Data and Analytics Management
This chapter covers importing and maintaining clean data and building reports and dashboards that turn records into insight. Administrators are responsible for both data quality and the analytics business users rely on.
Importing and maintaining data
The Data Import Wizard handles common imports of standard and custom objects up to its limits, while Data Loader supports larger volumes and more objects. Duplicate management, using matching rules to detect matches and duplicate rules to alert or block, helps keep the database clean at the point of entry.
Report types and formats
Reports can be tabular (simple lists), summary (grouped by rows), matrix (grouped by rows and columns for two-dimensional analysis), or joined (multiple blocks). Choosing the right format lets you summarize data the way a business question requires, such as opportunities by stage and by owner in a matrix.
Dashboards
A dashboard presents several components, such as charts, gauges, and metrics, each powered by an underlying report, giving managers a consolidated visual summary that can be refreshed on demand. Dashboards turn the data captured and reported in Salesforce into an at-a-glance view for decision making.