14 IdeaExchange Ideas We Love (Vote for Them!)

We love the IdeaExchange! It's great being able to suggest new Salesforce features, vote on ones others have suggested, and track an idea's progress towards delivery. We always celebrate when an Idea we care about reaches the threshold for "Product Team Review" because hearing comments back directly from the SF product managers is always enlightening.

We've picked out 14 of our favorite Ideas -- go vote for them if you agree!

REPORTING

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of our most-wanted Ideas have to do with reporting, in some way. The Salesforce report builder is a robust, impressive, and occasionally frustrating tool.

Here's one idea that would just make running certain reports a little bit faster:

Add "All Time" to Report Time Frame Options

And here are a few that would allow us to dig even deeper into our data, and keep us from having to export results to excel for further analysis in some cases.

Report Filters Should Be Able to Compare Fields to Each Other

Ability to Use Filter Logic on Cross Filters

Filter on Custom Report Formula

CUSTOM REPORT TYPES

We would be nowhere without Custom Report Types -- they allow us to construct much more complex queries across different objects (both custom and standard). The feature was released in Summer '07… and kind of hasn't changed that much since then. Custom Report Types got left behind when the Salesforce Report Builder was rolled out in the Winter '11 release (sidenote: we literally danced in the street in Brooklyn on the day that particular upgrade was announced), and the "edit" screen for CRTs is one of the least user-friendly interfaces that's still kicking around in Salesforce today. So here are a few Ideas for improving it, and CRTs in general!

Redesign the UI for creating / editing Custom Report Types

Automatically Add New Fields to Custom Report Types

Better Management of Reports and Custom Report Types

 
seriously. look at this. there has to be a better way.

seriously. look at this. there has to be a better way.

 

IDEAS FOR ADMINS

Part of an admin's job is to make sure that all the other users in the organization can do their jobs without having to worry about the details -- the end user should have a pretty seamless experience in USING the system without needing to know what's going on underneath. Meanwhile, the admin is always in the weeds. Here are a few Ideas for making the weeds easier to weed through.

Make the Installed Packages List Sortable

Ability to Update Mail Merge Templates "In Place"

Merge Chatter Feeds as Part of Record Merge Process

Reporting on Scheduled Reports

Allow Process Builder Action to Create Opportunity Contact Role Record

CUSTOM FIELD IMPROVEMENTS

The fact that we can create virtually unlimited custom fields in Salesforce is probably one of the most underappreciated aspects of the system. We frequently have conversations with clients who are surprised that they can just create a brand new field to capture some piece of information, rather than having to clunkily repurpose an existing, unused field that's really meant for something else. We love custom fields; here are two Ideas to make them better.

Default Decimal Places for New Currency Fields to 2 Instead of 0

Include Fiscal Year as Merge Field for Formulas