Getting Started With Salesforce CRM Analytics 2E - Johan Yu

Johan Yu
Getting Started with Salesforce CRM

Analytics
A Beginner’s Guide to Building Interactive and
Complex Dashboards
Second Edition
Johan Yu
Singapore, Singapore
ISBN 979-8-8688-0478-6 e-ISBN 979-8-8688-0479-3

https://doi.org/10.1007/979-8-8688-0479-3
© Johan Yu 2019, 2024
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is
concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any
other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service

marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a
specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective
laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice
and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date
of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a
warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
This Apress imprint is published by the registered company APress Media,

LLC, part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY
10004, U.S.A.
To my wife, Novida, and my son, Jeremy, thank you for your love!
Introduction
Salesforce is known to be the most friendly user interface for enterprise
applications; it is the pioneer of cloud applications; over 25 years,
Salesforce has evolved from a simple cloud CRM application to a
comprehensive enterprise application for Sales, Service, Marketing, and so
on, including Analytics.
One of the most liked features by Salesforce platform users is the report
and dashboard. Users are able to create and edit reports and dashboards on
their own easily using drag and drop. Furthermore, the result generated is
based on real-time data from the Salesforce platform, and the user will get
the result in seconds, including sorting, grouping, adding chart, subtotal,
bucket field, row-level formula, summary fields, etc. The dashboard is built
using a report created as the data source for each dashboard component.
Salesforce reports and dashboards serve well in generating simple real-
time operational reporting, but Salesforce is not designed to work with large
amounts of data, nor as a data analytics and exploration tool; it does not
support the creation of reports and dashboards with complex logic, and it
cannot connect and retrieve data directly from external or other Salesforce
organizations. Therefore, Salesforce introduced CRM Analytics to fill the
gap for complex analytics needs.
CRM Analytics is hosted in the Salesforce core cloud, so it is tightly
connected to the Salesforce core platform; it is also able to get and sync
data from external systems, including from multiple Salesforce
organizations.
The CRM Analytics dashboard is built using datasets stored in the CRM
Analytics platform; in this book, we will learn how to build the dataset
using recipes, where you can combine and transform data from multiple
sources. We will also learn how to store, share, and secure the assets,
including each user’s permissions and licenses.
The best method to learn CRM Analytics is to be hands-on with all the
features introduced, so you need to have access to the platform from the
beginning. If your organization has not purchased CRM Analytics licenses,
you can register for a free Salesforce Trailhead Developer Edition
organization with CRM Analytics enabled; you will learn that in this book.
Thank you for purchasing this book; if you read till the end of the book
and follow all the hands-on provided, you will know and absorb all the
features offered by CRM Analytics and know how to build interactive
dashboards for your organization or clients. Happy learning!
Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author
in this book is available to readers on GitHub (https://github.com/Apress).
For more detailed information, please visit
https://www.apress.com/gp/services/source-code.
Acknowledgments
I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and say thank you to
everyone who directly and indirectly contributed to this book. Writing the
second edition of this book was not as simple as I thought, but I enjoyed
sharing my knowledge, and it has been a great journey authoring this book.
I am grateful for every opportunity, support, and input from
My family
My manager and teammates: Adrian, Eileen, Masako, Swapna, Jesus, and
Joel
Venkata Karthik Penikalapati for the review and feedback to make this
book better
Sayantani Mitra, the technical reviewer in the initial edition; Alexander
Waleczek; and all team members of CRM Analytics
#WorkoutWednesday
Shonmirin, Aditee, and Kripa from the Apress team
All Salesforce CRM Analytics Product Managers
My church and cell group
All Salesforce Singapore Trailblazers
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:CRM Analytics:Introduction
Getting the Right Term
Integration with Salesforce
Why CRM Analytics?
Environment and License
CRM Analytics Permissions
Navigating CRM Analytics
Lightning Page
Analytics Tab
Analytics Studio
Mobile App
CRM Analytics Components
Apps
Dashboards
Lenses
Datasets
Understanding Data Manager
Jobs Monitor
Data Assets
Recipes and Dataflows
Usage
Connections
Summary
Chapter 2:Data Sources
Getting Data into CRM Analytics
CSV File
Hands-On:CSV Data Load
Local Salesforce Data
External Data
Existing Dataset
Salesforce Trend Report
Hands-On:Trend a Salesforce Report
External Data API
Summary
Chapter 3:Recipe
Dataflow
1.Open Dataflow
2.Convert to Recipe
3.Save and Run
Recipe User Interface
Creating a Recipe from Scratch
Use Case
Building Concept
Hands-On:Create a Recipe
Backup and Restore Recipe
Data Transformation in Recipe
Input Data
Transform
Filter
Aggregate
Join
Append
Update
Output
Summary
Chapter 4:Dataset
Dataset Properties
Dataset Fields
Extended Metadata File
Rename the Field Label
Hide Fields
Edit Values
Format Numbers
Default Fields
Specify the Dataset Grain Label
Replace and Restore Dataset
Configure Actions for Dataset
Summary
Chapter 5:Lens
CRM Analytics App
Creating App
Run App
Share App
Exploring Dataset
Using Chart in Lens
Using Table in Lens
Saving Lens
Present Lens
Clip Lens to Designer
Share and Download Lens
Get URL
Post to Feed
Download
Add Lens to Subscriptions
Add Lens to Collection
Add Lens As Favorite
Explore with Conversational
Summary
Chapter 6:Building Dashboard
Permission
Layout
Template
Widgets
Chart
Table
Filter
Container
Date
Link
Image
List
Number
Range
Text
Toggle
Navigation
Page
Sharing Widget
Dataset Filter
Dashboard Tab
Performance
Adoption and Maintenance
Faceting
Global Filter
Using Multiple Datasets
Summary
Chapter 7:Exploring Dashboard
Dashboard Inspector
Set Notifications
Annotations
Following Annotations
Hands-On Annotations
Share Widget
Show Details
Explore
Hands-On Explore Widget
Widget Built with SAQL
Embedding CRM Analytics Dashboard to Salesforce Lightning
Page
Hands-On Adding Dashboard to Lightning Home Page
Hands-On Adding Dashboard to the Record Page
Summary
Chapter 8:Applying Security
Permission Set Assignment
Apps Level Sharing
Security Predicate
Syntax
Hands-On Security Predicate
Role Hierarchy Access
Sharing Inheritance
Enable Sharing Inheritance
Configure Recipe
Sharing Inheritance Coverage Assessment
Summary
Chapter 9:Advanced Topics
Recipe Nodes
Edit Attributes
Drop Columns
Custom Formula
Filter Node
Append Node
Join with Multiple Value Lookup
Salesforce Direct Data Queries
Hands-On
JSON
Dashboard and Lens
Recipe
Dataset
SAQL
Binding and Custom Query
Hands-On Binding and Custom Query
Widgets
Input
Repeater
Component
Summary
Index
About the Author
Johan Yu
has more than 25 years of experience
working in the IT sector across
multinational corporations (MNCs) and a
leading Salesforce consulting company in
the Asia-Pacific region. He has spent more
than 19 years working with Salesforce
technology, starting his career as a
developer, team leader, architect, and
technical manager, among many other
challenging roles.
Based in Singapore, Johan holds 19x
active Salesforce certifications, ranging
from Administrator to Architect/Designer
certifications, including CRM Analytics
and Einstein Discovery Consultant. In his
spare time, he enjoys writing blogs and volunteering in the Salesforce
Trailblazer Community.
In May 2014, Johan became the first Salesforce MVP from Southeast
Asia. He is also the leader of the Salesforce Singapore User Group for more
than a decade.
About the Technical Reviewer
Venkata Karthik Penikalapati
is a seasoned software developer with over
a decade of expertise in designing and
managing intricate distributed systems,
data pipelines, and MLOps. Armed with a
master’s degree in Computer Science from
the University at Buffalo, his knowledge
spans the realms of machine learning, data
engineering, and workflow orchestration.
Venkata thrives in the world of distributed
systems, continually pushing the
boundaries of innovation.
Currently, Karthik is a valuable
member of the Salesforce team within the
Search Cloud division. Here, he’s at the
forefront of cutting-edge developments, spearheading the integration of the
latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI).
OceanofPDF.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024
J. Yu, Getting Started with Salesforce CRM Analytics
https://doi.org/10.1007/979-8-8688-0479-3_1
1. CRM Analytics: Introduction

Johan Yu1
(1) Singapore, Singapore
CRM Analytics is a visualization platform from Salesforce that allows you

to build complex and interactive dashboards. The dashboard will let you
and your users get insights and make smarter decisions from Salesforce and
external data. Furthermore, it can also give you predictions and
recommendations by analyzing the data.
The data visualization built will work in the web browser and mobile
app. As the Salesforce admin, you can add the CRM Analytics dashboard to
other Salesforce products, such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience
Cloud, Slack, etc. This empowers your Salesforce users to access the
dashboard seamlessly from the Salesforce platform, which allows the user
to analyze data without the need to switch platforms. You can also embed
the dashboard into a record page, such as the Account or Opportunity page,
so the dashboard will only show insight that is relevant to a particular
record open. Additionally, if your organization is using Slack, you can also
integrate CRM Analytics into Slack with a simple setup.
If you are familiar with building reports and dashboards in Salesforce,
you need to reset your mind when learning to build dashboards with CRM
Analytics. The concept of building a CRM Analytics dashboard is different
from building a dashboard in the Salesforce platform. In CRM Analytics,
you do not need to have reports to use as source data for the dashboard
widgets because it will pull data directly from the CRM Analytics data
source.
This book is written for Salesforce admins, analytics specialists,
business intelligence professionals, data analysts, business analysts, and
reporting analysts who want to learn to build CRM Analytics dashboards
without any prior experience with CRM Analytics. This book is also
intended for the managers and decision-makers who use and explore CRM
Analytics dashboards in their daily jobs, so that they can make the most out
of the platform.
Throughout this book, you will learn step-by-step instructions to guide
you in exploring dashboards and building interactive and complex
dashboards, from preparing datasets, creating recipes, building dashboards,
and implementing security.
By the end of this chapter, you will learn the following:
Introduction to CRM Analytics and relation with the Salesforce platform
Setting up the environment, licensing, and permission
Navigating CRM Analytics and components of CRM Analytics
Getting the Right Term

In the past, CRM Analytics was also known as Tableau CRM, Einstein
Analytics, and Wave. Since the Salesforce Summer ‘22 release (around
June 2022), this product has been called CRM Analytics. Thus, if you see
those terms mentioned in older blogs, YouTube videos, or discussion
forums, they refer to the same product, so the content may still be applied,
but you will need to be cautious as some content may no longer be valid as
of now.
Integration with Salesforce

If you have experience working in the Salesforce platform, the knowledge
of Salesforce permission, objects, and fields will benefit you in learning
CRM Analytics. However, CRM Analytics is a platform by itself; the data is
stored on the CRM Analytics platform, not in the Salesforce platform.
Therefore, only the data needed by dashboards has to be “brought” into
CRM Analytics. Ideally, not all fields and objects in Salesforce will be
available in CRM Analytics. However, for specific needs, you can query
data in real time from Salesforce objects.
Because CRM Analytics is tightly integrated with the Salesforce
platform, it offers the Salesforce admin the ability to embed the CRM
Analytics dashboard easily into the Lightning App Builder. Users with
CRM Analytics permissions will be able to explore embedded CRM
Analytics dashboards from a Lightning page. For dashboards that are not
embedded in a Lightning page, users can access the dashboard from the
Analytics tab in Salesforce.
As a dashboard builder, you need to open the Analytics Studio app to
create or edit a dashboard or work with recipes. Select the Analytics Studio
app from the Lightning App Launcher (nine-dot icon) at the upper-left
corner of the Lightning platform; see Figure 1-1. The Analytics tab and
Analytics Studio app will only be visible for Salesforce users with CRM
Analytics permission.
Figure 1-1 Analytics Studio app and Analytics tab in the Salesforce Lightning App Launcher
If you are unable to locate Analytics Studio from the App Launcher, you
probably have not been assigned the permission set to access CRM
Analytics; we will cover permissions related to CRM Analytics later in this
chapter. Another reason is that your Salesforce profile has not been enabled
with the Analytics Studio app; reach out to your Salesforce admin to enable
it.
For the CRM Analytics admin, CRM Analytics configuration and user-
related permissions are configured from the Salesforce setup menu. Type
Analytics in the setup search box to configure it, while user permissions
are granted with the Salesforce permission set.
Why CRM Analytics?

With CRM Analytics, users are empowered to ingest, explore, and analyze
data on their own. The CRM Analytics dashboard does not depend on the
Salesforce object’s structure; therefore, as a dashboard designer, you are
free to create datasets, recipes, dataflows, and dashboards with your own
creativity. The CRM Analytics platform is designed to handle millions of
records, and it supports users in interacting and analyzing data by
faceting/broadcasting selected data across components.
Salesforce comes with great standard reports and dashboard features, so
why do we still need CRM Analytics? It depends on the dashboard’s
purpose.
Table 1-1 is the comparison between CRM Analytics and standard
Salesforce Report and Dashboard.
Table 1-1 Comparison of CRM Analytics with Salesforce Report and Dashboard
CRM Analytics Report and Dashboard

Data Source Salesforce and external Salesforce
Object Relationships Many levels Three levels
Count of Rows Millions 2,000 (display)
Data Availability Schedule Real time
Usage Insight Operation
Mobile App Analytics Salesforce
Data Load External Data API SOAP/REST/Bulk
Environment and License

CRM Analytics is hosted in the core Salesforce platform; if you are an
existing Sales Cloud or Service Cloud customer, you need to purchase
additional CRM Analytics licenses for each user to build or access CRM
Analytics; reach out to your Salesforce Account Executive (AE) for the
pricing and information on the different editions of CRM Analytics. After
acquiring the CRM Analytics license, you should learn or test it in a
sandbox environment.
However, if your company has not purchased CRM Analytics and you
would like to learn CRM Analytics, there is nothing to worry about; you
can learn CRM Analytics by signing up for Trailhead with free CRM
Analytics–enabled Developer Edition from the following URL:
https://developer.salesforce.com/promotions/orgs/a
nalytics-de. This environment allows you to learn almost all the items
that will be discussed in this book.
Note To check if your Salesforce environment has CRM Analytics

enabled, navigate to Setup and type Analytics in the Quick Find
search box; if you see the Settings under the Analytics menu, your
environment (Salesforce organization) has CRM Analytics enabled.
Another option is to navigate to Company Information in the setup
menu and look for Analytics Platform in the Permission Set Licenses
box; see Figure 1-2 to see the numbers of Analytics Platform licenses
purchased and remained.
Figure 1-2 CRM Analytics license information in Salesforce Company Information
CRM Analytics Permissions

As the CRM Analytics license is in addition to the Salesforce license, each
Salesforce user needs to have a CRM Analytics license to access CRM
Analytics dashboards; otherwise, the users will not be able to build or
explore CRM Analytics dashboards. And vice versa, each CRM Analytics
user needs to have a Salesforce license as well; the Salesforce license type
can be a “cheaper” one, such as a platform license.
In CRM Analytics, the license for a dashboard builder and a dashboard
explorer is the same. To check if a user has been given a CRM Analytics
license, go to user detail in Salesforce, scroll down to the Permission Set
License Assignments related list, and look for Analytics Platform or
CRM Analytics Plus, as shown in Figure 1-3. This license name depends
on the editions of CRM Analytics you purchased. We will discuss CRM
Analytics user permission further in Chapter 9, which will include hands-on
instructions to assign the user the correct CRM Analytics permissions.
Figure 1-3 CRM Analytics licenses on a user
Navigating CRM Analytics

Since CRM Analytics is a Salesforce product, it integrates well into the
Salesforce platform. A Salesforce user can access CRM Analytics
dashboards from multiple places in Salesforce.
Lightning Page
A Salesforce admin can add CRM Analytics dashboards to any Lightning
page, such as the Home page or a record page (Account, Opportunity, etc.).
To add the dashboard to a record page, Salesforce can pass the record ID as
a filter to the dashboard, so the dashboard only shows the relevant data. The
Salesforce admin needs to edit the Lightning page, then add the CRM
Analytics Dashboard component, select the dashboard, and configure the
component property.
Analytics Tab
Once CRM Analytics is provisioned, the Analytics tab will be added to
your Salesforce organization. Your Salesforce admin needs to configure the
tab visibility, either by profile or permission set; this is similar to the
standard Salesforce tab; your Salesforce admin can set it as Default On,
Default Off, or Tab Hidden.
From the Analytics tab, users can explore all apps, dashboards, and
lenses that users have access to. Also, users can track Notifications,
Subscriptions, Watchlists, Collections, and Favorites of items added.
Analytics Studio
The Analytics Studio app is primarily for dashboard builders to build or edit
CRM Analytics dashboards, starting from building the dataset to defining
security and so on. Dashboard builders can open Data Manager from
Analytics Studio or the App Launcher; we will discuss Data Manager later
in this chapter. Figure 1-4 shown a sample of Analytics Studio user
interface with the Home tab.
Business users will be able to access Analytics Studio if their profile or
permission set allows; from here, the users can explore apps, dashboards,
lenses, and datasets. There are two ways to open the Analytics Studio app:
1. Analytics Tab: Open a dashboard or lens, then click the “Open
Analytics Studio” icon at the upper-right corner.
2. Analytics Studio App: Click the App Launcher (nine-dot icon at the
upper left in Salesforce Lightning), then click Analytics Studio.
Figure 1-4 Analytics Studio user interface
Mobile App
Users can download the CRM Analytics mobile app from the App Store or
Google Play Store. In the mobile app, users will be able to open all
dashboards and lenses to which the users have access.
As the dashboard builder/designer, you should design dashboard layouts
that are optimized for mobile or tablet devices. If you do not create the
mobile or tablet layouts, the mobile app will be using the default app for
web browsers, where some widgets will not visualize well on mobile/tablet
devices.
CRM Analytics Components

We discussed that the dashboard is the visualization for users to explore and
analyze data, but behind that, many components build a CRM Analytics
dashboard. We briefly mentioned Apps, Lenses, Widgets, Datasets, and
Data Manager. Now, let us go through each component of CRM Analytics.
Apps
Suppose you are familiar with the Salesforce report and dashboard; each
report and dashboard are stored in a folder, and the folder controls user
accessibility of the reports and dashboards that are stored in that folder. An
app in CRM Analytics is like a folder in Salesforce, where it controls who
can view, edit, or manage items within the app.
The app is similar to containers that can hold multiple types of items,
from dashboards, components, lenses, and datasets. Ideally, you should put
all related items within an app; then, you can configure the app sharing to
users who need to access the dataset, dashboard, or lens.
Dashboards
A dashboard is a collection of widgets that may contain charts, tables,
repeaters, text, numbers, links, components, containers, images, filters, lists,
inputs, toggles, dates, ranges, and navigation. Ideally, a dashboard is the
result of what we want to achieve, and then it is published to a group of
users, where users will explore and analyze the data. You can build a
dashboard that contains multiple pages.
However, not all business needs are required to build a dashboard; for
example, if the users simply need to get the data into a table or a chart, we
can use Lens, which explores data from one or multiple datasets.
Lenses
A lens is a visualization of dataset; it can be presented as raw data,
grouping, pivot table, and multiple types of charts. The lens can be saved to
an App and shared with other users.
The lens is similar to that of Salesforce’s report. However, the CRM
Analytics dashboard does not need a lens to build the widgets as a data
source; the widget gets the data directly from the data source.
A lens can be created by exploring a dataset or by exploring a widget
from the dashboard. When the user explores a widget from a dashboard, it
will not impact the dashboard itself, but it will create a new lens, and the
user is able to save the lens if needed for future usage or analysis.
A lens can be visualized in the form of a chart or table. Many types of
charts can be used in a dashboard; the same type of charts is available to use
in a lens.
Datasets
A dataset is a collection of data stored in a tabular format. The data can
come from multiple sources, such as Salesforce objects, other Salesforce
organizations, external systems, and CSV files.
Everything you need to build a dashboard or lens starts from the dataset.
The dataset contains the data itself and extended metadata (XMD).
You can configure dataset extended metadata by exploring the dataset,
such as setting field formatting, relabeling field names, hiding fields, setting
default fields, and editing data values (but this is not bucketing).
By opening the dataset, you can get dataset information such as the API
Name, created date time, data last refreshed, data last queried, the number
of rows, source, app, usage, and security predicate. Additionally, you can
perform actions such as backing up and restoring the extended metadata,
configuring actions, restoring the dataset, and replacing data (for CSV data
load).
If a dataset is created as a result of a recipe or dataflow, whenever
possible, design the recipe or dataflow that produces data that can be easily
used in the dashboard, where all the heavy lifting works are performed in
the recipe or dataflow, not in the dashboard, such as by performing SAQL
(Salesforce Analytics Query Language). Figure 1-5 show CRM Analytics
architecture, from data sources, recipe to dashboard.
Figure 1-5 CRM Analytics architecture

