A few simple questions will help guide you to the correct list sort to implement.
One area that is sometimes overlooked is the ability to alter the record count for Related List Records.
or if you don't have experience with Visualforce, you can simply click on the 'Show me fewer / more records per list page'.
This setting will take the default of 5 records and allow you to increase the displayed count to as many records as the related list contains. For related lists that contain over 100 records, you may be clicking quite a few times to get to the end of your list.
You also should ask Your user what he/she is looking for in the detail. This will help you determine if the related list view count needs to change or if the use case is indicative of an Object (Tab) Custom View for the User. I always make sure that I demo the ability to sort by fields from the Related List display and that the A-Z is to help filter the results of the column that I have chosen to sort by. Users consistently overlook this feature and it can drastically cut down on detail searches when a User is looking for a related list record with a specific value. The same applies for avoiding the need to spin up a SF report, when a list sort or custom view is sufficient.
ADDITIONAL TIPS:
You can't sort by any field that is set up as a Multi-Select Picklist field.
Picklist fields will sort by the order available in the picklist, not alphabetically (unless you've set that as your order in the picklist)
'All' resets the filtered display back to all records
'Other' filters to record names that don't start with a letter ex. an Account named 3D
An Admin can create custom views on any object and share out to Groups for visibility (that way you are managing the view and changes to the object/addition of new fields) Alternatively, you can train Users to create these views under their own logins.
Since there is no Org-wide setting to render a default number of rows on the related lists, you can also specify a set number of rows to return by manipulating the url on the list display. If you wanted to display 30 records on your related list, you would take your results display url and append '?rowsperlist=30' to the url and hit enter. Now refresh your Org and pull up your Opportunity. When you navigate to your related list, you'll see it's now displaying 30 records. Pretty neat, huh? Just remember this change is sticky, meaning it has been applied to all of your related lists and will only change if you manually update to another record count. (Note: 200 is the max # of rows a user can define)
You can also max out your Related List displays. When you're on the Object Detail page and can see there is a related list object that has say, 150 records, if you wanted them ALL to show up without having to click Go to List, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on ' Always show me more records per related list'.
Woo hoo! Now you don't have to manipulate the url for row count or click on show more records. Seems pretty awesome, right? Well, there's ONE big catch - if you have say 120 records, you'll see all 120 in the display order determined by your related list on the object and you can always click on 'Go to list (120)>>' to get to a displayed list where you can now play around with the sorting of your columns. The problem is when you have only 40 records, they all display, but there's not enough records for Salesforce to give you the option to 'Go to list'. That's a problem if you're trying to sort by some column other than the default sort setting determined by the related list. For end Users looking for specific detail, this can be a nightmare.
For an Admin, if the default sort is pushing the detail you need to the top of the list display, then there's no issue. However, if you need to sort, you'll have to resort to a custom list view, a report or unwinding the 'Always show me more records per related list'. You can do this by scrolling to the very bottom of the Salesforce page and select 'Always show me fewer records per related list'.
