In your sales organization, you want to know how business is doing this month. You'd like to know metrics such as opportunities created, deals closed, and deals closing next month. While in the past you had to create three separate reports in Salesforce, now, you can get all this data in one report by using the joined report format.

Here’s how to get the data with a joined report:

Example: Create a joined report with multiple views

1. Let’s start with a basic opportunities report and change it to the joined format.

   
   
   

2. Add three blocks. Drag and drop “Opportunity Owner” and “Amount” fields in each block. Each block shows a different view of the business so that decision makers can quickly assess and draw insights at a glance. Label the blocks “Created,” “Closed (Won),” and “Closing next month.”
   
   
   
3. As with other report formats, you can filter, summarize, and group fields. Filter each block by date range or opportunity status as appropriate.
   
   
4. Summarize the Amount column in each block, and group the results by “Opportunity Owner” (sales rep).

             To make this data more visual, add a chart using the “Add Chart” option.

Now what if you wanted to report on data from not one but several report types -- multiple objects in other words? Joined report is still the way to go. Take the following example.

Example: Combine data in a joined report from multiple report types

As a salesperson, you want to gauge the health of your accounts while prepping for customer calls. You'll need a report that looks at different opportunity and case records for each account. We'll pull in data from three objects.

To begin, create an accounts report. Then, add data from the Opportunities report type and Cases report type. You're able to add data for Opportunities and Cases objects because they’re related to Accounts, which is a common parent object. See how each report type that you add is its own block.

We'll create four blocks, each showing a different facet of the account.

1. In the accounts block, add the “Employees” column and summarize by max, which gives you maximum value of the Employees column.
2. Create an opportunities block showing the lifetime value of the account. Calculate the sum of “Amount” and set “Opportunity Status” to “Closed Won.”
3. Show the open opportunity pipeline in the next block. Set Opportunity Status to “Open” and get the sum of Amount.
4. In the last block, show open cases with “Case Owner,” “Subject,” and “Age” columns. Filter by “Status” “not equal to” “Closed” to just see the open cases.

Now group all blocks by Account Name.

There’s more you can do with joined reporting. For example, you can create summary formulas to calculate additional totals on number fields for one report type or create cross-block formulas to get totals for number fields across different report types.

To get hands-on experience, try the joined report examples in the Analytics Workbook or watch this brief video, Introducing Joined Reports in Salesforce.

To recap: Joined reports let you report across multiple data sets in a single report. See related data from multiple report types, or see different views of data from the same report type. Joined reports are available to you in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer editions.