You can access the Data Manager from Analytics Studio or the App
Launcher (nine-dot icon in the upper-left corner). Data Manager is meant
to be used by dashboard builders, CRM Analytics super users, or CRM
Analytics administrators to manage data connection and scheduler.
From Data Manager, you can create and schedule recipes, create and
schedule dataflows, monitor job runs, monitor data assets, monitor usages,
manage connections, and schedule data sync. If you have permission to
access Data Manager, click the gear icon at the upper-right corner of
Analytics Studio, then select Data Manager; see Figure 1-6.
Figure 1-6 Accessing Data Manager from Analytics Studio
Jobs Monitor
Jobs Monitor is the default page when opening Data Manager. Jobs Monitor
will show all the history and current jobs that are running, including Recipe,
Dataflow, Data Sync, Trend, and File Upload. At the top bar, you can click
one of the six tabs to filter the jobs quickly based on job status: All,
Succeeded, Failed, Warning, Running, and Queued. For a sample of Jobs
Monitor and Data Manager user interface, see Figure 1-7.
Figure 1-7 Data Manager user interface

Click the filter icon at the upper-right corner to filter the job history and
run. Click the refresh icon (next to the filter icon) to refresh the latest status
of jobs run. Information from Jobs Monitor will include
Job ID
Origin
Status
Type
Started
Duration
Wait Time
Click the Job ID to get details from each job, so you can monitor which
nodes take lots of time, and you can try to optimize them:
Name
Status
Type
Started
Duration
Rows In
Rows Out
Rows Failed
Data Assets
From Data Assets, see Figure 1-8, you can view all datasets that exist in the
CRM Analytics platform, as well as Salesforce (and external) objects that
are connected to CRM Analytics.
For datasets, you can see where the datasets are stored, who created the
dataset, the number of rows, creation date time, last refreshed, and last
queried; click the header to sort it. For Connected data, you can see the title,
the connection source, and the last data sync.
You can also create a new dataset from a CSV file by clicking the New
Dataset button at the upper-right corner; this is similar to creating a dataset
from Analytics Studio.
Figure 1-8 Data Assets user interface
Recipes and Dataflows

Recipe is the primary data transformation tool in CRM Analytics. Use the
recipe to transform and enrich data before loading it as datasets or other
targets. When building a recipe, you can preview the results as you build it.
When you are done building the recipe, run the recipe to write the result as
datasets or other targets, such as CSV or Salesforce objects.
The dataflow used to be the primary data transformation tool before the
recipe was enhanced with many features. There are many benefits of the
recipe compared to the dataflow, which we will discuss in depth in Chapter
3.
By default, the Recipes tab will list all recipes built; click the arrow at
the far right of the recipe name:
Edit: This is the same as clicking the recipe name.
Delete: Please note that you cannot restore a deleted recipe.
Run Now: Run the recipe, and you can monitor the progress in Jobs
Monitor.
Schedule: Select time based (hour, day, week, month) or event based.
Notifications: Send notifications when the recipe runs and ends with
warnings, failure, or all events.
Similar to Jobs Monitor, you can click the header to sort, type in the
search box, refresh, and filter the list of recipes. To create a new recipe,
click the New Recipe button in the upper-right corner of the Recipes tab;
we will discuss more on new recipe creation in Chapter 3.
To create a dataflow, make sure “Allow users to access Data Manager
(Legacy)” is enabled in the Analytics setting under the Salesforce setup;
click “Manage Dataflows” at the bottom left of the Data Manager.
However, as Salesforce has transitioned to using recipes as the primary data
transformation tool, we will not discuss the dataflow in depth in this book
edition.
Usage
In this tab, you can review the data usage at a glance:
Number of rows used (total of all datasets) and maximum rows allowed
for your organization. The maximum rows are based on the CRM
Analytics edition and the number of licenses purchased.
Usage in GB of output to Salesforce and the maximum size allowed in a
day.
Usage in GB of output to CSV and the maximum size allowed in a day.
Synced data does not count toward CRM Analytics usage; only the rows
are in All Datasets.
Connections
The Connections tab shows local Salesforce objects that are synced
between Salesforce and CRM Analytics; this connection is called
SFDC_LOCAL. For each item:
Object Name: This is the Salesforce object API Name.
Filter: Adding a filter here will cause not all data to sync from Salesforce
objects.
Columns: Number of columns that synced from each object.
Connection Mode: What is the sync mode for the object?
Last Run: When is the last sync for the object?
Status: What is the status of the last sync?
Similar to the recipe, click the arrow at the far right of the object name
to
Run Data Sync: Only run data sync for the select object.
Disconnect Object: This will disconnect the object from the data sync.
Data sync will stop pulling data from the data sources.
Edit Connection Mode: This can be set up differently for each object.
You can connect CRM Analytics to external data sources, such as
Google Big Query, Microsoft Azure SQL, Amazon RDS, Snowflake, etc.,
and, of course, you can also connect to other Salesforce organizations.
To create a new connection, click the New Connection button on this
page, then select the connectors. To schedule the sync, click the arrow next
to the connection name and click Schedule; this is similar to scheduling
recipes. See Figure 1-9; you can select Run Now to sync all connected
objects for this connection, set Notifications, or Edit Objects.
Figure 1-9 Connections user interface
When you click an object from SFDC_LOCAL, you will see three tabs:
1. Columns: Select fields that you want to sync from Salesforce.
2. Data Preview: Preview data for selected columns.
3. Data Sync Filter: Add filters to filter out data sync from Salesforce;
unless you are working on a specific custom object, do not set filters
for main objects, such as Account, Opportunity, etc., as other
dashboards (maybe in the future) may need those data. You can filter
out unneeded data from the recipe with a filter.
Summary
In this chapter, we learned that CRM Analytics is a platform by itself. The
data is stored in the CRM Analytics platform, not in the Salesforce
platform, but you can configure the system to sync the necessary fields and
objects. We also discussed why we need CRM Analytics and the differences
with standard Salesforce reports and dashboards.
CRM Analytics user provisioned from Salesforce user details with a
permission set. To access the CRM Analytics dashboard, users need to log
in to Salesforce and then access the embedded dashboard on the Lightning
page or from the Analytics tab. But to edit or build a dashboard, you must
start from Analytics Studio.
You can create a free Trailhead Developer Edition with CRM Analytics
to learn CRM Analytics from a basic level; this environment will give you
all the items that you need to learn CRM Analytics.
We ended this chapter by walking through permissions, the components
within CRM Analytics, and Data Manager. In Chapter 2, we will discuss
Data Sources and how we can get data into the CRM Analytics platform, so
stay tuned!
OceanofPDF.com
2. Data Sources
Johan Yu1
In Chapter 1, we learned what CRM Analytics is, the differences with the
Salesforce dashboard, and the components in CRM Analytics, including
Analytics Studio and Data Manager. In this chapter, we will dive deep into
data sources and how to get data into CRM Analytics. As explained in
Chapter 1, CRM Analytics stores data on its platform, utilizing recipes to
get and transform data from multiple sources, including the local Salesforce
platform, external Salesforce organization, and other external data sources.
By the end of this chapter, you will learn multiple methods to get data
into CRM Analytics.
CRM Analytics syncs data from Salesforce local and all connected
environments within schedules set by the CRM Analytics admin. Each
connection can have a different data sync scheduled, and each object from
Salesforce local can be configured with a different Connection Mode (Full
Sync, Periodic Full Sync, and Incremental Sync). As a CRM Analytics
admin, you need to decide and set the correct connection mode by
analyzing the volume of transactions and the total number of records for
each object. I recommend setting Periodic Full Sync whenever possible;
this will prevent data drift over time with Incremental Sync.
However, some Salesforce objects, such as User and Group, can only be
set with Full Sync; this makes sense as those objects will not have many
transactions – the same applies to external connections, with only Full Sync
available for all objects. All of this can be configured in the Connections
tab under Data Manager.
Data that is uploaded manually into CRM Analytics, such as from a
CSV file, will be stored as a dataset. You can update the data by opening the
dataset and clicking Replace Data, and you can also restore the previous
version of data by clicking Restore Dataset.
Getting Data into CRM Analytics

The Dataset in CRM Analytics is the result of data “import” into the CRM
Analytics platform; this includes data from the local Salesforce platform,
external Salesforce organization, other external data sources, and CSV files.
You can create new datasets from Analytics Studio by clicking the Create
button at the upper-right corner and selecting Dataset.
Figure 2-1 A few options to create a new dataset
We will walk through each of them. However, if you are using the free
Trailhead Developer Edition, you may not see the last option, “A Salesforce
Report”; this is only available in the paid CRM Analytics. You can check if
the Salesforce organization has the “Trend Report Data in CRM Analytics”
permission. See Figure 2-2 for data integration concept in CRM Analytics.
Figure 2-2 Concept and sample of data integration in CRM Analytics
CSV File
CSV files are the most basic type of data source. However, it is still widely
used as it is standard, simple, human-readable/editable, can be opened with
a simple text editor, and is interoperable by many systems. You can directly
load data from a CSV file into CRM Analytics from Analytics Studio; this
will create a new dataset. If the data is stored in an Excel file, save it in
CSV format before the upload process.
CSV files are also suitable for storing simple data without many rows,
such as mapping or reference between data stored in Salesforce with output
needed in CRM Analytics; this data is supposedly not frequently changed.
Hands-On: CSV Data Load

Let us start with getting our hands dirty by loading a CSV file into CRM
Analytics. In this exercise, we are going to load the quota for each sales rep
for each quarter. You need to prepare the CSV file as shown in Table 2-1; to
create the file quickly, you can use Microsoft Excel and save it as a CSV
file.
Table 2-1 Sample Table for Sales Rep Quota
Employee Id Quota Quarter Quota Amount

A001 2024-03-31 500,000
A001 2024-06-30 600,000
A001 2024-09-30 650,000
A001 2024-12-31 500,000
A002 2024-03-31 700,000
A002 2024-06-30 750,000
A002 2024-09-30 800,000
A002 2024-12-31 650,000
A003 2024-03-31 400,000
A003 2024-06-30 450,000
A003 2024-09-30 500,000
A003 2024-12-31 350,000
Let us save the data from Table 2-1 as “Quota 2024.csv,” then load the
CSV file as a dataset in CRM Analytics; follow these steps:
1. Open Analytics Studio.
2. Click the Create button, then select Dataset, see Figure 2-3
Figure 2-3 Create a new Dataset
3. Select CSV File.
4. Upload the CSV file by selecting the file or dragging it to the box.
5. Click Next to continue.
6. Click Next again; for now, let us use the default dataset name and
default app, My Private App.
7. Click the Upload File button; there is no need to change anything on

this screen; the system automatically matches each column with field
type. Notice there are three types of Field Types:
Employee Id: Dimension
Quota Quarter: Date
Quota Amount: Measure
8. Done; wait for a few seconds, and the system will open the created
dataset, see Figure 2-4. Optionally, you can monitor the data load
progress from the Data Manager.
Figure 2-4 The dataset is created; the pencil icon means that you can change the data
9. Let’s confirm the dataset created by going back to Analytics Studio,

clicking the Browse tab, and then clicking the Datasets button; you
should see the Quota 2024, as in Figure 2-5
Figure 2-5 The new dataset is available under the Datasets
10. Clicking the Quota 2024 dataset will open the dataset as a new lens;
by default, it will be a horizontal bar chart with the count of rows as
bar length and without any grouping.
11. Click the arrow next to the dataset name and select Show Fields
Panel to see all available fields for the dataset. See Figure 2-6
Figure 2-6 Explore the dataset and show the fields panel
Here are a few items that we learned from this hands-on:

The file must be in CSV format, not in Excel format or other formats.
By default, the dataset name would be the file name and stored in My
Private App, but if you click the Create button from an app, the dataset
created would be stored in that app.
There are three types of Field Type:
Dimension: Data is stored as text; you can perform the string functions
in this field.
Date: Data is stored in a date format; CRM Analytics will auto-split it
into year, quarter, month, week, day, hour, minute, and second.
Measure: Data is stored as numbers; you can set the number format
and perform the numerical functions in this field.
You can monitor the data loading progress via Jobs Monitor in Data
Manager.
Local Salesforce Data
You probably noticed that I mentioned earlier in this and the previous
chapters Salesforce “local” and external Salesforce. Salesforce local means
the Salesforce organization where your CRM Analytics is hosted; remember
that the user must log in to Salesforce to access CRM Analytics. For
external Salesforce, this is another Salesforce organization that is not
related to your CRM Analytics; still, you can retrieve the data by adding it
to the Connection. Table 2-2 show the difference between Local Salesforce
and External Salesforce in CRM Analytics.
Table 2-2 Local Salesforce vs. External Salesforce
Local Salesforce External Salesforce

Relation with the CRM CRM Analytics host, although the Not related to your CRM
Analytics platform data is separate Analytics organization
Connection mode Full Sync, Periodic Full Sync, Full Sync
Incremental Sync
Number of organization Only one organization, which is Connect to multiple Salesforce
local organization
Whether local or external Salesforce, you need to run/schedule data

sync to retrieve data from Salesforce local or Salesforce external
organization’s objects to CRM Analytics as “sync objects.” You cannot
see/explore synced data, only the number of columns; however, you can
create a simple recipe to pull data from the synced objects and write the
output to datasets.
Tip You can see the number of rows synced in Jobs Monitor, open the
succeeded sync job, and look for Rows In and Rows Out.
When a recipe runs, it will not retrieve the data from the Salesforce objects,
but from the synced data in the CRM Analytics platform. With this
architecture, the data load performance in the recipe runs much faster than
that of retrieved data directly from Salesforce, see Figure 2-7.
Figure 2-7 Retrieve Salesforce data to CRM Analytics
Tip You can create multiple “SFDC_LOCAL” connections, but an

object can only be connected to one “SFDC_LOCAL” connection. The
purpose of having multiple “SFDC_LOCAL” connections is to have a
different sync schedule, for example, SFDC_LOCAL will sync the
Account object every two hours, while Opportunity in SFDC_LOCAL_2
will sync every hour. You can move the object across the SFDC_LOCAL
connection by selecting Switch Connection from the object arrow at the
far right.
External Data
CRM Analytics provides multiple connectors to retrieve data from other
systems, including the connector to retrieve data from different Salesforce
organizations.
From Data Manager, click the Connections tab, and you will see all
connections and the objects synced for each connection. To add a new
connection, click the New Connection button in the upper-left corner.
Figure 2-8 Connector available in CRM Analytics
For each connection, you can schedule when to sync from the external data
source, including from external Salesforce. Figure 2-8 shows that I have
three connections; two of them are SFDC_LOCAL, and one is another
Salesforce organization, where I named the connection “johan2024.” With
this, we can set different sync schedules for each connection, see Figure 2-
9.
Figure 2-9 Multiple connections connected to CRM Analytics
Tip You can schedule a recipe to run after the Salesforce local
connection or external connection sync is completed.
Existing Dataset
In some scenarios, you need to use existing datasets for other purposes,
such as to build a new similar dashboard. Another scenario is that it is too
risky to change the existing dataset that is used in existing dashboards and
lenses. As a solution, you can create a recipe to use existing datasets; select
the “CRM Analytics Datasets” checkbox when adding input data to create a
new enriched dataset; this will not impact the existing dataset and
dashboards and is the safest option when the dataset has been used in
dashboards or lens.
We will discuss the recipe in detail in Chapter 3.
Salesforce Trend Report

The Salesforce trend report is a compelling feature yet a simple way to
trend Salesforce data into CRM Analytics. With the Trend, you can push
data directly (in schedule) from a Salesforce report to CRM Analytics as a
dataset. You also do not need to know the Salesforce objects and fields; you
can use any Salesforce report and click the Trend button.
This option also has another benefit, such as if the fields that you would
like to push to CRM Analytics are fields that are only available in the
report, such as Last Activity, Age, and Fiscal Period in Opportunity report.
A recipe or dataflow will not be able to retrieve those fields, but the Trend
will serve that efficiently.
Basically, the idea of creating trending is to track key metrics over time
so you can see your data growing in a dataset.
After clicking the Trend button, you need to schedule the frequency and
time. As for trending, data pushed into CRM Analytics will be kept added,
not overwritten like the dataflow or recipe. In addition to creating a new
dataset, it will also automatically create a new Dashboard in CRM
Analytics.
If you are using the Trailhead Developer Edition, you need to check if
you have the “Trend Report Data in Analytics” permission in your
organization; otherwise, you will not see the Trend button in the report; you
may log a ticket to Salesforce to ask for enabling this permission.
Hands-On: Trend a Salesforce Report

Let’s get our hands dirty and have an exercise to trend a Salesforce report:
1. Create a report
You can use any Salesforce report for trends. For this exercise, I’ll
create an Opportunity report and add the Opportunity Name, Stage,
Age, and Last Activity, then group rows by Fiscal Period. Fiscal Period,
Age, and Last Activity are report-only fields. Hide the Detail Rows,
save and run the report, and click the Trend button, see Figure 2-10
Figure 2-10 Trend a Salesforce report
2. Configure a Trend
In the Trend window, the Dataset name and Dashboard title have been
pre-populated; you can change them if needed. Then, you need to
schedule for frequency and select the days and times when the Trend
will run. You can keep the default dataset and dashboard name; let’s
change the frequency to Daily 5:00 AM or any time you prefer, then
click the Trend button at the bottom right of the window, see Figure 2-
11.
Alternatively, you can also trend a report from Analytics Studio;
click Create and then Dataset, and select A Salesforce Report; see
Figure 2-1.
Figure 2-11 Schedule the Trend from a Salesforce report
Note At a minimum, you can only run the Trend scheduled once daily;
if you need to run more trends in a day, you can duplicate the report,
schedule trends for each report, and then use a recipe to combine the
datasets into a new dataset.
3. Verify the Dataset and Dashboard
Once you click the Trend button, the dataflow will run immediately
(before the scheduled date and time); this will create a new dataset
(with the data as in the report) in CRM Analytics. You can monitor the
progress for the initial run from Jobs Monitor; see Figure 2-12.
Once completed, you should see a new Trend dashboard and dataset
in My Private App.
Figure 2-12 Monitor trend progress for the initial trend run
Tip If you only need one snapshot of data per day, set the schedule
daily before the current time. For example, now is 10:30 PM; if you set
the schedule at 11:00 PM, the schedule will run at 11:00 PM on the same
day, and you will have two data snapshots for the same day, but if you
schedule before the current time, the schedule will only run the
following day.
4. On Schedule Date/Time
When the schedule runs, the dataset will add data from the report to the
existing dataset from the initial run. You can check in Jobs Monitor that
the process is a bit different; there is an additional process called
append, see Figure 2-13. If you recheck the dataset, the count is more
than that of the initial trend run.
Figure 2-13 Trend job progress detail on schedule trend
5. Dataset Fields
Let us see what fields are created in the dataset from the Trend. Open
the dataset as a new lens and change to the table format; you should see
all fields from the Salesforce report, including fields used for grouping.
Additionally, there is a DateTime field called Snapshot Date; this field
is useful to mark when the Trend runs when adding new rows in the
dataset. See Figure 2-14.
Figure 2-14 The table shows data in the dataset created by Trend
6. Trend Dashboard
As part of the Trend process from Salesforce, a simple dashboard is
created in CRM Analytics with the data source from the trend dataset.
See Figure 2-15.
Figure 2-15 Trend Dashboard
Tip If you need to have only the latest data from Salesforce and do not
keep adding data to existing rows, you can create a recipe to clean all
existing rows and make sure the recipe runs before the Trend schedule
runs. Ideally, this should be performed at midnight, when no one is
accessing the dashboard because the dataset will blank out between the
recipe end and trend end.
External Data API

