With their recent Spring 12′ release, Salesforce now offers a new “Joined” report format. The new format allows you to cross-reference multiple objects and report types in a single report. This is a powerful addition that greatly expands reporting capabilities, but in its simplest form, it now allows you to do side-by-side comparison reports with different filters applied to each report.
As an example, we will be running a Joined Report on a custom object Transactions, which will display a side-by-side comparison of Transactions grouped by Product, comparing Current Fiscal Year-to-Date versus Previous Fiscal Year-to-Date. (Current FY YTD Vs. Previous FY YTD).
- Build the Report for Current FY creating the necessary groupings and sum columns (In this example we are grouping by Product, and Summing by Price).
- Select Joined Report Format
- Give a name for the resulting report block, and assign the filters for the current results block.
- Drag the field you are looking to compare to the blank area next to the existing result Block. This will create a new Result block and adds a new Filters section for the Result Block.
- Rename the new Result Block and assign the filters for the new Result Block. (For our Previous Year FY YTD, we need to exclude any Transactions from Previous Year FY that occur after today’s date last year. To do this, we add a filter that excludes Transaction Dates that occur in the last 365 days.)
- Run the Report
The new Joined Report format allows you up to three Result Blocks for comparison.