It’s time to take a look at another overlooked feature of Salesforce, the Salesforce bucket field. This is in fact a very powerful tool, and a lot of the organizational struggles that users live with can be solved using this thing. Now, before you grumble and say that the bucket thing is too confusing, let me tell you that I didn’t like this thing at first either.
See, part of the problem with the Salesforce bucket field is that everyone who talks about this thing makes it out to be very confusing and complicated. Nobody really puts effort into demystifying the idea, or pointing out how it’s so practically helpful in context of that.
This means that this powerful feature, which can solve a lot of problems, goes unused by many, and they turn to additional, bulky tools to solve problems that Salesforce already has the gear to handle.
How to Add Fields in Salesforce to Categorize Reports
Well, I’m not going to go into how to add fields in salesforce tutorial and how to use this tool, because that much is documented pretty well within Force.com, and I’d just be reinventing the wheel to go through that here, now wouldn’t I?
No, what I want to do is just talk briefly about what the concept is in more practical terms, and talk about how this power can be so helpful.
So at its heart, the bucket field is a quick-configured search and sort filter construct. It’s not that different from a formula or a custom report structure, only they can be built on the fly, and reconfigured rapidly and simply.
Now, this is useful because you can crosslink multiple fields and record types with simple filtering rules, and make multiple outcomes out of the sorts to account for levels within a metric, and much more. Read more about how to create record types in salesforce.
Now, it’s not complicated to set these up, but explaining how to add fields in salesforce and they work internally would be kind of hard. But, fortunately, it’s represented by Salesforce in a simple way that takes the complexity out of it, once you know what it’s for.
Now, these bucket fields are useful for sorting metrics into levels and nested categories. Since they’re compatible with standard forms and reports, these are a useful tool to get fast, sorted data into your reports, snapshots and other readouts without a lot of difficulty.
So, you can create better metrics, analytics, reports and forecasts using these fields to quickly and reliably sort like this. Since they’re circumstantial, they’re not a commitment in the tables and libraries like formulae and custom report structures.
This kind of sorting is a hurdle that a lot of data management environments struggle with, and a lot of time is burned in trying to address these problems through additional practices or technologies.
So, understanding the purpose of the Salesforce bucket field, and applying it to practical situations in stead of going completely off in tangents is going to make your life a lot easier. Do some research after this, to see what kinds of bucket fields there are, and some suggested uses for them for new kinds of reports and snapshots you may not have thought to try. Learning how to add fields in salesforce is powerful, but only if you actually use it. More Reports information can be found on how to create a report in salesforce page.