This option is not available when you click Create Dataset from Analytics
Studio, and this is more targeted for developers. The API enables you to
upload external data into the CRM Analytics platform, and it can be
triggered based on actions in other systems. You need a developer to write a
script and use the CRM Analytics API. However, we will not discuss this
option in this book; check out this article:
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-
us.bi_dev_guide_ext_data.meta/bi_dev_guide_ext_dat
a/bi_ext_data_overview.htm.
Summary
In this chapter, we looked at all possibilities for bringing data into the CRM
Analytics platform, from a simple CSV file data load, from local Salesforce
data sync, from other Salesforce organizations, from other systems with
external connectors, and trends from a Salesforce report. Additionally, we
were also able to create a new dataset by using values from the existing
datasets with the recipe.
However, there is also a feature that we have not discussed, where we
can directly pull local Salesforce data to the dashboard in real time without
using a dataset; we will discuss this in Chapter 6.
The next chapter will be more exciting as we will be hands-on with
building Recipes from scratch. The Recipe is the most crucial tool for CRM
Analytics professionals because it offers you unlimited possibilities to
design the datasets. We will also share how to back up and restore recipes
and will close with a session to create a recipe.
OceanofPDF.com
3. Recipe
Johan Yu1
We discussed how to get data into CRM Analytics in Chapter 2. We had a

hands-on CSV file data load exercise and also another hands-on with
trending data from a Salesforce report; in both exercises, we created a new
dataset. But we have not discussed the Recipe, one of the most critical tools
for data transformation from multiple sources into CRM Analytics, so let us
start now.
Trust me, this chapter will be fun; we will build a Recipe from scratch.
You can architect the data transformation, data manipulation, and data
enrichment to produce the datasets that are required for your dashboard.
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to build a new recipe from
scratch and convert an existing Dataflow into a new Recipe.
Dataflow
The Dataflow used to be the primary data transformation tool; it was when
the product was still known as Wave and Einstein Analytics.
As per the product evolution, the Dataflow is no longer available by
default; unless your Salesforce/CRM Analytics admin enables it, look for
Allow users to access Data Manager (Legacy) under the Analytics menu
in the Salesforce setup. If you have existing dataflows built and scheduled,
they will continue to run as usual. You can still edit or even create new
dataflows.
One of the limitations of Dataflow is that you will not see the preview
of data transformed along the nodes; after you run the Dataflow and open
the Dataset created, then you will see the data, which sometimes takes
minutes. While using the new Recipe for data preparation, you will see the
data preview for each node, so if the result is incorrect, you can fix it
immediately without the need to run the Recipe.
If you have existing Dataflows, you can convert them as Recipes; see
the following sample.
1. Open Dataflow
From Analytics Studio, click Data Manager, then click Manage
Dataflows at the bottom left of the screen, and you will get into an older
version of Data Manager. Click the Dataflows & Recipes tab on the left
menu, and look for the Dataflow that you want to convert.
2. Convert to Recipe
At the end of the Dataflow, click the arrow button (see Figure 3-1) and
select Convert to Recipe.
Figure 3-1 The older version of the Dataflow
In some instances, the conversion may not be smooth, so you need to

edit and fix the Recipe manually.
Here are a few items to note on Dataflow conversion to Recipe:
1. The conversion will run immediately and will take only a few seconds.
2. The conversion will create a new Recipe; by default, the Recipe name
is the same as the Dataflow name with the suffix “_R3”. You can
rename the Recipe before saving it. If you see a warning icon on top of
the node, something is wrong with that node after conversion (see
filterOpty node in Figure 3-2); you need to fix it.
3. By default, the Dataset created in the converted Recipe will have the
same label but a different API Name; you can adjust it manually in the
Output nodes.
Figure 3-2 Recipe created from a Dataflow conversion
3. Save and Run

Once all the warnings are fixed (if any), click the Save and Run button at
the upper-right corner to test. You can monitor the Recipe runs in Jobs
Monitor under Data Manager.
As mentioned, the dataset output from the Recipe will have a different
API Name (and different ID) than the Dataset produced by the original
Dataflow, so it will not overwrite the existing Dataset and will not impact
the existing dashboards. Once the new Dataset is verified, you can update
the Recipe’s Output node to have the same API Name as the original dataset
name. Once the Recipe run is completed, it will overwrite the existing
Dataset, and the dashboard will automatically consume datasets produced
by the Recipe. You can verify the dataset source data by editing the Dataset
and looking for the Source information; see Figure 3-3.
Figure 3-3 Dataset's source
Recipe User Interface

The Recipe user interface is pretty clean and straightforward, see Figure 3-4
for a sample of Recipe. At the very top, there are
Recipe name at the left, where you can change the name by clicking the
pencil icon.
The search box is at the center, where you can search by node and
column name, but unfortunately, it does not search for the description
entered in the node.
Back to the Data Manager link.
At the second row from the top, we can group them into three:
Group of Icons at the Left
Add Input Data: Click this icon to add additional data input from an
existing dataset, Salesforce Local, or external.
Undo and Redo
Cleanup Nodes
Upload and Download Recipe JSON: Click the Download icon to
download the Recipe in JSON format and store it on your local computer
as a backup. If you want to restore it from the “backup” version, upload
the backup JSON file to restore the Recipe.
Group of Icons at the Center: There are five icons in total; they will
only appear when you select a node in the Recipe: Copy nodes, Cut nodes,
Duplicate nodes, Paste nodes (only when already copied or cut node), and
Delete nodes.
Group of Icons/Buttons at the Right
Information the Recipe last saved
Gear icon: Refresh preview and disable data previews
Version History icon: Revert the Recipe to a version previously saved
Save and Save as New Recipe button
Save and Run button
In the third row from the top, only on the right, these icons are related to
the zoom controls for the Recipe.
At the center of the Recipe is the white canvas for you to architect the
Recipe, which is represented by nodes.
The lower part of the canvas will be visible when you select a node;
each node will have different properties. However, the right panel will be
the same, which is about data preview:
Hide or Show Column Icon: If you are in the Preview tab, click the eye
icon to hide the column. To show the column, go to the Columns tab,
find the columns, and click the eye icon to show the columns (you can
select multiple columns at once).
Column Profile Icon: To quickly analyze data based on the selected
column.
Expand or Collapse Icon: Click this icon to expand the data preview
pane to maximum (override the Recipe canvas).
Tip You can adjust the panel height and width by dragging the
horizontal and vertical bars.
Figure 3-4 A sample of a Recipe
Creating a Recipe from Scratch

Instead of reading lots of text, let us build a simple recipe, so this will be
fun. We are going to create a new Recipe from scratch to produce a dataset
for a dashboard.
Use Case
Build a recipe to create a new dataset that contains the following
information from Opportunities:
– Opportunity Id
– Opportunity Name
– Opportunity Owner
– Opportunity Stage
– Account Name
– Amount
Additionally, we need a field called “Is New Business?” and this is not a
field in Salesforce; the logic is if the Type contains “New Business,” then
“Yes”; otherwise, “No.”
Also, the Dataset should only have Opportunities of
– Only Open and Closed Won opportunity
– Amount must be > $0
Building Concept
Understand and analyze the data relationship in all related objects and
fields:
1. Determine how many objects are involved. For this use case, there are
three objects:
– Opportunity
– User
– Account
2. Determine the main object; this will determine the granular level of
rows in the Dataset. For this use case, the main object is Opportunity.
3. Determine filters for each object:

– Opportunity Stage <> “Closed Lost”
– Opportunity Amount > 0
4. Determine fields to extract from each object:

Opportunity
– Id
– Name
– OwnerId
– AccountId
– Type
– Amount
– StageName
User
– Id
– Name
Account
– Id
– Name
5. Determine the relationship of each object:
– Opportunity.AccountId with Account.Id
– Opportunity.OwnerId with User.Id
6. Determine if we need any formula fields; for this use case, we will
create a field called “Is New Business?” in the Recipe.
7. Once you have all the preceding answers, you are ready to rock!
Hands-On: Create a Recipe

Let’s get started:
1. Open Data Manager from Analytics Studio or the App Launcher.
2. Click the Recipes tab, then click the Create Recipe button.
3. Name the Recipe by clicking the Save button; name it Open

Opportunity more than $0, Version Description Initial recipe, then click
the Save button.
4. Click the Add Input Data button at the center of the canvas.
5. Select only “Salesforce Objects” at the upper-left drop-down box, then

select Account; at the right panel, only select Id and Name; you can
click “Show Only Selected” to deselect the default fields quickly.
Perform the same for the User object; select only the Id and Name
columns. For Opportunity, select Id, AccountId, Name, StageName,
Amount, Type, and OwnerId.
6. Click the Next button to continue.

Tip: If you want to add fields after clicking Next, you can add them
from the Input node.
7. We are free to move the nodes around; to make them look neat, I move
the Opportunity node between the Account and User nodes.
8. Look up the Account to Opportunity to get the Account Name, click +
next to the Account input node, drag it to the Opportunity node, and
then select Join. The system will try to match the join keys, but you
can change them if they are wrong. I will change the Join node from
Join 0 to joinOptyAcct, and click the Apply button. Since we do not
need the Account ID from the Account object, we can remove it from
the Columns tab. In the Preview tab, you should see the Account
Name column (with an orange icon) with the data.
9. Perform the same for Lookup from User to joinOptyAcct to get

Opportunity Owner. Remember to use the latest data stream
joinOptyAcct, which now contains the Account Name lookup. Rename
the node to joinOptyUser and click the Apply button. As previously,
we can remove the User.Id from the Columns tab; this is also to ensure
the Dataset is clean; also, make sure the join keys are correct. In the
Preview tab, you should see the Full Name column (with an orange
icon) with the data. By now, your Recipe should be similar to Figure 3-
5.
Figure 3-5 Recipe in progress
10. Click + at the joinOptyUser node and select output from the bottom-
left panel:
Rename the node to OutputOpportunity (click the pencil icon)
Write To = Dataset
Dataset Display label = Open Opportunities more than 0
Dataset API Name = Open_Opportunities_more_than_0
Click the Apply button. By now, your recipe should be similar to
Figure 3-6.
Figure 3-6 Final Recipe
11. Click the Save and Run button, then click Back to Data Manager at
the upper-right corner to monitor the Recipe progress. Depending on
the volume of data, this may take a few minutes.
12. Once completed, you should see the Status = Succeeded; open
Analytics Studio and search for the Dataset with the name “Open
Opportunities more than 0”; remember the dataset name set in point
10 iii earlier. See Figure 3-7 for dataset search in Analytics Studio.
Figure 3-7 Search Dataset in Analytics Studio
13. Click the Dataset; it will open as a new lens with a bar chart count of
rows.
14. Done.
To summarize the preceding hands-on exercise, we create a new recipe

that pulls data from Opportunity, Account, and User objects; then, we join
the Account to Opportunity to get the Account Name by matching
AccountId in Opportunity to ID in Account. Then, we continue to join the
User object to the latest data stream (with Account Name) to get the
Opportunity Owner.
Backup and Restore Recipe

You can back up a recipe by opening the Recipe and clicking the
“Download recipe JSON” icon; this will store the JSON file on your
computer drive.
The Recipe also offers the Version History feature; by clicking the
Version History icon next to the gear icon, the system will show when the
Recipe is saved and by whom, see Figure 3-8. You can simply click the
stored version to see the Recipe at that time. Clicking the arrow allows you
to delete or add a description for that particular version.
Figure 3-8 Version History
Since there is version history, do we still need to have the backup/restore

JSON file?
Because the Recipe is editable by any user with permission, it can be a
challenge to find the correct version in the version history, even worse
when the correct version has been deleted.
You can “migrate” the Recipe across an organization, such as between
sandbox and production.
You can edit the JSON file manually using a text editor; for example,
when you are using the wrong field in the Recipe or the field API Name
is changed in the source, you can mass update the field name in the JSON
file using a text editor and restore it (make sure to back up the original
JSON file).
Data Transformation in Recipe
In short, the purpose of a recipe is to get data, transform it, and write to
output. So, what can we do with a recipe? Any data transformation based on
your creativity for a specific purpose.
Input Data
The first and must-have component in a recipe is input data, which is to
load data from the data source to the Recipe; a recipe can have one or
multiple input data. You must have input data to start building a recipe. The
source of data can be from
1. CRM Analytics Dataset: These are data already stored as datasets in
CRM Analytics.
2. External Connected Objects: These are objects from external data,

including other Salesforce organizations.
3. Salesforce Objects: These are objects of the Salesforce organization

that host CRM Analytics.
When you start creating a recipe, you will see a blue button at the
center, Add Input Data, or click the “Add Input Data” icon in the upper-
left corner. Next, you will be presented with the “Add Input Data” window,
where you can add and search for the objects that you need. Additionally,
you can filter the list by selecting from the drop-down menu for just
datasets, external objects, or Salesforce objects - see Figure 3-9. You can
differentiate a dataset and object with the different icons in the list.
You can select multiple datasets or objects and then select (and search)
all the fields for each object that you want to use in the Recipe; it is good to
know the API Name of the fields to make sure you have selected the correct
fields. Then, click the Next button.
Figure 3-9 Add Input Data window
You can always add new input data when needed, not just upon recipe
creation. To add/remove fields from the input node, click the node and click
Change columns or click Replace to change the data source, see Figure 3-
10.
Figure 3-10 Add Input Data icon
Tip Scroll down in the input node property; in the Data Preview
Sampling, select Sampling Mode = Filtered rows; this is useful if you
need to monitor specific values data only, and all data preview in the
following nodes will be based on these filtered rows.
Transform
The Transform node is one of the most used and important nodes in the
Recipe. In this node, you can create “columns” based on the logic defined.
There are a lot of functions offered by the Transform node; here are a few
items you can do in the Transform node:
Now: Return the date and time value in a specific format.
Custom Formula: Calculate and return a value based on the existing
value in columns; this is the most useful function to create a new column;
many items below can be used with a custom formula.
Trim: Select a dimension field, then select New Column (and Keep
Original), New Column (and Drop Original), or Original Column. Use
this function to remove leading and trailing whitespaces and set the
maximum character length from the left.
Substring: Select a dimension field; use this function to retrieve
characters from the specified position and of the specified length.
Split: Select a dimension field; use this function to split a column value
into two new values at the specified delimiter.
Uppercase and Lowercase: Select a dimension field, then select New
Column (and Keep Original), New Column (and Drop Original), or
Original Column. Use this function to get a value in upper- or lowercase
for the whole string.
Replace: Select a dimension field, then select New Column (and Keep
Original), New Column (and Drop Original), or Original Column. Use
this function to replace a specific value with an existing value.
Text to Number and Date: Select a dimension field, then select New
Column (and Keep Original), New Column (and Drop Original), or
Original Column. Use this function to change the text into a number or
date.
Format Date: Select a dimension field, then select New Column (and
Keep Original), New Column (and Drop Original), or Original Column.
Use this function to convert dates in the selected Text column to the
specified format.
Bucket: This function can be used in the dimension and measure field;
for the measure (number) field, you can organize values into buckets
based on ranges; for the dimension, organize values based on the defined
value for each bucket.
Edit Attributes: The purpose of this function is to change field attributes
for both columns Label and API Name.
Drop Columns: To remove columns that are no longer needed from the
Recipe.
Fill: This function is only available in the number column; use this
function to fill in null values in the data with the given replacement
value. You can select New Column (and Keep Original), New Column
(and Drop Original), or Original Column.
Is Transform node a must-have in a recipe? The Transform node is not a
must-have in a recipe; however, a recipe without any Transform node will
only add or remove rows or aggregate from the data source, which can be
achieved with the Join, Aggregate, and Filter nodes.
It would be best if you renamed the default Transform node name by
clicking the three-dot icon above the node, and at the same time, you can
add the description for that node. Another way is by clicking the node and
then clicking the pencil icon at the node properties to change the node name
to something meaningful.
Tip Make sure each node has a unique name that represents what the
node does.
In a Transform node, you can add multiple transformations, and they will be
run in order, for example, in step 1 you can create a new field called A, then
in step 2, you can use field A as the logic for new field B. To make it clear,
you can edit the transformation name to reflect what the transformation will
do, see Figure 3-11 to edit the node Name and Description.
Figure 3-11 A sample of a Transform node with multiple transformations
For Custom Formula, you can also work with data across rows; you need to
enable Multiple Row Formula, and you will be offered a set of “Windows
Functions.”
Filter
A Filter node is required to filter out rows that are not needed for our
dashboard or output. Remember that we usually sync all data from the
original data source; unless the data has been filtered out in the Connection
setting, this is usually only for objects that are used for a specific
dashboard.
You can add Filter nodes anywhere in the Recipe, and you can have it as
many as needed. As a best practice, you should put the filter at the start or
after the Join node (depending on the scenario), so the Recipe doesn’t
process unused data.
Adding a filter to the node is very easy; select the field, operator, and
value, for example, Amount Greater Than or Equal To 0. You can have
multiple filters in a Filter node, and by default, all the relation is AND. To
change the logic to OR, click the Add Standard Filter Logic from the
arrow drop-down in the Filter properties, so if you have multiple filters, you
can have filter logic, for example, (1 OR 2) AND (3 OR 4).
Another option is to use Custom Expression; this is useful for
complicated filters. Click Add Custom Expression from the same drop-
down menu in the Filter properties, for example, StageName =
'Closed Won' AND Amount > 0.
Aggregate
Use this node to summarize large amounts of data with aggregates and
groups. You can aggregate the data with
Unique
Sum
Average
Count
Maximum
Minimum
Then, group it by rows and columns (optional). As per the standard in
the Recipe, you can rename the node and add a description. In the preview
window, see the result after aggregate.
You can add multiple aggregates into a node; each aggregate will create
a new column in the output. As you see in the preview, after the Aggregate
node, the original raw data will no longer be available, see Figure 3-12. But
of course, you can have a branch from the previous node to keep the raw
data.
Depending on the needs, the Aggregate node is not very commonly used
in the Recipe, compared to the Filter, Join, and Transform nodes, which are
very common.
Figure 3-12 A sample of an Aggregate node with multiple aggregates
Join
As per the node name, use this node to join data from two nodes, for
example, to get the Opportunity Owner Name; by default, Salesforce only
has the “Opportunity Owner Id” field in the Opportunity object, so we need
to join Opportunity with the User object to get the Opportunity Owner
Name.
To perform join, drag + at the right of the lookup (right) node to the
main (left) node, then select Join, see Figure 3-13. Alternatively, click + at
the right of the lookup (right) node, select the Connect tab, select the main
(left) table, then select Join.
Figure 3-13 Connecting node with Join
For easy visualization and understanding, I will use the two datasets in
Figure 3-14 to explain each type of Join and the results.
Figure 3-14 Sample datasets

