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JThemuss Pro Edition Reports - Am I mad?
Hi Guys..
I am trying to build a simple report that lists future bookings at our shipping company.
I have a structure as follows:
Account
Contacts
Shipping Instructions
Flight Details
Crates
(Note that flight details and crates both relate to Shipping Instructions)
I need to do a simple report that shows all flight bookings, with the contact name and the crates to be shipped.
Problem is I cannot create a custom report type that is based on Shipping Instructions and Flight Details AND Crates
The custom reports are forcing me to relate each level to a new object when I need to relate both the Flight Details and Crates objects to the Shipping Instructions object.
That is how it is in the UI.. i.e. Shipping Instructions have a related list for Flight Details and a related list for Crates.
I need to print
Flight Date
Flight Number
Shipping ref (Comes from Shipping Instructions object)
Sender (Comes from Contact Object)
Receiver (Comes from Shipping Instructions object)
Crate(s) (Comes from Crates Object)
It is so simple.. but I cannot work out how to do it in Salesforce PE..
Can anyone help before I go insane? :)
Regards
j.themuss
Apparently it looks like you need data from 4 objects - Contacts, Shipping Instructions, Flight Details and Crates and from what it appears, the relationship amongts the objects goes as follows:
Contacts are linked to Shipping Instructions and both Crates and Fligh Details are linked to Shipping Instructions
If I am not wrong, there is no direct relationship between Flight Details and Crates (correct me if I am wrong)! Which could be the potential reason why you can't get all of them into one report. Here is what I think is happening:
1. If you select Contact as the Primary object, you get Shipping Instructions as Object A and then you can either choose Flight or Crates as Object B. Whichever out of the 2 you select, you don't get the other one for selection as the 4th object.
2. If you select Shipping Instructions as the Primary object, then again you can either choose Flight or Crates as Object B. Whichever out of the 2 you select, you don't get the other one for selection as the 3rd object.
This is simply because a direct relationship is missing between Crates and Flight Details objects, which is causing the issue. Unless you have this relationship, I am afraid you won't be able to pull data from all 4 objects into one report.
Hope this helps!
However how can I link the crate and flight objects together while still keeping them both linked to shipping instructions object ?
Jthemuss
Sent from my iPhone
Well, from a data model perspective, you can create a relationship betweem Crates and Flight Information objects. You can simply do a lookup between the 2 objects and have the relationship created. This will also work for you in the report.
However, with my experience, I would also advise you to first check whether this relationship between Crates and Flight Information will make sense from a business process perspective or not.
So to answer your question, YES, you can create a relationship between the 2 objects but do consider the overall business requirements before making that change!
Hope this helps! Do click KUDOS if you find this helpful!
My problem is that for each flight there could be multiple crates..
i.e. 1 shipping instruction... could have just one flight.. but multiple
crates.
Will a lookup allow me to pull ALL the related crate records into the
report?
j.themuss
I think it should work, though would suggest you to try mocking it up in a Sandbox or Dev env. So here is the relationship that I think you would want to setup:
1. Shipping Instructions will have a related list of Flight i.e. with one Shipping instructions you could have one or more Flight records.
2. Flight records will in turn have a related list of Crates i.e. wih one Flight record you may have one ore more Crate records.
Once this relationship is setup, you can then setup a custom report type, choosing Contact as the primary object, followed by Shipping Instruction, then Flight and then finally Crates (you will get this option once you have this relationship b/w Crates and Flights)
Let me know how it goes and I would be happy to help you more.
That structure will work. However there is always an exception
In our case it is when a client books their own airline ticket and simply rents or buys the animal crate from us.
In this situation the crate needs to linked directly to the shipping instruction object.
I guess we could simply have a special entry on shipping called "passenger" and then on flights called "own ticket " and then enter the crate details.
Not ideal but it might work.
Unless there is a way to also relate crates to shipping instructions to cater for the exceptions.
Jthemuss
Sent from my iPhone