OK ignore part of (a)... I figured out how to use the Activities List to view all of the recent activity - although I really think it could benefit from more filtering options.  Showing what every user (or even individual users) “viewed” would (hopefully) be information overload to the point of useless.  I’d really appreciate your “Blog” view here, just across Projects.

I also noticed the Opportunity section of Activities, which is useful, but without any summarization/aggregation - it’s still a few steps short.

Thanks!
Luke (again)

Make sure you check under “Activities Dashboard” then “Opportunities Managed By…“ and “Next Actions Assigned to…“  These are not just filters but entirely different screens.

I agree more reporting and forecasting tools would be nice, or at least the ability to export the pipeline data to a spreadsheet (Google Docs?) and create custom reports that way.

sloughwi - Jun 22, 2009 02:08pm

Make sure you check under “Activities Dashboard” then “Opportunities Managed By…“ and “Next Actions Assigned to…“  These are not just filters but entirely different screens.

I agree more reporting and forecasting tools would be nice, or at least the ability to export the pipeline data to a spreadsheet (Google Docs?) and create custom reports that way.

I did check those out.  Unfortunately the closest one to what I’m looking for (“Recent Activity for”) is a bit like drinking from a firehose. ):

And I’d really not like to export to a spreadsheet. ):  I’d hate to go through that process (or require my less-techy sales folk) every time I want the most basic of sales reports.

Hi Luke, Our next update, that we’re hoping will be released in the next day or two, will add a total for number of opportunities and dollar value (by currency) to the bottom of the “Workspace, Activity Dashboard, Show opportunities managed by” report.

We are also working on a new report for the Activity Dashboard area which would allow you to create a custom view of activities across the entire system (priority task).  This would essentially be the global view of what has happened / is happening.

Engineering Staff - Jun 22, 2009 02:15pm

Hi Luke, Our next update, that we’re hoping will be released in the next day or two, will add a total for number of opportunities and dollar value (by currency) to the bottom of the “Workspace, Activity Dashboard, Show opportunities managed by” report.

We are also working on a new report for the Activity Dashboard area which would allow you to create a custom view of activities across the entire system (priority task).  This would essentially be the global view of what has happened / is happening.

Sounds good.  Any chance you’ll have date filtering for the Opportunity stuff?  Generally we look at the pipeline next week, month, 90 days, etc.

Just an FYI - The main sales report we use today (beyond forecasting) is a weekly report which includes the current stage (list + summary) of upcoming business, as well as all business that closed in the last week.  The one element that is challenging to get is any stage changes from the last week (which really is the most valuable column).

Yes we’ll be looking at adding date filters to the opportunity report (as data accumulates it will become important).

Thanks for the tip.  “Stage changes” is an interesting snip of data to consider reporting on.

Engineering Staff - Jun 22, 2009 03:39pm

Thanks for the tip.  “Stage changes” is an interesting snip of data to consider reporting on.

I can’t emphasize how important that little piece of data is.  Nothing shows Progress (which is what a report is all about) in a sales report than changes from the previous report.  For us we have “Previous Stage” as a column, and I believe it’s a somewhat manual process to generate it in SalesForce (which is what we use now). 

I think they have “Last Change Date”, and “Previous Stage”, and we manually make the report from those two - because we only care about changes in the last week (eg weekly report).

LukeF - Jun 22, 2009 02:14pm

And I’d really not like to export to a spreadsheet. ):  I’d hate to go through that process (or require my less-techy sales folk) every time I want the most basic of sales reports.

I agree, but something is better than nothing for now… and spreadsheet exports are easy to implement with lots of flexibility.  Anyway, we’ll see how it looks after the next release and maybe it’ll be at least a semi-moot point.

I saw this was not commented on for a while, and I want to bump it as important.  I would like more filtering options on the opportunities.  I would also like forecasting as an option, since getting realistic projections of revenue is always so difficult to achieve. 

I would also like to do date ranges.

For example, what was my “won” sales this week / month / quarter / ytd / prior 12 months.

Right now, all we have is all.  Its a new quarter and I want to start tracking it that way.

I know we can export to excel, but it makes so much more sense to be integrated.

I would also like to be able sort by any custom fields I create for opportunities.  For example, we have a custom field called “source” and we want to have a report grouped by that source for a specific date range, so we can see where our revenue is coming from.  Then we replicate the good sources and improve the weak ones.

I have a feeling this has to be on your radar, since it’s so close as it stands.

[Side-note: I’m not entirely certain how it works, but maybe something like youcalc integration would be an appropriate pairing.  http://www.youcalc.com.  (This is mostly a shot in the dark.  I don’t use it now.)  It looks like a cool idea, but I’m not sure if the visuals are simply pretty or actually useful.]

Just a note to acknowledge your post Jonathan.  Thanks for comments and suggestions.  Expanding the filtering options for the opportunity report is on our radar.

Any chance of reporting being expanded on further?

If you could have something similiar to “opportunities managed by” but more along the lines of Activity Metrics or totals that would calculate out new contacts, notes, opportunities, etc for each user and total those up in a concise view for managers to get a quick overview on group activity it’d be a huge bonus.

As-is I’m not seeing a good way to report over time, and for our needs we don’t really use opportunities, but everything else like generating leads thus adding contacts/companies and scheduling visits is a good indicator of our salespeoples activity for management.

Due to the lack of technical experience of the people that’d need to view this data, we’d definitely prefer to see such an option built-in rather an having to deal with CSV exports or API off on a 2nd site.

Have you checked out the “Show activity changes for..“ report?

I did check the activity changes for, but that’s in a stream of activity which you’re lucky to be able to view about 10 entries per screen on due to the entry data being shown as well.. and it’s not a dashboard style overview or spreadsheet to give a at a glance report on the actual #‘s of new entries over a period like each month, quarter.

I can see you have the data there in the little widget box showing Type & Qty, with

call logs: #
notes: #
opportunities: #

etc.. If that was just available in the opportunities managed by layout sorted by users with a column for each entry Type and the cell with the Qty for that time period. Then a total like the opportunities for the time period and Quantity of each record type generated.

Reporting enhancements +1

Reporting enhancements +1