The Recipe offers five types of Join; let us look at how it works for each of
them:
LookUp: This is the standard Join to get the data from the lookup object,
such as to get the Opportunity Owner, as mentioned earlier. LookUp can
look up multiple values; you need to select Look Up Multiple Values in
the join properties. For Look Up Multiple Values, if the lookup field is a
number field, the number will be the sum in the result.
The lookup type will not change the number of rows of the main
(left) node, no matter if there are matched lookups based on the keys. If
there is no result, the data will be blank. In Figure 3-15, the Master Staff
is the main data. Note that we can see the keys from the preview table.
Figure 3-15 A sample result of LookUp
Left Join: This join type will expand the number of rows of the left table
if the lookup from the right table has multiple rows with the same key. In
Figure 3-16, the Master Staff is the main data.
Figure 3-16 A sample result of Left Join
Right Join: Similar to left join, but the other way round, see Figure 3-17
Figure 3-17 A sample result of Right Join

Inner Join: Both tables must have the key; otherwise, the rows will be
eliminated, see Figure 3-18.
Figure 3-18 A sample result of Inner Join
Outer Join: This Join node will show all results; the one with the
missing key will be blank, see Figure 3-19.
Figure 3-19 A sample result of Outer Join
Cross Join: Each row from the left table will be combined with each row
on the right table, so there is no key to match, see Figure 3-20.
Figure 3-20 A sample result of Cross Join
For all types of Join, except Cross Join, we need to match the keys between
the left and right tables. The system will try to auto-set the keys, but we can
manually change them if they are incorrect.
For all types of Join, there is a property called API Name Prefix for
Right Columns; the value here will be added as the prefix in the API Name
for the right object fields; for example, if the value entered is Owner, the
result field is “Owner.Id”. You can see the field API Name from the
Columns tab, including the field type and source. You can use Edit
Attributes to change the Label and API Name.
Append
As the name suggests, the purpose of this node is to combine data from two
nodes, so the total number of rows will be the total of rows from both
nodes. If you have more than two nodes to join, then you need to have
additional Append nodes; for example, we need to Append node A, node B,
and node C; for this scenario, append A and B, say node D as a result, then
Append node D with node C with the final result in node E.
The system will try to map the columns from both nodes, but you can
manually fix it if incorrect. You can also select Map all columns and then
select Allow schema merge; this will add columns that do not match as
new columns.
Figure 3-21 A sample result of the Append node with Allow schema merge
Update
Use this node to replace column values with data from another data source
when key pairs match. See the example in Figure 3-22; instead of using the
original Name value, for each key matched, the New Name value will
replace the original Name value. However, the column name will stay the
original, which is the “Name” in the example.
Figure 3-22 A sample result of the Update node
Output
The Output node is the result of the Recipe, and you can have multiple
Output nodes in a recipe. There are three output options:
1. Dataset: This is the most common output from a recipe, where the
output is a dataset and can be used for a lens or dashboard.
2. Output Connection: You can write the result to a system, including

Salesforce; make sure the admin has selected Enabled Salesforce
output connection in the setup menu.
3. CSV: The result will be written as a File in Salesforce; you will need a
developer to write a script with the REST API to retrieve the file.
In this book, we will cover Dataset only as the output result. There are a
few properties that we need to set in the Output node:
Dataset Display Label: This is the Dataset label.
Dataset API Name: This is the Dataset API Name.
App Location: This is where we want to store the Dataset; ideally, all
related assets (Dataset, dashboard, lens) are stored in the same app, so it
is easier for us to set the sharing access.
Sharing Source and Security Predicate: These will be discussed in
Chapter 8.
Summary
Finally, we learned one of the most powerful items in CRM Analytics. In
this chapter, we learned about Recipe. We did hands-on exercises by
converting a Dataflow to a Recipe. Lastly, we created a recipe from scratch
based on the given scenario.
We learned each node available in CRM Analytics’s Recipe by getting
data into the Recipe using the Input Data node. Use the Transform node to
do data transformation, including work with data across rows. Use the Filter
node to remove data that is not needed. Use the Aggregate node to
aggregate raw data into groupings and values in summary. Use the Join
node to look up or join data from two nodes. Use the Append node to
combine data from two nodes, even if they don’t have similar columns. Use
the Update node to replace data and the Output node to write the data into a
Dataset, CSV, or Salesforce.
We also learned how to back up and restore the Recipe using a JSON
file and version history.
In the next chapter, we will look into Datasets created in CRM
Analytics, which can be created from the CSV file, Dataflow, Recipe, or
Salesforce trend report. We will also learn, including hands-on exercises,
how to configure dataset metadata so that the Dataset will be displayed as
per our business needs.
OceanofPDF.com
4. Dataset
Johan Yu1
In Chapter 2, we discussed how to get data into CRM Analytics. From

Analytics Studio, you can quickly bring the data into CRM Analytics by
creating a new dataset, clicking the Create button, and then selecting
Dataset; a wizard will assist you in selecting a source of data, with the
option to upload a CSV file, using the Dataset Builder to extract Salesforce
data from the external data source, create a recipe to use an existing Dataset
or connected data, and trend from a Salesforce report.
In Chapter 3, we learned how to use the Recipe as a tool to create
Datasets in CRM Analytics; it could be data from Salesforce, from other
data sources that synced to CRM Analytics, or from the existing Dataset in
CRM Analytics. A Recipe gives you the freedom and creativity to build the
dataset model needed for the dashboard. Remember that Output is the node
that will create/overwrite the Dataset in the Recipe. The Recipe will allow
you to have new enriched Datasets, usually from multiple datasets,
local/remote Salesforce objects, or connected data synced from other
systems.
In this chapter, we will learn everything about the Dataset from
Dataset Properties
Dataset Fields
Extended Metadata
Dataset Properties
To see the properties of a dataset, from Analytics Studio, find the Dataset
and click Edit from the arrow drop-down at the far right of the Dataset, see
Figure 4-1.
Figure 4-1 Edit Dataset
From the Dataset properties, you can check and perform actions for the
Dataset, see Figure 4-2.
Figure 4-2 Dataset Properties
The following are the information and actions that can be performed on the
Dataset:
Dataset Label: Click the pencil icon next to the dataset name to change
the Dataset label, but not the API Name. When you explore or work in a
dashboard, you will see the dataset label, not the API Name.
Dataset Information
Dataset API Name: You cannot change it from here, but from Recipe,
or recreate the Dataset for the CSV file.
Dataset Created Date Time
Dataset Last Modified Date Time
Dataset Last Refreshed
Dataset Last Queried
Number of Rows
Source: Which Recipe or Dataflow creates the Dataset.
App: Where the Dataset is stored; you can move the Dataset to another
App by clicking the pencil icon.
Usage: All dashboards and lens use that Dataset.
Sharing Sources and Security Predicate: We will discuss these items in
Chapter 6.
Download and Replace Extended Metadata File: We will discuss this
item later in this chapter.
Replace Data: This is to replace the Dataset with a CSV file.
Configure Actions: Configure fields in the Dataset when they are open
in the dashboard or Lens.
Restore Dataset: Restore the Dataset from the previous two most recent
versions.
Delete Dataset: You cannot undelete the Dataset once it is deleted; you
also cannot delete the Dataset if it is still in use in a dashboard or Lens.
Explore: This is to explore datasets as a lens, including taking some
actions for the Dataset.
Dataset Fields
When you load a CSV file as a new dataset or replace an existing Dataset,
each column from the CSV file will become a field in the Dataset; you will
be prompted for the following:
Select a CSV file.
Dataset Name: The CSV file name would be the default for the Dataset
Name; however, you can change the Dataset Name.
App: This is to define where the Dataset will be stored; by default, the
Dataset will be stored in the “My Private App.”
Field Label: By default, it will be the same as with the column name, but
you can change it if needed.
Field Type: CRM Analytics will try to assign a field type (Dimension,
Measure, or Date) for each field based on the value of data; however, you
can change the field type as needed, for example, if all value in the
column is number, the system will set the field type as Measure
(number), but you can change it to Dimension (text).
As mentioned in previous chapters, you can monitor the data load
progress from the Data Manager. Once the data is loaded, search for the
Dataset name from Analytics Studio.
For the Dataset Created from a Recipe, if no data transformation
happens, the field name and field type will follow the Salesforce field name
and type. The Dataset API Name and Dataset Label are defined in the
Output node. By default, the Dataset will be stored in the “My Private App”
app, and you can change it.
Note The Dataset API Name must begin with a letter, can contain only
alphanumeric or underscores, can’t exceed 80 characters or end with an
underscore, can’t contain two consecutive underscores, and is case
sensitive.
Extended Metadata File

By configuring the extended metadata file of a Dataset, we can present data
stored in the Dataset differently:
Rename the field label.
Hide fields.
Edit field values for the Dimensions field.
Format numbers for the Measures field.
Set default fields.
Specify the Dataset Grain Label.
Now, let us see each of them, but before that, I’ll share how to edit the
extended metadata easily.
CRM Analytics provides an easy way to update Dataset extended
metadata from Analytics Studio. Explore the Dataset (or click Explore from
Dataset properties) by clicking the Dataset name; this will open the Dataset
as a New Lens. From the left panel, click the arrow next to the Dataset
label, then click “Show Fields Panel.”
Figure 4-3 Click Show Fields Panel to configure the Dataset Metadata, see Figure 4-3
Then, you will be presented with a list of fields grouped by field type.
Rename the Field Label

To rename the field label, from the fields panel, hover your mouse over the
field name, then click the pencil icon, see Figure 4-4; type in the new label,
then click the Save button to save.
Figure 4-4 Rename the field label
Note Once saved, all existing labels in the dashboard or Lens using the
field will be renamed with the new label.
Hide Fields
In a scenario where you need to hide fields that exist in a dataset, you can
hide the fields from here. So, the user will not see the fields and will not be
able to use them in the dashboard or Lens.
Similar to renaming a field, from the field panels, hover your mouse
over the field, click the arrow icon, and select Hide, see Figure 4-5.
Figure 4-5 Hide fields
To show hidden fields, from the field panels, click the gear icon next to the
number of rows, then select “Show Hidden Fields.”
Note Once the field is set to be hidden, it will impact all existing
dashboards and Lens. If the fields are used in the dashboards or Lens,
this will cause errors in the dashboards or Lens.
Edit Values
This action only applies to the Dimension field; the purpose of this function
is to change the field value; for example, instead of showing “Partner” in
the Account Type field, let’s change the value to “Channel.” As previously
mentioned, any changes here will impact all existing dashboards and Lens.
You can also define the color of the selected field.
From the field panels, hover your mouse over the field, click the arrow
icon, and select Edit Values, see Figure 4-6.
Figure 4-6 Edit field values
Note If you change two or more different values to the same value,
CRM Analytics will not “combine” the data when you group it, even if
the value is the same after editing.
Format Numbers
For the Measures field only, we can set the value shown in a specific
format, such as percentage, currency, or custom format; this is very useful
when you show the data in Table format or even in a chart. From the field
panels, hover your mouse over the field, click the arrow icon, and select
Format Numbers, see Figure 4-7.
Similar Format Numbers can be found in Dashboard widgets or Lens.
Figure 4-7 Format Numbers

Default Fields
When you explore a dataset, it will open as a new lens; if you change the
chart to a Values Table, you will see a set of fields displayed. By default, it
would be the first five dimension fields and the first five measure fields in
alphabetical order.
You can set the default fields by clicking the gear icon and then
selecting Default Fields in the field panels, see Figure 4-8.
Figure 4-8 Set default fields
Specify the Dataset Grain Label

By default, each line of data will be called “Rows,” but we can update the
label of dataset grain to something else friendlier; look at the sample in
Figure 4-9.
Figure 4-9 The grain label changed
To specify the Dataset Grain Label, from the fields panel, click the
pencil icon next to the count of rows, see Figure 4-10, type in the new label,
and then click Done.
Figure 4-10 To change the grain label

CRM Analytics offers you options to replace and restore the existing
Dataset; however, you cannot back up the Dataset manually online or
offline.
A replacement dataset is usually only needed when the Dataset is
manually loaded with a CSV file. To replace the Dataset, edit it and find the
“Replace Data” icon in the top rows of the icon, see Figure 4-11. All
existing data will be replaced; however, the extended metadata and security
predicate (if any) will stay.
Figure 4-11 Replace Dataset
CRM Analytics also offers you the ability to restore the Dataset from the
last two versions, whether the Dataset is overwritten manually using the
Replace Dataset function or overwritten after a Recipe run. CRM Analytics
automatically backs up the Dataset before overwriting it.
When you click the Restore Dataset icon, it will show two previous
versions of the Dataset, including information on when the Dataset was
created and the number of rows for that version. Select which version to
restore, and then click the Restore button, see Figure 4-12.
Figure 4-12 Restore Dataset

An action is very useful for Datasets extracted from Salesforce, whether
created using a Recipe or manually loaded from a CSV file of Salesforce
data export, but you need to have the Salesforce record ID field in the
Dataset. The data needs to be presented in a table or chart in a Dashboard or
Lens, and then the user can select actions configured from a record.
Two types of actions can be configured:
1. Open Salesforce Record: With this action, the user can open the
Salesforce record from the CRM Analytics dashboard or Lens. It could
be in a table or chart widget.
2. Perform Salesforce Actions: You can choose whether to show all

available actions or only selected actions, such as Email, Log a Call,
etc., including custom actions created for the object.
To configure an action
From the edit Dataset page, click the Configure Actions (gear) icon next
to the Replace Data icon.
Select the field to enable for action.
Select the Record ID Field. This field must be the Salesforce record ID,
and it is mandatory.
Select Display Fields. This is not mandatory; however, this is useful
when there are duplicate values of the field that are set for action. By
adding other fields here, users will be able to differentiate which record
they want to perform the action; we will see more in the following
sample.
In Figure 4-13, we configure an action for the Name field. The Record
ID Field is Opportunity ID, so when the user selects the action, it will act on
that Opportunity ID. For Display Fields, let us select Name, Stage, and
Opportunity Type; for Actions, let us select “Open Salesforce record.”
Figure 4-13 Configure Actions

Because we select the Open Salesforce record action, if there is no
duplicate value of the Name, clicking the arrow next to Name in the
table/chart will show the “Open Record” action.
Figure 4-14 Open Record action
However, if there are duplicate values for Name, the system will prompt
users to select which record for the action. Because we select Display Fields
= Name, Stage, and Opportunity Type, the screenshot in Figure 4-15 shows
how the system will react when duplicate values are found; in this case, the
Name “Opportunity for Abbott1184” exists twice in the Dataset, so the user
needs to select a record to open the record in Salesforce. In short, configure
“Display Fields” to help the user in selecting the correct record when there
are duplicate values.
Figure 4-15 Display Fields in action

Note If there are no fields selected for “Display Fields” and any
duplicate values are found, the system will show the Record ID for users
to select.
You can quickly notice fields have been enabled for “action” by hovering
the mouse over the field, and an arrow will appear right after the field
value; see Figure 4-14.
For a Table widget, you can set up one-click actions from table
properties, so clicking the field value will perform the action configured.
Summary
In this chapter, we discussed what can be done once a Dataset is created,
whether it is manually loaded from a CSV file or created from a Recipe.
We started with dataset properties, which show the Dataset Created,
Last Modified, Last Refreshed, Last Query, the Dataset usage, the Dataflow
or Recipe that created the Dataset, the number of records in that Dataset, the
security predicate defined, the dataset API Name, and the App name where
the Dataset is located.
Also, on the Dataset properties page, we can perform multiple actions,
such as changing the dataset label, replacing data, configuring Actions,
restoring the Dataset, deleting the Dataset, exploring the Dataset to a Lens,
downloading and replacing an extended metadata file, changing the app for
the Dataset, and defining a security predicate.
We also discussed how easy it is to manipulate data and fields in the
Dataset with extended metadata.
In the next chapter, we will discuss everything about Lens, how to
create Lens, how to make use of a Lens in analyzing CRM Analytics data,
how to use Lens to download and share data, and the types of chart and
formatting available in Lens.
OceanofPDF.com
5. Lens
Johan Yu1
When we explored the Dataset and played around with Extended Metadata
in Chapter 4, without our awareness, we opened the Dataset as a new Lens.
A lens is a view of a dataset or dashboard widget, and we can use it to
explore the data and get insight. We have options to explore the data in a
Lens as a chart or table, including using a query with SAQL or SQL. CRM
Analytics provides many types of charts and table widgets for users to
explore the data, including Conversational Exploration, which will be
discussed later in this chapter.
If we compare Lens with Salesforce reports, there are similarities, but
mainly differences. A dashboard in Salesforce requires reports as the data
source, while a dashboard in CRM Analytics does not need Lens as the data
source but directly retrieves data from the Dataset.
In this chapter, we will learn everything about Lens, including
CRM Analytics App
Explore Dataset with Chart, Table, SAQL, and SQL
Explore Dataset with Conversational
Download and share data
CRM Analytics App

In this chapter, we will discuss Lens; however, to store a Lens, you need an
app, whether private or public. Let us discuss a bit on the App before
starting our discussion on Lens.
You may have heard the term “app” earlier in the previous chapters of
this book, so let us get the correct term for what App means in CRM
Analytics. Apps provide containers for sets of related assets, such as
dashboards, lenses, components, models, and datasets.
Similar to the Salesforce dashboard or report folder, there are three
types of App in CRM Analytics:
My Private App: This is similar to a private folder; all items in this
folder are only accessible to you. If you create a dashboard to share with
other users, make sure the Dataset is not stored in this App.
Shared App: This is similar to a public folder; users who have a CRM
Analytics license assigned will be able to access items stored in this App
from the Dashboard, Lens, or Dataset.
Custom App: Salesforce does not use this term, but this is the App that
you can create for specific needs in CRM Analytics, where you can set
who can access and edit existing assets stored or save new items to this
App.
Apps also control user visibility and accessibility to the items within
that App, whether as a manager, editor, or viewer. CRM Analytics allows a
Dashboard or Lens to use the Dataset from different apps; this will cause
errors when the user opens a Dashboard, but the Dashboard uses a Dataset
that is stored in a different app, and the user has no access to the App.
Just to be clear, the App here has nothing to do with the CRM Analytics
mobile app.
Creating App
From Analytics Studio, click the Create button, then select App, see Figure
5-1.
Figure 5-1 Create a new App

Depending on the CRM Analytics license that your organization purchased,
you may ask if you want to create a Blank App or start with a template. For
now, let us click the Create Blank App button, click the Continue button,
and then name your App. I’ll enter “Regional Sales,” and we just have a
brand-new app created. Figure 5-2 shows that within an app, we can store
Dashboards, Components, Lenses, Models, and Datasets. Since this is a
new app, we have nothing yet in that App.
Figure 5-2 A new App was created
Run App
Open the App and notice the “Run App” button at the upper-right corner, or
you can also search the App name in the Analytics Studio or Analytics tab;
on the result, click the arrow at the end of the App name, then click “Run
App.”
Run App will open the Dashboard or Lens stored in that App; by
default, it will be in alphabetical order; however, you can edit the list to
hide or reorder the list, see Figure 5-3.
Figure 5-3 Run App and the ability to edit a list
Share App
Sharing an App in CRM Analytics is simple; this is similar to sharing a
dashboard folder in Salesforce. See Figure 5-2; click the Share icon (before
the arrow icon) at the upper-right corner of the App or the drop-down menu
when clicking the arrow after the App name in the Home or Browse page of
Analytics Studio. You can share the App by User, Group, and Role (option
to include Subordinates), see Figure 5-4 – this refers to User, Public Group,
and Role in Salesforce.
Figure 5-4 Give App access to other users
Exploring Dataset
Once we bring data into CRM Analytics, we should verify the data is
correct based on data completeness, quantity, and quality. Completeness
means the fields are complete as we expect, with no missing fields;
otherwise, we need to re-upload the Dataset or modify and rerun the
Recipe. Quantity means the number of rows is complete, with no missing
rows. Quality means all the fields contain the right values with the correct
data type.
Using Chart in Lens

From a Dataset in the Home or Browse page or search result, click the
dataset name; by default, the system will open the Dataset as a New Lens
(see Figure 5-5) with a simple bar chart and contain the following setup:
Bar chart.
Bar length is the count of rows.
No grouping.
No filters.
Figure 5-5 New Lens
With this simple chart, we can verify the data Quantity; from the chart, we
see that the Dataset has 1K of rows; we can compare this from Dataset
properties, as shown in Figure 4-2, and look for “Rows.” However, we
cannot verify if the Dataset contains complete fields, field type, and value
of fields; we need to change the chart to Table Mode and select the Values
Table to verify those items.
Before discussing Table Mode, let us explore the common things we can
do in Chart mode and analyze data using Chart mode, see Figure 5-6:
Change Bar Length to Sum, Average, Maximum, Minimum, Unique,
Median, First, Last, Stddev, Stddevp, Var, and Varp: All of them are
only applicable to the Measures field, with the exception of Unique,
which can be used in any type of field. I am not going to explain each of
the functions, but it is good to familiarize each of them.
Add Additional Bar Length: With this, you can analyze multiple
measurements at a glance, such as the Count of Rows and the Sum of
Annual Revenue.
Add Bars: This means that we are going to have a new grouping in the
chart.
Add Filters: We can add multiple filters for multiple fields, and we can
apply filter logic OR and AND here.
Change Chart Type: CRM Analytics offers more than 30 chart types for
us to use, but remember that each chart type has its own properties, so
your existing selection may be removed if the new chart type does not
have such properties or move as other properties. If you are confused
about which chart is best suited to you, click “Suggested Chart” to let
CRM Analytics offer a few options based on the data and selection.
Apply Chart Formatting: You can set the chart title, font size, show
axis, show legend, etc.
Figure 5-6 Analyze data with a chart
Using Table in Lens

Let us switch to the table mode by clicking the “Chart Mode” icon and then
selecting the “Values Table”, see Figure 5-7.
Figure 5-7 Switch to the Values Table

If you remember, in Chapter 4, we discussed Extended Metadata; we can
set default fields for a dataset. If default fields for the Dataset have been
configured, switching to Table mode will give us those default fields in the
table columns.
Actions that have been set when in Extended Metadata will be applied,
including renaming field labels, editing values, formatting numbers, etc.
Here are a few things you can configure on the table, see Figure 5-8:
At the bottom of the left panel, look for “Query Limit”; by default, it will
show only 100 rows; you can edit to set the query limit to a maximum of
25,000 rows, although the suggestion is a maximum of 2000 rows for
better performance.
Add or remove fields easily by clicking the pencil icon at the left panel;
you are also able to reorder fields by dragging and dropping the fields
accordingly.
Click the “Formatting” icon at the right to format the table with spacing,
color, header, etc.
Click the table header to sort the table ascending or descending by a
specific field.
Click the arrow next to the field name and select “Freeze Columns Up to
Here”; all the fields from the selected field and fields on the left will
always be visible if you have a lot of fields added and you scroll to see
fields at the right.
Figure 5-8 Values Table
Using the Values Table, we will be able to verify if the Dataset contains all
the fields that we need to build a dashboard and if all fields contain correct
values, which we cannot verify in Chart mode. However, chart mode allows
us to group data and sort it quickly, so we can analyze the data on the fly,
get percentages of each group, or get data trends over a timeline.
Additionally, in the Table mode, we can switch to Compare Table,
where we can group the table based on fields, and Pivot Table, where we
can organize and summarize data grouped by rows and columns.
Saving Lens
After the Dataset opens as a new lens, hit the Save button on the upper-right
corner to save the configured Lens so that you or your team member can
reuse it in the future. You can store it in “My Private App” if you do not
want anyone else to touch it, in the “Shared App” to let everyone in the
organization access it, or in a Custom App if you need to share it with your
team or other users. Enter the Lens Name, Description (optional), and
Version History (optional).
When saving a Lens, all items within the Lens will be saved, from the
table or chart type, including all the filters, fields, grouping, sorting,
conditional formatting, etc. If you have edited the chart or table with the
custom query SAQL or SQL, this will be saved as well.
If you save an existing Lens to a different App, CRM Analytics will
move it to the new App, so it is not a Save As. If you need to save the Lens
as a new Lens, you should clone it, click the arrow at the corner, and select
“Clone in New Tab”, see Figure 5-9.
Figure 5-9 Clone Lens
Present Lens
There is an icon called Present at the Lens. The purpose of Present Lens is
to show the Lens on the web browser at full screen. If you are using the
Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge web browser, this is similar to hitting
the F11 key. Press the F11 key again to exit from the full-screen mode.
The Present mode is useful when you need to present the Lens and not
be disturbed by other things or when you need to analyze the Dataset with
more real estate.

The scissors icon before the Present icon is called Clip to Designer. The
purpose of this function is to add the Lens to a dashboard. CRM Analytics
will add the Lens as a new Query to all dashboards that are currently open.
If there is no dashboard open, CRM Analytics will create a new dashboard,
then add the Lens as a new Query to the new Dashboard created.
When clicking this icon, CRM Analytics will ask for a Query Label;
click the Clip to Designer button to apply. Notice that Clip to Designer will
not add a chart or table widget to the Dashboard, but a Query, see Figure 5-
10; you can drag the Query added to the Dashboard Designer to get it added
as a widget in the Dashboard. Furthermore, you can change the chart type
or formatting in the Dashboard.
Figure 5-10 Clip a lens to the Dashboard
Once a lens is clipped to a dashboard, the Lens is copied to the Dashboard;

this means the Query created in the Dashboard does not relate to the
original Lens; they are completely independent. Any changes in the Lens
will not impact the Dashboard, and any changes in the Dashboard will not
impact the Lens either. We will discuss the Dashboard in Chapter 6, so you
do not need to worry about it for now.
Share and Download Lens

Sharing Lens with your team or the whole company is easy; as discussed in
Chapter 1, the permission to access CRM Analytics assets is controlled by
the App, including Lens and other assets such as the Dataset and
Dashboard. So, before sharing a Lens, make sure the Lens is stored in the
App accessible by the users and the Dataset used for that Lens is also stored
in an app accessible by the users.
Note You can have the Lens and Dataset stored in different apps.
Get URL
Instead of manually copying and pasting the URL to your colleague, click
the arrow icon at the far right of the Lens, then click Share. Click the Get
URL tab, and you will see two options: open the link in the Analytics Tab or
Analytics Studio. So, which one should we get? Ideally, if your colleague
needs to edit the Lens, get the URL for Analytics Studio, but if they just
need to explore the Lens, get the URL for Analytics Tab, see Figure 5-11.
Figure 5-11 Get the URL to share a Lens
Post to Feed
With this feature, you can easily share the Lens to a User Chatter feed or a
Group Chatter feed. Posting this will add the chart or table as an image and
will be visible to all users in the group or users who follow the user. Even if
users do not have a CRM Analytics license, they will be able to see the feed
posted as an image.
Download
Does your team ask how to download data from a dataset? The answer is
that CRM Analytics does not give options to download directly from the
Dataset to an Excel or CSV file. However, they can explore a Dataset as a
table and then download the data into an Excel or CSV file, making sure all
the fields needed to download are added to the table.
If you notice, I mentioned fields added to the table; this means that you
should not use the Chart lens if you would like to download the raw data.
Downloading from chart lens will only give you a summary number based
on the chart configured.
CRM Analytics also gives you the option to download the Lens as an
image. The image will be in PNG format and will be similar to the one in
Post to Feed.
Tip If you do not see the Download option, check with your Salesforce
admin to enable the “Download CRM Analytics Data” permission on
your CRM Analytics permission set.
Add Lens to Subscriptions

We will discuss Subscription in Chapter 9, but in short, Subscription is a
feature that allows you to receive lenses, dashboard widgets, and collections
to your email on a schedule.
You can add a Lens to your Subscription by clicking the Show
Subscriptions (envelope icon). As per the Spring ‘24 release, you can only
subscribe to a Lens that has been converted to SAQL by clicking the Query
Mode icon and saving the Lens.
If you have already created the Subscription, the system will ask you for
the Title; otherwise, you need to create the Subscription by selecting the
Frequency and Time for the email to be delivered, then click the Subscribe
button to confirm.
Now, go back to Analytics Studio and click the Subscriptions tab; you
will see that the Lens has been added to your Subscription, see Figure 5-12.
Figure 5-12 CRM Analytics Subscription
Note When the Lens is updated, the Subscription will be updated too;
the email will deliver the latest Lens saved.
Add Lens to Collection

The purpose of the Collection is to organize CRM Analytics assets into a
collection, such as the Dashboard, Component, and Lens. With the
Collection, you and your team are able to access the related assets easily,
regardless of whether they are stored in different apps.
You can add Lens to an existing Collection or create a new Collection;
click the Add to Collection icon next to the “Show Subscriptions” icon, see
Figure 5-13.
Figure 5-13 Add Lens to a Collection
Add Lens As Favorite

Suppose you have used Salesforce for some time; you may be aware of the
Favorite feature, where you can access Salesforce assets, such as records,
list views, and reports/dashboards, that have been marked as favorite, so
that you can access them from anywhere in Salesforce via the Favorite icon.
The same applies to Favorite in CRM Analytics, where you can add
CRM Analytics assets such as Apps, Lens, and Dashboards as Favorites.
Even better, the CRM Analytics assets that are added as favorites will be
shown in Salesforce’s Favorites icon, see Figure 5-14.
Figure 5-14 Accessing Favorites from Salesforce
You can access CRM Analytics assets added as favorites from Analytics
Studio as well, see Figure 5-15; however, this will not include Salesforce
assets here.
Figure 5-15 Accessing Favorites from Analytics Studio
Explore with Conversational

When you explore Lens with Chart mode or Table mode, you may notice
there is a text box above the chart or table with the following sentences:
“What do you want to see? Just start typing….” If you do not see this box,
reach out to the CRM Analytics admin to make sure “Conversational
Exploration” has been enabled; navigate to the setup menu, type Analytics
in the Quick Find box, and then click Settings, see Figure 5-16.
Figure 5-16 Enable Conversational Exploration
Let’s go back to open a Lens or explore from a Dataset. Conversational

Exploration means asking questions about the Dataset using nontechnical
language and getting a quick answer as a chart; this is useful when you need
to analyze a Dataset quickly.
How could we interact with the Dataset using this method? Click the
Conversational Exploration text box; you will get a few suggestions on
what you can ask. A conversation can begin with “show me” or “what is,”
with a dimension like “industry,” or with a measure like “amount,” “top x,”
etc. It is even better that you can include filters in the conversation to
narrow the result area.
Here are a few sample questions you can ask based on fields in the
Dataset:
Top two annual revenue by account type
Show count of rows by account type
Show me sum annual revenue by owner ID
Show me average employees by account type
What is annual revenue for previous year
Ideally, the question should contain a measure field for CRM Analytics
to build the chart. All parameters or filters will be automatically entered
based on the questions, and you will also be able to modify the parameters
and filters manually as needed, see Figure 5-17 and notice the conversation
submitted.
Figure 5-17 Converse with data in Lens
Summary
In this chapter, we discussed everything about Lens. Usually, we use Lens
to explore a dataset, both from the Dataset or from a Dashboard widget. So
far, we have not discussed the Dashboard yet, but in the next chapter, we
will build a dashboard from scratch.
We had a hands-on experience exploring the Dataset into a new lens,
including both chart mode and table mode, and then we learned about
saving and cloning lens. We also discussed Clip Lens to Designer which
offers to copy Lens into an existing dashboard or to a new dashboard. We
also mentioned that Lens is not related to a dashboard; anything added to
the Dashboard will not impact the Lens or Dashboard anymore; they are
entirely independent, just sharing the same Dataset.
We discussed how to share Lens with your team or the whole company;
we can also post a Lens chart or table into someone’s Chatter feed or Group
feed, and with Lens, we are able to download raw data from CRM
Analytics. Subscriptions, Collections, and Favorites are additional CRM
Analytics features that can be added from Lenses.
We ended the chapter with a discussion on how to explore Lens with
conversational language, so instead of manually selecting and adding fields
and grouping, Conversational Exploration will do the job for us.
OceanofPDF.com
6. Building Dashboard
Johan Yu1
After discussing the Recipe, Dataset, and Lens in previous chapters, we are
going to start building a dashboard in this chapter. Let us start with the
permission, layouts, dashboard template, widget, query, page, facet, and
using multiple datasets in a dashboard; you will use most of those items
when building a dashboard, although it is not a must to have all of them in a
dashboard.
What can we expect from a CRM Analytics dashboard? With CRM
Analytics, we can build a dashboard that shows numerous key metrics for
our business with specific needs, from sales, support, marketing, adoption,
etc. When building a dashboard, you can easily add dashboard filters using
any fields available in the dataset, so your users are able to analyze data,
including using facets.
For users on the road, CRM Analytics also comes with a mobile app
that can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play Store. By
default, all CRM Analytics dashboards will work in the mobile app;
however, the layout will not be friendly when it opens on the mobile device
until you create a layout that is optimized for mobile.
In this chapter, we will learn the following topics related to creating a
dashboard:
Permission
Layout
Template
Widgets
Query
Pages
Faceting and global filter
Using multiple datasets
Permission
We discussed the “App” in Chapter 1; the App controlled user permission to
access items within that App, whether as a viewer, an editor, or a manager.
Only users with editor or manager access (defined in each App) will be able
to save dashboards into the App; otherwise, they will not see the App when
saving a dashboard.
On top of permission on the app, to create dashboards, the user also
needs to have a “Create and Edit CRM Analytics Dashboards” permission
in their Salesforce user via Permission Set assignment.
Layout
When we create a new dashboard, the default layout is called “Default,”
and it is optimized for viewing the dashboard with a web browser from a
computer, not from the mobile app. The CRM Analytics dashboard allows
you to create multiple layouts for a dashboard, which are optimized for web
browsers, tablets, and mobile devices.
Let’s start creating a new dashboard:
1. Log in to Salesforce and open Analytics Studio.
2. Click the “Create” button, then select “Dashboard.”
3. Select “Create Blank Dashboard”; this will bring you to the Dashboard
Designer with a blank canvas.
4. By default, there will be 12 columns; on the right, notice the Layout

panel with multiple properties, starting from General, Device, and
Background Image. If you can’t find the Layout panel, click the gear
icon (Dashboard Properties) at the upper-right corner; see Figure 6-1.
Figure 6-1 Dashboard Designer without widgets added
5. From this panel, we can change the layout name and other layout
properties, such as column, row height, cell spacing, background color,
etc. From this panel, let us change the layout name from default to
“Web Browser” and columns to 18.
6. At the left bar below the default dashboard name, New dashboard,
there is a + icon and an Untitled tab with an arrow. When you create a
dashboard, it will start with one page only and is called “Untitled”; we
can rename this by clicking the arrow and selecting Rename. Another
option is Hide from Navigation and Clone; for now, let us rename the
page to “Page-1” and click the Apply button.
7. A CRM Analytics dashboard can have multiple pages; click the + icon
to create a new page and enter the name; for now, let’s stick with one
page. Later in this chapter, we’ll discuss the dashboard with multiple
pages.
8. Let us rename the dashboard accordingly from the default “New

dashboard” to “Global Accounts” by clicking the pencil icon next to the
dashboard name, see Figure 6-2.
To manage layouts, click the arrow in the layout drop-down; in our
case, remember that we renamed it “Web Browser” and then click
Manage Layouts. From here, we can rename the layout and see all the
layouts that are available for the dashboard. If multiple layouts have
been created, you can delete them, except the current layout.
Figure 6-2 Change in the layout name, columns, page name, and dashboard name
9. If you create a layout with the Mobile layout type, this template will
be auto-selected when the user opens the dashboard from the mobile
app. We also have the option to copy all content from the current
layout to the new layout and also to enable Sync widgets across
pages, see Figure 6-3.
10. Let us save the dashboard by clicking the Save icon at the upper right;
the dashboard name by default will follow the dashboard title, Global
Accounts; save it to My Private App.
Figure 6-3 Manage Layouts to see and rename layouts
Template
When you create a new dashboard, CRM Analytics will ask if you would
like to create it from a blank dashboard or a dashboard template. If you
select to create from a template, you can choose from ten templates
available:
Comparison Dashboard
Details Dashboard
GMT Blank Dashboard
Metric Trend
Performance Summary
Summary Dashboard
Table Expansion
Three-Columns Dashboard
Tile Dashboard
Time Series
Using a dashboard template, you can speed up the development process
in creating a new dashboard; the new dashboard will have widgets and
layouts based on the selected template but still give you the flexibility to
move, add, and delete widgets. Some templates come with filters,
containers, main charts, supporting charts, tables, and key metrics.
While some of them, such as Metric Trend, Performance Summary,
Table Expansion, and Time Series, will ask you a few questions, each of
these templates will ask for different questions, but the dataset will always
be asked.
Table 6-1 Questions for the Dashboard Template
Metric Performance Table Time

Trend Summary Expansion Series
Choose a dataset ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Choose a metric ✓ ✓
Choose a date ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Choose groupings ✓
Choose filters ✓
Choose dimensions ✓ ✓
Choose measures ✓ ✓
Choose a confidence interval ✓
Indicate if seasonality impacts ✓
your data
Some of the templates are also marked as “smart,” which means the
dashboard requires little to no additional configuration; for example, in the
Time Series template, the dashboard visualizes how metrics change over
time and predicts future metric trends based on historical data.
We will not discuss each template in this book, but let us create a new
dashboard using the Time Series template (which is marked as smart); make
sure the dataset has a date field and a measure field.
1. Log in to Salesforce and open Analytics Studio.
2. Click the “Create” button, then select “Dashboard.”
3. Select the “Create Dashboard from Template” button.

4. Select the “Time Series” template and click the Continue button.
5. You need to select a dataset and fields for a few questions, then click
“Looks good, next.”, see Figure 6-4.
Figure 6-4 Create a dashboard with the Time Series template
6. Enter the dashboard name as “Time Series” and save it in “Shared

App.”
7. A Time Series dashboard is created with filters; the main chart is a

timeline chart with trends over months; supporting charts and tables are
added to the dashboard based on fields selected in the wizard. The
timeline chart shows the prediction of future metrics based on historical
data, see Figure 6-5.
Figure 6-5 A Time Series dashboard
However, not all dashboard templates may be suitable for our business
needs, so we may find ourselves creating blank dashboards more often.
Widgets
When you create a new blank dashboard, you will see a blank canvas with
12 column boxes and a list of icons at the left panel; see the blank
dashboard that we created earlier, “Global Accounts,” as in Figure 6-2, each
icon represents a widget that can be used in the dashboard designer for
different purposes. Let us walk through some of them and learn to use them.
Chart
The chart is the first icon from the top and is the most commonly used
widget in every dashboard. Use the chart widget to show data as a chart in
the dashboard. There are more than 30 types of charts provided by CRM
Analytics. Let us do a quick hands-on exercise to use this widget:
1. Open the Global Accounts dashboard created earlier and click the Edit
button.
2. Drag the chart widget to the dashboard designer.
3. Click the “Chart” icon at the center of the widget added.
4. You will be asked to select a dataset; find the “Open Opportunities

more than 0” dataset created in Chapter 3. Once a dataset is selected,
by default, you will get
Bar chart
Bar length, which is the count of rows
Without filter
Without grouping
The chart looks similar when we explore the dataset by creating a
new lens, with the difference at the top-left corner, “Untitled Query,”
instead of “New Lens,” and the additional Back and Done buttons at
the bottom. Clicking the Back allows you to select a different Dataset.
5. Change “Untitled Query” to “Step No of Rows.”
6. Click the Done button and Save icon to save the dashboard.
7. Notice that a query is created at the right panel of the dashboard

designer; this panel will show all queries created for the dashboard; we
can also create the query manually here, see Figure 6-6. We’ll discuss
“query” later in this chapter.
Figure 6-6 Blank dashboard with a widget and query

Table
Use this widget to display the record values table, compare table, and pivot
table. Similar to the chart widget, let us continue the Global Accounts
dashboard:
1. Assume the Global Accounts dashboard has been opened; if not, open it
and switch to edit mode by clicking the Edit icon at the upper right.
2. Drag the table icon into the dashboard designer below the chart widget.
3. Click the “Table” icon at the center of the widget added. You may
notice that the system no longer asks you to provide a dataset; this is
because CRM Analytics remembers that you have selected a dataset
earlier and will be using the same dataset; however, if you need to
select a different dataset, click the “Back” button.
4. Even if this is a table widget, by default, we’ll get a bar chart with a
count of the number of rows; if you do not change the chart to table
mode, you will get only the number of rows in the table. To get record
details in the table, change the table by selecting Table Mode, then
Values Table.
5. Select fields that we would like to show in the dashboard.
6. Change the query title to “Query Record Detail.”
7. Click the Done button.
8. To get better visibility of the table content, you can move and resize the
widget accordingly, see Figure 6-7.
9. Click the Save icon.

Figure 6-7 A dashboard with chart and table widgets
Tip To have columns occupy the whole table width, from the widget
properties at the right, find the Spacing section, then set Column Width =
Fit to Widget; with this setting, the width of the columns will be auto-
adjusted when the web browser size changes.
Filter
Use this widget to make a global filter of the data displayed in the
dashboard. You can select to have a single or multiple global filters. Let’s
do a hands-on exercise to use this widget:
1. Open the Global Accounts dashboard, then switch to edit mode.
2. Drag the filter widget into the dashboard designer.
3. Select the “Single Global Filter” under widget properties on the right
panel.
4. Click the “Filter” icon at the center of the filter widget added.
5. Select the same dataset used earlier, then select a field from the selected
dataset.
6. Click the “Create” button.
7. Click the “Preview” button at the top panel to test if the added filter is
working correctly, see Figure 6-8; notice that the dashboard is no
longer in edit mode (there are no blocks in the background).
8. To edit the dashboard again, click the Edit icon.
9. Click the Save icon to save the dashboard.
Figure 6-8 Dashboard with a global filter
Tip You can simply hit the “e” key to switch to edit mode, hit the “e”
key again to go back to preview mode, and hit the “s” key to save the
dashboard.
Container
The container widget is useful for grouping a few widgets into a container,
so you can move them easily. You can also set the background or border
color to group multiple widgets with the same purpose.
1. Open the Global Accounts dashboard and switch to edit mode.
2. Drag the Container widget to the dashboard designer.
3. Resize the widget to be wider and occupy the whole width of the
dashboard.
4. Drag the chart and table created into the container.
5. Change the container widget background color to dark green; you can
do this by selecting the container widget, then looking for Widget Style
on the right panel, clicking the arrow under Background Color, and
selecting dark green, see Figure 6-9.
6. Hit the “e” and then the “s” key to exit from edit mode and save the
dashboard.
Figure 6-9 Dashboard with a container
Date
Use the calendar widget to add a date field as a filter. You can only select a
date field for this widget.
2. Drag the Date widget to the dashboard designer.
3. Click the “Date” icon at the center of the widget.
4. Select a date field; only date fields will be available here.
5. Click the “Create” button.
6. Select the widget from the right panel for widget properties, change
the widget title to “Date,” and enable “Update instantly.”
7. Click the Query tab; few things to notice here:

Apply Global Filters: Enable this to implement the value selected
in the Global Filter widget discussed earlier.
Faceting: When the user clicks a selection from a chart widget, and
the widget is set to broadcast to other widgets, enabling this will
filter available dates based on the selection; you can select All,
Include, Exclude, and None.
Selection Type: Configure if the selection is required and as a
single or multiple selection.
Broadcast Selection As Facets: When a user selects a value of
dates, this selection will broadcast to other widgets; this is related to
faceting.
For now, do not change the preceding items, and use the default
values.
8. Move and resize the widget accordingly. I’ll move this widget to the
top-left corner, above the container created earlier, and the filter
widget next to it.
9. Click the Preview button (or hit the “e” key) to verify the Date filter is
working correctly, see Figure 6-10.
10. Hit the “s” key to save the dashboard.

Figure 6-10 Dashboard with a date filter
Link
Use this widget to navigate the user to
Saved Lens: Open an existing lens.
Saved Dashboard: Open an existing dashboard.
New Lens: Create a new lens based on the existing query.
URL: Open any URL into a new tab.
Page in Component: Open an existing component.
Page in Layout: Only available if there are multiple pages in the
dashboard.
Even the widget name is “Link,” it will appear as a button in the
dashboard. Let us continue with the hands-on exercise:
1. Continue with the Global Accounts dashboard and switch to edit mode.
2. Drag the Link widget to the container and drop it at the top-right
corner.
3. Change the Text to “Search with Google.”
4. Set “Link To” to URL.
5. Destination = http://www.google.com.
6. Link Tooltip = “Click to open Google.”

7. Hit the “e” key to preview and then the “s” key to save.
8. Click the “Search with Google” link; it should open the Google website
as a new tab, see Figure 6-11.
Figure 6-11 Dashboard link at the top right
Tip To get round corners for the link button, click the widget from the
widget properties, look for the Widget Style section, then set the border
radius to 8 or 16. You also can change the background color and border
color.
Image
As the name suggests, this widget is used to add an image to the dashboard.
It can be for a logo or other images to be embedded in the dashboard. Let’s
do a hands-on exercise:
2. Move the Date widget to the right so we have space in the upper-left
corner for the image widget.
3. Drag the image widget to the upper-left corner.
4. Click the Image icon within the widget.
5. Click the Browse Files button and select the image for a logo from your
computer; image format supported gif, bmp, jpeg, jpg, png, and svg.
6. From widget properties, change the Image Scale to Fit Width or Fit
Height, arrange Image Alignment, and you also can resize the widget,
see Figure 6-12.
7. Hit the “e” and then the “s” key.
Figure 6-12 Adding the image widget to the dashboard
List
The list widget is another most commonly used widget, and its purpose is to
filter data shown in the chart or table. List values will be automatically
populated as a unique value from a selected field. Let’s do a hands-on
exercise:
2. Drag the List widget after the Date widget.
3. Resize the widget height to occupy two blocks.
4. Click the List icon in the widget.
5. Select a field, and choose Account Type, then click the Create button.
7. Click the Account Type drop-down; in my case, I’ll see three options
with the radio button – you can only select one value, and there is a
number at the right, meaning the number of records for each value, see
Figure 6-13.
You can compare the visualization with the Filter widget using the
same Account Type field. Although they do similar things, the
experience is a bit different.
Figure 6-13 Adding a List widget
8. Let us edit the dashboard again; from the list widget properties, click
the Query tab and change Selection Type to “Multiple selections.”
Now, the radio button has changed to a checkbox, which means you
can select multiple values.
Number
In some cases, you would like to show numbers in the dashboard; this is
good for catching user attention, such as the total amount, the number of
open cases, etc. Let’s do a hands-on exercise:
2. Resize the container bigger, move the table to the bottom, and chart to
the right so we’ll have space under the logo.
3. Drag the Number widget below the logo.
4. Resize the widget height to occupy three blocks’ width and three
blocks’ height.
5. Click the Number icon in the widget.
6. Let’s use the default value, which is the Count of Rows, and click the
Done button.
7. From the Number widget properties, look for the Text Style section,
change Number Size to 48, and Alignment to Center, see Figure 6-14.
Figure 6-14 Adding a Number widget
Range
Use this widget and link it to a Measure field to filter dashboard data. This
widget allows users to filter data by entering from and to values or slide the
slider provided; the number will be adjusted as the user adjusts the slider.
2. Drag the Range widget to a space at the top in the dashboard designer.
3. Click the Range icon in the widget.
4. Select a Measure field and click the Create button.

5. Hit the “e” and then the “s” key, see Figure 6-15.
Figure 6-15 Adding a Range widget
Text
In many cases, we need to inform the user about a chart added to the
dashboard; we can use a Text widget to add that information as a label; we
can also use this widget to inform the dashboard in general, including as a
dashboard title or subtitle. Apply text style and widget style to make the
widget attractive.
2. Drag the Text widget to the empty space in the dashboard designer.
3. Look at widget properties on the right panel and modify the text to
“this dashboard contains global data”; you can change the font format,
color, and size, see Figure 6-16.
4. You will see the changes immediately as you work.

Figure 6-16 Adding a Text widget as a dashboard title
Toggle
Adding a toggle widget will allow our users to filter data easily with one
click. Only data that exists in the dashboard will appear in the toggle, for
example, you have Account Types Customer, Prospect, and Alumni, but
within a period, there is only Prospect and Customer, so your user will not
see the Alumni in the toggle. However, we can use a static step to handle
this; we will discuss a static step in the last chapter.
2. Drag the Toggle widget to an empty space in the dashboard designer.
3. Click the Toggle icon in the widget.
4. Select Account Type to use for the toggle.
5. Click the Create button to continue.
6. Adjust the widget size as necessary, ideally making all values visible;
otherwise, the user will need to scroll.
7. Click the Query tab and change Selection Type to “Multiple

selections”; this is to allow the user to select multiple values.
Figure 6-17 shows a toggle with two values selected (background in

blue).
Navigation
Before adding this widget, let us add a new page to the dashboard.
Remember that we can have multiple pages in a dashboard; we will discuss
pages in the next section.
2. Click the + icon under the dashboard name.
3. Enter the page name; I will enter “Page-2” and click the Add button.
4. Now, we have a blank dashboard designer, and the Page-2 tab is

selected.
5. Click the Page-1 tab, and now you will see all widgets added
previously.
6. Drag the Navigation widget to the bottom of the dashboard designer.
7. By default, it will show Page-1 and Page-2 as available pages; you

can update the color and style of the widget.
8. Step 6 will add the Navigation widget to Page-1 only, not Page-2, so
select the widget:
a. Select “Add to Page” at the bottom left.
b. Click “Page-2.”
c. Click the “Apply” button.

9. Now the widget is copied to Page-2
Play around by navigating to page 2 and back to page 1.
Figure 6-19 Dashboard with a Navigation widget at the bottom
Page
As mentioned earlier, a dashboard can have multiple pages. For admins, this
is good in terms of maintaining dashboards; instead of showing many
dashboards in Analytics Studio, a dashboard with multiple pages will be
shown only as one dashboard. From the user perspective, this offers a better
experience as the user will not open the wrong or many dashboards; for
example, if we have a “main” dashboard with multiple “child” dashboards,
the system will open a new tab when clicking a link which will confuse by
having many web browser tabs opened.
However, it depends on the needs; sometimes, we must use multiple
dashboards instead of one dashboard with multiple pages. Let us go through
each use case, including when we need to use multiple pages in a dashboard
or when using multiple dashboards. We will have no hands-on exercise in
this section, but you can refer to the hands-on exercises in Figures 6-18 and
6-19 when we discussed the Navigation widget.
Sharing Widget
A multipage dashboard will offer the ability to share widgets across pages.
When you add a widget to other pages, they will share the same widget
style, meaning changing the widget style on a page will impact the widget
style shown on other pages; however, you still can shift the widget in the
dashboard designer, and this will not impact the location of the widget in
other pages.
CRM Analytics also offers the ability to unlink the widget from other
pages; select the widget and click the Unlink link above the widget to
unlink it, see Figure 6-20.
Figure 6-20 Unlink a widget used in multiple pages
Dataset Filter
When you use a dataset across pages, and if there are filters set, the filter
selected on one page will also filter the result on other pages; this includes
faceting from other charts too. If you totally need to separate them, you
must use multiple dashboards or multiple datasets.
Dashboard Tab
One of the benefits of using multiple pages is transparency for users; the
user will not know if they are opening multiple pages because the tab and
URL are not changed, and it also does not open a new tab when users
switch across pages. Using the link widget will open the new dashboard as
a new tab so that multiple tabs will be opened.
Performance
Because the dataset was loaded when opening the dashboard, a dashboard
with multiple pages will offer better performance compared to opening
multiple dashboards.
Adoption and Maintenance

Using a dashboard with multiple pages will allow the admin to monitor the
usage and adoption of a dashboard more easily; the admin just needs to
monitor a dashboard instead of monitoring multiple dashboards.
Dashboards with multiple pages will only show once in Analytics Studio;
this is also cleaner for maintaining overall dashboards.
Faceting
Faceting, which is enabled by default, is one of the most useful features in
CRM Analytics for a user to drill down and analyze data. For a dashboard
using a dataset, when the user clicks a group in a widget, the whole
dashboard will be filtered based on the selection on the widget; for
example, clicking a product in a widget will filter the whole dataset to the
specific product clicked, so other widgets using the same dataset will be
automatically filtered.
Let’s go back to the Global Accounts dashboard created earlier, edit the
dashboard, click a chart, and then click the Query tab. Notice there are two
checkboxes related to faceting:
a) Apply filters from faceting.
b) Broadcast selections as facets.
Both options are enabled by default. The first option is to accept filters
when other widgets broadcast faceting, and the second option is to
broadcast selection as facets to other widgets, see Figure 6-21, so if other
widgets have “Apply filters from faceting” enabled, the widget data will be
filtered based on the selection in the selected widget. You can have more
than one widget that broadcasts a facet; all selections will filter the dataset,
for example, the product is A and the region is US. However, you cannot
have more than one selection in a widget; this is different from using a List
as a filter.
Figure 6-21 Faceting options in the query
Global Filter
When you need to use partial data from a dataset based on some criteria,
adding a global filter widget is the easiest option, rather than recreating a
new dataset using a dataflow or recipe, which will give us, as admins,
another item to maintain. Also, this option will save the number of rows
used by CRM Analytics because we do not create a new Dataset. This
method is also simpler than applying filters to each widget in the dashboard.
To achieve partial data usage, we should make the filter locked so our
users will see only related data in the dashboard, for example, we need to
build a Customer dashboard, but our dataset is combined between Customer
and Prospect, so we can add a global filter to filter only customers, then
lock the filter.
When the dashboard is added with the filter widget, in the dashboard
edit mode, notice the number in the filter icon is no longer zero (located at
the upper right, next to the layout drop-down), but tell us how many filters
were added, see Figure 6-22. You can add multiple filters into a global filter
panel as explained in the hands-on exercise earlier; check out Figure 6-8.
Figure 6-22 Dashboard with global filter and filter properties
Tip To lock a filter widget, click the filter icon next to the layout drop-
down, click the pencil icon after the field name, enable “Locked”
properties, see Figure 6-23, and click the Apply button. Once the filter is
locked, notice the keypad icon in the filter widget.
Figure 6-23 Locked a filter widget
Tip To add values to the filter widget, make sure the field is not locked
in the Global Dashboard Filters. In dashboard edit mode, click the arrow
button at the upper-right corner and select Pick Initial Values, select the
filter widget, select values to filter, click the Apply button, click the
Done button, and then lock the field.
Using Multiple Datasets

So far, we have discussed using only one dataset in a dashboard; however,
we can use multiple datasets in a dashboard. When you add the widget from
a different dataset, filtering and faceting will not work across widgets that
use different Datasets.
However, we can link them using a common value, for example, we
have a dataset called “Order” for actual sales and another dataset called
“Target,” so when we select a name from a widget, we would like to show
Target only for the sales rep selected; in this case, we will use the “User
Name” to connect both datasets. Let’s have a quick hands-on exercise:
1. Prepare the data for a new dataset; for this, I’ll sample using
Microsoft Excel.
Table 6-2 Target Dataset
Name Target
Dennis Howard 10
Irene McCoy 20
Kelly Frazier 15
2. Create a new Dataset using the CSV file upload.
4. Drag a list widget to the dashboard designer.
5. Click the “List” icon in the widget.
6. By default, it will auto-select the last dataset used; since we are going
to use a new dataset, click Change Data Source at the top right of the
window.
7. Select the Target Dataset just created and select a field; for this
scenario, select Name.
8. Click the Create button and change the widget title to Target.
9. Add the Number widget next to the List widget added.
10. Change the bar length to Sum of Target and click the Done button.
11. Now, let us connect the dataset; click the arrow button at the upper-
right corner and select Connected Data Sources.
12. Click the New Connection button.
13. Enter Connection Name = Sales Name and select a field for both data
sources – Data Source 1: User.Name; Data Source 2: Target:Name,
see Figure 6-24.
Figure 6-24 Build data source connection
14. Click the Save button, then the Close button.

15. Done, and now let us try.
16. Exit from edit mode by hitting the “e” key.
17. When selecting a Name from the Account owner widget, the Target
will be updated as in the Target dataset, see Figure 6-25.
Figure 6-25 Dashboard with connected datasets
Summary
In this chapter, we discussed everything a dashboard builder needs to know
to build a dashboard from scratch in CRM Analytics. We started with the
permissions needed for the user to build a dashboard. Layouts and
templates are something that a dashboard builder should know and make
use of when building a good dashboard.
We discussed widgets available in CRM Analytics, including hands-on
exercises for most of the widgets. Then, we looked into building a
dashboard with multiple pages, and we explained the benefits of using
multiple pages in a dashboard.
We discussed how faceting works across widgets, and faceting is one of
the most frequently used features in analyzing data in the dashboard. Then,
we shared how to use global filters in a dashboard; with global filters, we
can use only partial data of the dataset and lock it according to the
dashboard’s purpose.
We ended with a hands-on exercise to use and connect multiple datasets
in a dashboard. In the next chapter, we’ll discuss how to explore and make
use of a dashboard to analyze data.
OceanofPDF.com
7. Exploring Dashboard
Johan Yu1
If you have a Salesforce background, CRM Analytics offers a more

advanced and interactive dashboard compared to Salesforce’s standard
dashboard. Faceting in the CRM Analytics dashboard offers your users the
ability to analyze and drill down data easily and quickly.
In addition to having chart widgets, adding a table widget to the
dashboard to show record-level details is very useful for users exploring
data. Data in the chart and table will automatically be filtered when a
selection is made on other charts. The user can make selections on multiple
charts, and this will filter the whole dashboard further, but only one
selection can be made from each chart. When users select a chart segment,
by default, it will broadcast as a filter to other widgets. “AND” is the filter
logic when multiple charts are selected. We will see the sample later in this
chapter.
Before exploring dashboards, as admins, we should look into how to
inspect the dashboard for better performance; this will include detailed
information for each query in the dashboard and advice on how to improve
it.
In this chapter, we will learn the following topics:
Dashboard inspector
Set notifications on the widget
Make annotations on the dashboard
Share widget
Embed a dashboard to the Lightning page
Dashboard Inspector
Once a dashboard is built, ideally, a dashboard builder should evaluate if
the dashboard is designed for optimal performance. The good thing is CRM
Analytics comes with a feature called “Dashboard Inspector” to analyze
dashboard performance. Let’s have a quick hands-on exercise for this:
1. Open Analytics Studio and open the Global Accounts dashboard built
in the previous chapter.
2. Click the arrow icon at the upper-right corner.
3. Select “Dashboard Inspector”; it depends on the dashboard wizards and

queries; this process should only take a few seconds, see Figure 7-1.
4. Dashboard Inspector will show the

Total Query Time
# Queries
Performance Bottlenecks and Query Details
5. Performance Bottlenecks will show all issues and recommendations to

increase dashboard performance; for example, a dashboard page has
too many queries, queries that fire multiple times, and redundant
queries. With this info, we can fix the query to improve dashboard
performance. You can edit the dashboard JSON to update the query.
Figure 7-1 Performance Bottlenecks in Dashboard Inspector
6. Query Details will show all queries and the time needed for each query
on the current dashboard page. You can sort the table by clicking the
Header and clicking each query to get the details:
Datasets: Dataset used for query and when the last data refresh.
Filters: All filters impacted that query, including broadcast from
other widgets and Global Filter.
Dimensions: All fields used related to the query.
Measures: All fields used and the aggregation, such as sum, count,
etc.
Last Run Metrics (ms): This includes metadata, waiting, and query
in milliseconds.
If you add a filter to the dashboard, the preceding value will be updated
immediately. The information here is similar to selecting “Show Details”
from a widget.
Additionally, there are two more icons on the upper right, see Figure 7-
2:
View Performance Details: This will tell the dashboard builder if any
data manipulation is not optimal.
View More Details: Use this feature if you need to debug the query.
Original Query
Final Query
Result
In this window, we see how a compact form query is translated into
SAQL and what the result from the query is.
Figure 7-2 Query Details in Dashboard Inspector

Set Notifications
This function helps the user be notified when specific criteria in the widgets
are met. With notifications, you can get CRM Analytics to work for you,
select a widget and define the criteria, set if the notification should notify
you only once or continuously, and then set when the schedule for the
notification will run.
Each user can set up to ten notifications; because of the limit, you
should set notifications only for items essential for you and delete
notifications that are no longer needed. You can see the notifications in
Analytics Studio, Lightning Experience notification, Analytics mobile app
for iOS, and email.
Users can set notifications from the Chart, Table, and Number widgets.
Make sure “Show widget actions” is enabled for the widget; otherwise, the
arrow handler will not be available. You can only set notifications in view
mode, not when you build/edit the dashboard.
When exploring a dashboard, click the “bell” (Show Notifications) icon
next to the Share icon to show all notifications that have been set for the
dashboard. You can also check all notifications added from all CRM
Analytics dashboards from Analytics Studio or the Analytics tab and then
click the Notifications menu on the left panel, see Figure 7-3.
Let’s have a quick hands-on exercise for this feature:
2. Edit the Global Accounts dashboard, click a number or chart widget

under Widget properties at the right panel, and make sure the “Show
widget actions” checkbox is enabled.
3. Save the dashboard and exit from edit mode.
4. Hover your mouse over the widget edited in step 2, click the arrow
icon, then click “Set Notification.”
5. Depending on the operator used for that widget, for example, count,
sum, average, etc., it will be used as the criteria, then select the operator
and value threshold.
6. Next, you should be notified only once if the threshold value is met or
every time when the schedule runs.
7. Schedule when the notification should run, from weekday, daily,

weekly, and time.
8. Click the Save and Run button.
9. Once added, notice a number in a blue square appears when you have
the Notifications panel open.
Figure 7-3 Set Notification in a number widget
10. The notification details from status, last modified, and criteria will be
shown in that panel.
11. Now go to the Analytics Studio main page and click the Notifications
tab; you will see all notifications that you have set up from all
dashboards and the status of whether the criteria have been met, see
Figure 7-4.
Figure 7-4 Monitor all notifications
12. Once the conditions are met, the user will get the notifications in the
Lightning bell notification (see Figure 7-5), as well as email and the
Salesforce mobile app.
Note If the query is built on the binding for a dynamic chart, you
cannot set a notification for that widget. For Notification on the value
table, you can select any Measure column added to the table.
Figure 7-5 Notifications in Lightning
Annotations
With the annotation feature, you can annotate dashboard widgets with
comments posted in the dashboard and Chatter. You can hold conversations
about the widget, including posting a screenshot of the whole dashboard.
Similar to Chatter, you can mention someone’s name or a Chatter group
name to get their attention on the post, and other users can comment on the
Annotation.
Different from notifications, Annotations are available on more widgets,
such as Toggle and Text widgets. You must enable “Show widget actions”;
otherwise, the arrow menu will not be available when your users hover the
mouse over the widget.
Once the post is considered done, you can select Resolve in the
annotation post, and the Annotation will be moved under the Resolved tab.
Also, you can reopen the annotations when needed. You can add as many
annotations as you need in a widget.
Following Annotations
Notice the Annotations icon on the CRM Analytics dashboard, see Figure 7-
6. Click this icon to show all Open and Resolved annotations for a
dashboard. Clicking the + Follow button will allow you to receive all posts
on the dashboard. Similar to Chatter in a record, when you follow a
dashboard, you will get a notification if someone annotates the dashboard.
Figure 7-6 Annotations in a dashboard
Hands-On Annotations
2. Edit the Global Accounts dashboard, click a number or chart widget,

and under Widget properties at the right panel, make sure the “Show
widget actions” is enabled.
3. Save the dashboard and exit from the dashboard designer.
icon, then select “Annotate.”
5. Share an update; you can mention someone’s name starting with @.

6. Select “Attach current screenshot.”
7. Click the Share button.
8. Verify the Annotation is created under the Open tab and also in the
mentioned user’s Chatter feed, see Figure 7-7.
Figure 7-7 Adding an annotation to the widget
9. Click the arrow and select Resolve to move the Annotation from the
Open to Resolved tab.
Share Widget
When exploring a dashboard, users can share the Chart, Table, and Number
widgets. Hover the mouse over the widget and click the arrow drop-down,
see Figure 7-8.
Note The arrow drop-down is only available for the widget when
“Show widget actions” is enabled.
Figure 7-8 Share action from a widget
There are three tabs under the Share action: Post to Feed, Export to Quip,
and Download, see Figure 7-9.
1. Post to Feed
Post the widget as an image to the Chatter feed:
Users can share the widget as a Chatter post to a user feed or a
Chatter group.
Add comment for the post (this is optional).
The widget will be shared as an image.
Because this is a chatter feed, the image will be visible to all users
who have access to it.
2. Export to Quip
If your organization is using Quip, you can publish the widget as a
Quip document.
3. Download
From here, users can download the widget as
Image (PNG format)
Excel format
Excel format with metadata: This one will include the dashboard
title, timestamp, generated by, filtered by, grouped by, etc.
CSV format: This is useful when you need to get the raw data for a
table widget.
Figure 7-9 Share the widget as a feed, Quip, or download
Show Details
From a widget dropdown menu, the Show Details action will show detailed
info of a widget, such as the dataset used, filters applied, dimensions and
measures field, and last run metrics (ms). Show Details is similar to
Dashboard Inspector, where it shows all the queries available on the page;
click a query, and the details will be shown.
While the Show Details action shows the same information as if we
click a query from Dashboard Inspector, sometimes we do not know easily
which query is related to a widget. So, clicking “Show Details” from a
widget will guide us precisely to the query name that powers the widget,
including all information related to the widget, see Figure 7-10.
This action is most useful for dashboard explorers to analyze data
shown in the widget, including dashboard builder, to make sure the widget
shows the correct data, for example, not using the wrong dataset, wrong
filters, etc.
Figure 7-10 Information from Show Details of a widget
Explore
Similar to previous actions, the Explore action is only available for the
Chart, Table, and Number widgets. In addition to enabling the “Show
widget action,” the “Show explore action” must also be enabled. But in
some scenarios, you may need to turn off the Explore action, so users will
not be able to explore and download the data.
When exploring a widget, CRM Analytics will create a new lens, and
the user can analyze it from the Lens, including changing chart type,
changing table mode, adding filters, and editing with SAQL. If users need
to store the modified Lens, they can store it in their private app or public
app when the user has editor or manager permission for the app. However,
unlike standard Salesforce reporting, the Lens created here will not impact
the dashboard or widget in the dashboard.
Hands-On Explore Widget

2. Edit the Global Accounts dashboard, click a number or chart widget,

and under Widget properties at the right panel, make sure the “Show
widget action” and “Show explore action” are enabled.
3. Save the dashboard and exit from edit mode.
icon, and then click “Explore.”, see Figure 7-11.
Figure 7-11 Exploring a widget
5. The widget will be opened as a new lens. By default, it would be the

same chart type or table as the widget, except for the Number widget,
which would be a bar chart without grouping. The filters from the
widget will be applied to the new Lens.
6. If it is a bar chart, you can change the grouping by changing the fields
under Bar, or you can add another level of grouping.
7. Optionally, you can save the Lens to your private app or to a public app
to share with your team.
8. You can perform all features offered by Lens, such as Clip to Designer,
present, save, share, and clone. We have discussed this in Chapter 5.
In case you need to export data in the widget to an Excel or CSV file,
you can use the same method as shared in Chapter 5: open the widget as
Lens, change the format to the table (if necessary), click Share and then
Download, then select to download as Excel or CSV format.
Widget Built with SAQL

For widgets built with SAQL, users will not be able to update the Lens with
clicks, so users must use SAQL to update. To check if a widget is powered
by a query build using SAQL:
For the dashboard builder, edit the dashboard, select a widget, and click
the pencil icon “Edit Query and Widget” at the bottom; you will find that
you cannot edit the values such as Bar Length, Filter, Query Limit, etc.
See Figure 7-12.
For the dashboard user, click the “Show Details” action, then the “View
more details” icon at the right, and select the “Original Query” tab. The
SAQL-powered query will show SAQL here, while a non-SAQL query
will show a JSON format compact form.
Figure 7-12 Comparison edit query for SAQL and standard query without SAQL
Embedding CRM Analytics Dashboard to
Salesforce Lightning Page
As discussed in the previous chapter, to explore the CRM Analytics
dashboard from Salesforce, users need to open the Analytics tab and find
the dashboard to explore. However, for some scenarios, it would be great if
a user is able to access the dashboard on the Lightning record page, app
page, and Home page.
Similar to accessing the dashboard from the Analytics tab or Analytics
Studio, the user needs to have a CRM Analytics license to view the
dashboard from the Lightning page.
When you embed a dashboard, the whole dashboard will be shown; you
cannot just show a widget. To enable the dashboard sharing from Lightning,
the CRM Analytics component must have a minimum height of 612 pixels.
For widgets with the Explore action enabled, users will be able to explore
the widget from Lightning. Explore will open Analytics Studio and create a
new lens. Faceting and filtering will work as normal.
To add a CRM Analytics dashboard to a Lightning page, your
Salesforce system admin just needs to drag the “CRM Analytics
Dashboard” component to the Lightning page. Once added, there are a few
options that can be configured:
Dashboard Name: Select a CRM Analytics dashboard that has been
prepared, and make sure the dashboard and dataset are stored in the app
that is accessible to the users.
Height: This is the component height in pixels.
Filter: This is optional but most useful when we need to auto-filter the
dashboard based on the record ID.
Show Sharing Icon: This can only be enabled when the component
height minimum is 612 pixels.
Show Tile: To show/hide the dashboard title.
Show Header: To show/hide the header, which includes the title, dataset
last refresh, and Analytics Studio icon.
Open Links in New Windows: If there is a link in the dashboard,
clicking this will open the target as a new window.
Hide on Error: To show/hide if an error occurred in the dashboard.
Enable Notifications: If this is enabled, clicking the arrow at the widget
will have the Set Notification option.
Enable Subscriptions: If this is enabled, clicking the arrow at the
number widget will give you the Subscribe option.
Set Component Visibility: This is a standard Lightning component
feature if we want to show the component just for a group of users, such
as profile or record values.
Hands-On Adding Dashboard to Lightning Home Page

Scenario: Add an interactive dashboard using CRM Analytics to show all
open and closed Opportunities for the current quarter and next quarter on
the Lightning Home page.
The assumption is that you already have a dataset created from a recipe.
Make sure the following fields are added to the recipe: Account ID,
Account Name, Account Type, Account Number, Opportunity ID,
Opportunity Name, Opportunity Stage, Opportunity Amount, Opportunity
Close Date, Opportunity Owner Name, Is Closed, and Is Won.
Figure 7-13 A recipe pulls data from Account, Opportunity, and User objects

2. Create a new Recipe, as in Figure 7-13, and a new dashboard to use the
dataset that outputs from the recipe.
3. We’ll not go through the steps of creating the recipe and dashboard, as
we already covered them in previous chapters. Check Figure 7-14 for a
sample of the dashboard; you can create your own Opportunity
dashboard, but make sure the fields mentioned earlier are included in
the recipe. Let’s name the dashboard “Current & Next Quarter
Opportunities.”
Figure 7-14 A dashboard shows Current and Next Quarter Opportunities
4. Let’s embed the dashboard into the Lightning Home page. Navigate to
the Lightning Home page and click “Edit Page” under the gear icon on
the upper-right screen.
5. Drag the “CRM Analytics Dashboard” component in the Lightning App

Builder.
6. Select the component and enter the following in the properties:
Dashboard: Current & Next Quarter Opportunity
Height: 612
Leave the rest as default
7. Click the Save button, then the Back button; if this is your first time
editing the Home page, you need to click the Activate button, then
Assign as Organization default.
8. You should be able to filter and facet the dashboard as you open it from
the Analytics tab, but note that the Share and Annotate actions are not
available here. Figure 7-15 show Lightning Home page with a CRM
Analytics dashboard embedded.
Figure 7-15 CRM Analytics dashboard embedded as a Lightning Home page
Hands-On Adding Dashboard to the Record Page

Scenario: Add an interactive dashboard using CRM Analytics to the account
record to show all opportunities related to that Account.
Let us clone the “Current & Next Quarter Opportunities” dashboard as
“Opportunities of Account.” We can use the same dataset, and nothing
needs to change in the recipe.
2. Clone the “Current & Next Quarter Opportunity” dashboard as
“Opportunities of Account.”
3. Modify the dashboard accordingly; for this dashboard, let us remove all
the filters, as the dashboard should show all opportunities for the
Account, see Figure 7-16.
Figure 7-16 Modified dashboard without filters
4. Open an Account record where you want to embed the dashboard, then
click “Edit Page” under the gear icon at the upper-right screen.
5. Drag the “CRM Analytics Dashboard” component to the upper right in

the Lightning App Builder.
6. Select the component and enter the following in the properties:

Dashboard: “Opportunities of Account”
Height: 400
Untick all checkboxes
7. Make sure “Filter Builder” is selected, then click the “+ Add Dashboard
Filter” button.
Select the dataset
Dataset Source Field: Account ID
Operator: Equals
Object Field: Account > Id
8. Click the OK button, click the Save button, then the Back button; if this
is your first time editing the Account Lightning page, you need to click
the Activate button, then Assign as Organization default. Figure 7-17
show a Lightning Account page with a CRM Analytics dashboard
embedded and filtered by the Account opened.
Figure 7-17 Account Lightning page embedded with the CRM Analytics dashboard
In the same way, you can embed the CRM Analytics dashboard into any
other Lightning pages without the need to write any script.
You can also embed a CRM Analytics dashboard into the Lightning app
page, where the app page can be used in both web browsers and mobile
apps.
Summary
In this chapter, we discussed everything about exploring a dashboard. We
started with Dashboard Inspector; dashboard explorers can use this tool to
understand the widgets, and dashboard builders can use this tool to debug
dashboard widgets, analyze queries, and optimize dashboard performance.
Next, we learned how to set notifications on widgets; this notification is
personal and will not impact other users; we’ll get notifications once all the
criteria defined are met. Annotation is the following action; we can use it to
collaborate with our team in discussing business metrics shown in a widget.
Annotation directly integrates with Chatter; users can set the Annotation as
resolved so it will not appear as an Open tab.
We discussed the Share action, which is sharing the widget as a Chatter
feed or downloading the widget as an image, Excel file, or CSV file. The
Explore action, as it is named, is very useful for users to explore the widget
as a lens; all existing filters from the dashboard will be automatically added
to the Lens.
Embedding CRM Analytics dashboards to the Salesforce Lightning
page is another great feature, so the dashboard can easily be accessed by
Salesforce users from Lightning Home, record, and app pages or show data
related to a record.
Next, in Chapter 8, we will learn how to set security to the dashboard
and the data, so stay tuned!
OceanofPDF.com
8. Applying Security
Johan Yu1
This chapter will discuss all aspects of security that can be implemented in
CRM Analytics. Same as other reporting tools, you always need to secure
access from multiple points of view, for example, hide a particular
dashboard from all users and only make it visible to a specific group of
users, or make the dashboard visible to users but not allow them to edit it.
In CRM Analytics, we can use Apps to control dashboard visibility.
For a more advanced technique, you can show the dashboard result
based on who the user is, so everyone will not see the same result in a
dashboard; this is controlled in the Dataset.
But before looking at Apps and Dataset security, we can also control the
basic permissions for the user, which are things that a user can do in CRM
Analytics in general. Hence, this is a blanket permission given for that
particular user. For example, users are not allowed to download data from
CRM Analytics or upload external data to CRM Analytics. This permission
is controlled under the Permission Set.
In this chapter, we will learn the following topics:
Apps Level Sharing
Security Predicate
Sharing Inheritance

This setting is configured in Salesforce user detail, not in CRM Analytics. If
you know how Salesforce users are assigned extra permission using the
Permission Set, this is precisely the same.
Depending on the CRM Analytics licenses purchased, you will get two
additional permission sets added to your Salesforce organization:
CRM Analytics Platform Admin and CRM Analytics Platform User for
CRM Analytics Growth license
CRM Analytics Plus Admin and CRM Analytics Plus User for CRM
Analytics Plus license
As these are default permission sets, you cannot edit or delete them, but
the Salesforce admin will be able to clone and adjust the cloned system
permissions.
We will not discuss each of the system permissions as in Figure 8-1, but
if you look at the permission name and description, some of them are pretty
obvious, for example, “Create and Edit CRM Analytics Dashboards”
permission; without this permission, the user will not be able to create or
edit any CRM Analytics dashboards; for “Upload External Data to
Analytics,” this permission gives the user the ability to upload a CSV file as
a dataset in CRM Analytics.
Figure 8-1 System Permissions for CRM Analytics
As per the Salesforce permission set model, the Salesforce admin can
clone the standard permission set to many permission sets, and each
permission set can have different permissions enabled; a user can be
assigned with many permission sets.
Apps Level Sharing
We discussed Apps in Chapter 5; when we start creating Lens, we can share
an App by
User Name
Public Group
Role
With access as a Manager, Editor, and Viewer
Users with Manager access have the highest level of access; in addition
to Editor access, these users will be able to share and delete the App.
Users with Editor access will be able to edit and save dashboards and
Lens in the App.
The Viewer users are only able to view the dashboard, Lens, and Dataset
stored in the App, but even if the user only has viewer access in an App,
the user will be able to save the Lens or dashboard into their Private
Apps.
Users with Manage CRM Analytics permissions will be able to access
all dashboards and Lens stored in public Apps, including access to the Data
Manager. Users with a CRM Analytics license and Modify All Data or
View All Data permission in Salesforce will be able to see all Apps.
Manage CRM Analytics should only be given to CRM Analytics admin
users.
Security Predicate
A security predicate is a filter condition that defines row-level access for
users to a dataset, and it is defined in the Dataset. Every time users access a
dataset (including those from the Dashboard or Lens), the system checks
the running user details to compare them with the security predicate defined
in the Dataset. You can use any fields in the Salesforce user object, such as
Profile Name, Role ID, User ID, and Department, or you can also create
custom fields.
The security predicate is not configured in Salesforce, so it will also
work for datasets that do not originate from Salesforce. The security
predicate will check running user detail with the Dataset; in some cases, we
may need to add additional columns in the Dataset, for example, as an
exception to let a profile have visibility to all data in the Dataset, no matter
what the Profile is – in this case, the Profile is defined in the security
predicate.
Syntax
The following syntax is fixed; you cannot put the dataset column after the
operator; it will not work.
<dataset column> <operator> <value>
Example valid security predicate: ‘ProfileId’ == “$User.ProfileId”

‘ProfileId’ is the API field name in the Dataset.
== is the operator.
“$User.ProfileId” is the running user profile ID in Salesforce.
Please note the difference in “ and ‘ syntax used.
You can use || as OR and && as AND and use () to set the order of
operators if needed in the security predicate. In the following sample, we
are going to give the visibility of all rows to all users with a Marketing
profile, while other users are only allowed to see data in their region:
'Region' == "$User.Region__c" || 'View_All' ==

"$User.ProfileId"
In the preceding security predicate

– Region and View_All are the field API Names in the Dataset.
– We use a custom field called Region__c in the User object in Salesforce.
– View_All should contain the Profile ID of “Marketing” for each row in
the Dataset.
Note The security predicate does not support using IN or comma, for
example, if you have multiple profiles that need to see all rows, you need
to have multiple fields for each Profile, for example, ‘Region’ ==
“$User.Region__c” || ‘View_All_1’ == “$User.ProfileId” || ‘View_All_2’
== “$User.ProfileId” .
Hands-On Security Predicate
In this hands-on, you will see the use of a security predicate to limit record
visibility. We will use the Department field in the Salesforce user detail to
set record visibility:
2. Create the Dataset from CSV files; you must change the View_All
value in Table 8-1 to a valid Profile Id in your Salesforce organization.
If you are unsure about the Profile Id, check with your Salesforce
administrator; the ID should have prefix 00e.
Table 8-1 Load This Table As a New Dataset and Name It “Top Account”
Department Account Name View_All

Sales Data Inc 00eB0000000KmquIAC
Sales Manager Inc 00eB0000000KmquIAC
Support Workflow Inc 00eB0000000KmquIAC
Sales Process Inc 00eB0000000KmquIAC
Support System Inc 00eB0000000KmquIAC
Support Business Inc 00eB0000000KmquIAC
Note: You must use 18 characters instead of 15 characters for the ID.
3. Find the Dataset created, click the Dataset to open it, and verify that the
data loaded is correct; you should see six records.
4. Back to the Analytics Studio, find the same Dataset, click the arrow at
the far right, and select Edit.
5. Click the pencil icon under the Security Predicate, and enter
‘Department’ == “$User.Department” || ‘View_All’ ==
“$User.ProfileId”; click out from the box to exit and then click the “Got
It” button from the pop-up window.
6. When you click the mouse out of the Security Predicate box, the
system will auto-check and reject if the security predicate syntax is
invalid, such as “$User.Department” == ‘Department’ (wrong order),
and if the field does not exist, such as ‘Department ==
“$User.UserDepartment” (the UserDepartment field does not exist in
the User object). However, the system will not validate and not reject if
the column name in the Dataset does not exist, such as
‘UserDepartment’ == “$User.Department” (the UserDepartment field
does not exist in the Dataset).
7. If the syntax check is passed, the security predicate will be saved
automatically.
8. Change your Department in your Salesforce user detail to Sales, see the
result in Figure 8-2.
9. Back to Analytics Studio and open the Top Account dataset again; now,
you should only see three records.
Figure 8-2 Security Predicate filter row Department = Sales
10. Edit the Dataset and move it to the Shared App.
11. Now, log in as a user with the Profile as in step 2, and open the
Dataset again; it should show six records because we made the Profile
ID the exception, see Figure 8-3.
Figure 8-3 Security Predicate filter with exception
Role Hierarchy Access

As you see from the preceding hands-on, the security predicate supports the
filter on a specific ID or word; furthermore, if we combine with the
“flatten” transformation to flat all Role Id in the Recipe, we can use the
security predicate to let users in the higher role hierarchy access data visible
by users in the lower role hierarchy.
Check out Figure 8-4 for a sample of the Recipe with flattening nodes.
Figure 8-4 Recipe with the flatten transform

Check out Figure 8-5 to set parameters in the flatten transform.
Figure 8-5 Flatten node properties
You will see fields added from Flatten nodes in the Recipe but not in the
Dataset. See Figure 8-6 and notice the fields in the Dataset.
Figure 8-6 Output to the Dataset with fields from the flatten transform
Here is the security predicate for the role hierarchy access:
'OwnerId' == "$User.Id" || 'Owner.Role.Roles' ==

"$User.UserRoleId"
Note This is only to give access to specific Datasets based on the

Salesforce role hierarchy, no matter how the security setting for the
objects in Salesforce, and it also does not relate if you have any
additional sharing rules in Salesforce.
Sharing Inheritance
As you see in the security predicate, we defined row-level security based on
criteria we defined in CRM Analytics, and this has no relationship with
Salesforce record security. Sharing Inheritance will give us the ability to use
the same row-level security defined in Salesforce; this includes object
sharing, role hierarchy, manual sharing, team sharing, and sharing rules
added for the object.
Sharing Inheritance sounds perfect for Salesforce customers to set data
visibility as defined in Salesforce; however, Sharing Inheritance has
limitations; it only works for five standard objects:
Account
Case
Contact
Lead
Opportunity
Additionally, if the record access is granted by more than 3000 sharing
descriptors, Sharing Inheritance will not work, and the backup security
predicate will take effect. But users with the “View All Data” permission
will be covered by Sharing Inheritance. You can use “Sharing Inheritance
Coverage Assessment” from the Salesforce setup menu to evaluate the
user’s eligibility to use Sharing Inheritance.
Sharing Inheritance is defined in the Recipe on the output node when
creating a Dataset.
Enable Sharing Inheritance

From the Salesforce setup menu, in the Quick Find box, type Analytics,
and then click Settings; look for Inherit sharing from Salesforce and
enable it.
Configure Recipe
Let us create a very straightforward Recipe with two nodes, see Figure 8-7:
1. Input: This is to get data from an object.
2. Output: This is to store the data in a dataset.
Figure 8-7 A simple recipe to get data from Salesforce and store it in a Dataset
To enable security inheritance, we need to define the object that will be

used as the sharing source in the Output node. For this sample, because we
only have one input node, which is from Opportunity, the option is only to
use Opportunity as the Sharing Source in the output node, see Figure 8-8.
Figure 8-8 Configuring Output node with Sharing Source
Sharing Inheritance Coverage Assessment

To access if you can use Sharing Inheritance for a Salesforce object
1. Navigate to the Salesforce setup menu.
2. Look for “Sharing Inheritance Coverage Assessment.”
3. Select the object.
4. Click the View Assessment button.

Figure 8-9 Sharing Inheritance Coverage Assessment
Figure 8-9 shows the Opportunity object (as my example) can use the
Sharing Inheritance. However, it does not mean that it can cover all CRM
Analytics users.
To evaluate user coverage, click the View User Coverage button;
depending on the number of CRM Analytics users that you have, the
process can take some time, see sample result in Figure 8-10.
Figure 8-10 Sharing Inheritance user coverage result

Summary
In this chapter, we discussed every aspect of security that can be
implemented in CRM Analytics. We started with basic permissions for what
a user can do in CRM Analytics, which are defined in the Permission Set
and can be assigned to each user.
Next, we discussed App security. We can share Apps with users based
on User Name, Role (including subordinates or not), and Public Group. As
you can see, all these sharings are related to the Salesforce setup. Then,
similar to the Salesforce report or dashboard folder, the App manager can
define the level of access for each user, Role, or Group as a Manager,
Editor, and Viewer.
With the Security Predicate, we can define row-level security; the
system will compare user details with data in the Dataset. You can set
exceptions for particular users based on Role, Profile, or custom fields. We
can also use the flatten transformation node in the Dataflow to give row-
level access based on the Salesforce role hierarchy.
The last security aspect that can be implemented in CRM Analytics is
Sharing Inheritance; this is pretty nice when you can inherit all security
measures as defined in Salesforce; however, a user is limited to particular
standard objects only and also max descriptors per record and per user;
otherwise, it will not be used. We can use the Sharing Inheritance Coverage
Assessment to evaluate if we can apply Sharing Inheritance to the object
and user coverage.
In the next chapter, which is the last chapter of this book, we will
discuss advanced topics related to CRM Analytics. We will learn advanced
transformation nodes in the Recipe and real-time data access from
Salesforce, SAQL, JSON, Custom Query, and Binding.
OceanofPDF.com
9. Advanced Topics
Johan Yu1
Congratulations, you’ve reached the last chapter of this book. By now, you
know what a Dataset is, how to import data into CRM Analytics, enable
data sync with Salesforce, work with dataset, explore dataset with lens, how
to build a dashboard from scratch, create a simple recipe, explore the
dashboard with features offered, and also learned on security
implementation.
In this chapter, we will learn a few techniques that we may face when
creating a dashboard in CRM Analytics:
Edit Attributes, Drop Columns, Custom Formula, and Filter
Augment node with multiple value lookup
Real-time data pull from Salesforce with SOQL (Salesforce Object
Query Language)
JSON
SAQL (Salesforce Analytics Query Language)
Binding
Recipe Nodes
In Chapters 3 and 7, we have hands-on building simple recipes with nodes:
Input
Output
Transformation
Join
We have also discussed each node in Chapter 3, section “Data
Transformation in Recipe,” so we will not repeat them here. But let us see a
few features and scenarios that can be performed in the Transform node.
Edit Attributes
Scenario: Create a recipe with join nodes for Opportunity, Account, and
User, which gets an Opportunity owner and Account owner (Figure 9-1).
Figure 9-1 Recipe with input nodes of Opportunity, Account, and User
If you look at the dataset label result, there are duplicate field names,
such as Owner ID, Account ID, User ID, and Full Name (Figure 9-2).
Figure 9-2 Recipe with duplicate names
As a dashboard builder or data analyst, it is never good to have
duplicate field labels. For this scenario, we can add a Transform node using
Edit Attributes to change the field name; let us do a quick hands-on
exercise:
From the last node before Output, add the Transform node.
Click the new node added, then from the Preview or Columns tab, click
the field that we want to relabel, then click the “Edit Attributes” icon.
Change the label, for example, from Owner ID to Opportunity Owner ID,
and click the Apply button.
Perform the same for other fields so it is clear without duplicate labels.
See Figure 9-3 after the field name updated with Edit Attributes.
Figure 9-3 Clean duplicate with Edit Attributes
Update the recipe by adding a Transform node to edit the attributes, see
Figure 9-4.
Figure 9-4 Recipe with a Transform node
Drop Columns
Let us continue with the preceding recipe if you notice that we still have
duplicate labels: the Account Owner ID and Opportunity Owner ID. The
API Names are different, which explains how the data is transformed.
However, do we need both similar fields? It is always a best practice to
remove unnecessary items to keep the dataset clean.
For some scenarios, you may want to keep the field, but for this
exercise, let us remove the Account.Owner.Id and Owner.Id fields.
Using the same recipe, let us add Drop Columns transformation in the
same Transform node; we can rename the node to “Transform” since the
node is not only Edit Attributes.
Click the Transform node.
Switch to the Columns tab and look for Owner.Id, then click the “Drop
Columns” icon, which is next to the Edit Attributes icon. Leave Drop
selected and click the Apply button.
Repeat the same for Account.Owner.Id.
Here is the updated result of our dataset, see Figure 9-5; nothing has
changed in the recipe layout.
Figure 9-5 Remove unnecessary fields with Drop Columns
Custom Formula
I want to say this is the most essential item in a recipe. With the Custom
Formula in a recipe, you can create new calculated fields in the dataset
based on some logic, including from existing fields, without the need to
change the data source. It would be a good practice to standardize new
fields created using a Custom Formula, as we may have many fields created
using this method.
Scenario 1: For Accounts with Billing Country = USA or Canada and
Type <> Customer, show them as “Yes,” and the rest as “No.”
Let’s do a quick hands-on exercise:
From the Account input node, click the “Change columns” button and
add the Billing Country field.
Click the Transform node and look for the formula (fx) icon; select
Custom Formula from the drop-down.
Enter the following formula, see Figure 9-6:
case when "Account.BillingCountry" in

('USA','Canada') and "Account.Type" != 'Customer'
then 'Yes' else 'No' end
At the left panel, scroll down and change the Column Label and API
Name to “Target.”
In Output Type, select Text, and click the Apply button.
Figure 9-6 Formula editor
Scenario 2: Look for the latest opportunity created for each Account and
mark it with Latest Opportunity = Yes. In this scenario, the formula will
scan data across many records with the same partition value defined.
Use the same recipe:
From the Opportunity input node, click the “Change columns” button and
add the Created Date field.
Click the Transform node and look for the formula (fx) icon; select
Custom Formula from the drop-down.
Enable the “Multiple row formula” switch at the upper right of the
transformation panel.
Enter the following formula:
case when row_number() = 1 then 'Y' else 'N' end
In Partition By, select “Account ID.”

In Order By, select “Created Date.”
In Sort Direction, select “Descending.”
In Output Type, select Text.
Column Label = “Latest Opportunity” and API Name =
“Latest_Opportunity.”, see Figure 9-7.
Click the Apply button.
Figure 9-7 Options for the multiple row formula
Filter Node
In Chapter 3, we discussed the Filter node, where we can use a simple filter,
add filter logic, and use Custom Expression.
Let us have a quick hands-on exercise using Custom Expression to
filter:
Hover over the Transform node, click the small icon at the right, and
select filter from the drop-down menu.
Click the arrow at the upper right of the Filter panel and select “Add
Custom Expression.”
Now, you should see an editor where you can type in criteria for data to
be selected; data that does not match the criteria here will be filtered out.
We can use “fields” created in the Transform node in the section “Custom
Formula”; let us enter Latest_Opportunity = 'Y'.
Click the Apply button.
Now, we need to break the link between the Transform and Output
nodes; click the arrow between these two nodes, and select Delete (the last
option), see Figure 9-8.
Figure 9-8 Deleting links between nodes
To link the Filter node to the Output node, simply drag from the plus icon
next to the Filter node to the Output node and select Connect Nodes, see
Figure 9-9. You must delete the link earlier before you are able to link the
node.
Figure 9-9 Connecting nodes
Append Node
Use Append to combine data from two nodes; you can map the fields
between the first and second nodes; if the fields are different, the fields in
the second node will be removed.
Another option is to enable “Allow disjoint schema.” Prior to enabling
“Allow disjoint schema,” the “Map all column” option must be enabled;
otherwise, you will not see the option for “Allow disjoint schema.” CRM
Analytics will auto-match the fields with the same name and add new fields
if no matching field is found. The fields with no matching will have null
values for unmatched nodes; see the example in Figure 9-10.
Figure 9-10 Append result with “Allow disjoint schema” enabled
Join with Multiple Value Lookup

So far, in all our samples, we are joining nodes without enabling “Look Up
Multiple Values,” which means if there are many matches in the child
records, the system will randomly select a matched child record. But if we
enable “Look Up Multiple Values” in the join node, the system will pull all
matched child records into a field with multiple values.
Let’s create a new recipe to see how this works.
Figure 9-11 Join with Look Up Multiple Values
From Figure 9-11, the Account is the granular record, and Opportunity is
the child. An Account may have zero, one, or multiple opportunities.
Because we enable “Look Up Multiple Values,” CRM Analytics will pull all
opportunities and store them into a field so that the Opportunity ID may
have multiple values; see the last row in the figure.
Note Even if the multivalues look separated with a comma in the

Recipe preview, they are actually stored as multivalue, which means
each value is independent; you can filter/select by each value.
Salesforce Direct Data Queries

So far, we have discussed building CRM Analytics dashboards using
datasets stored in the CRM Analytics platform. All the data shown in the
dashboard or lens is not real time; it will only be updated when the recipe
runs by schedule for minutes, hourly, daily, or weekly.
However, in some scenarios, we need the dashboard to show real-time
data from Salesforce, and it’s great that CRM Analytics supports this; since
the data is pulled directly from Salesforce, there is no data transformation as
we can do using a recipe.
Hands-On
In this scenario, we need to show open opportunities from Salesforce, group
by Stage:
2. Create a new Dashboard; select Blank Dashboard.
3. Drag a Chart widget to Dashboard Designer and click the Chart icon
at the center.
4. Click the Salesforce Object tab, then find Opportunity and select it.
5. In the query, click + under Bars, select Stage, and add filter Closed =
false.
7. Drag the Table widget and perform the step as the chart widget.
8. Change to Table mode and select Values Table to show the data.
9. Select the following fields: Opportunity ID, Name, Account ID,

Amount, and Close Date, then add filter Closed = false.
10. As you can see, we cannot show the Account Name because the
Opportunity object only has the Account ID, so this is one of the
limitations because we can’t join the data as in the recipe.
11. Now you should see the dashboard as shown in Figure 9-12.
Figure 9-12 Dashboard with widget query data from Salesforce directly
Note
Every time the dashboard opens or the browser refresh or the “Return
to Initial View” button (next to the dashboard title) is clicked, it will
pull data from Salesforce, so it is live data.
As in Figure 9-12, when you click a stage from the chart, the selection
will broadcast and facet by other widgets that query from the same
object or child objects.
JSON
JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation and is commonly used in data
interchange language; however, we are not going to discuss JSON in depth
in this book. But as you have read earlier in this book, we mentioned JSON
many times. So, what is the relationship between JSON and CRM
Analytics? Most CRM Analytics assets are stored in JSON format.
Although JSON is a subset of the JavaScript programming language, the
good thing is that it is pretty friendly to human eyes; we do not need an
extra tool to generate or decode it.
Dashboard and Lens

Open a dashboard or lens and hit Ctrl+E (for Windows OS) or Command+E
(for Mac OS) to switch from the graphical interface to JSON mode, see
Figure 9-13. You can make changes to the dashboard or lens in JSON mode,
click the Done button to exit from JSON mode and save it, or use the
Cancel button to exit without changes.
Figure 9-13 A dashboard in JSON mode
If you make changes in JSON manually, when you hit Done, the system
will check if the JSON format is valid; otherwise, it will prompt for
“Invalid JSON”; you may delete or add a comma or quote, etc., to fix it. If
you cannot find the issue, you can copy and paste it into a text editor (such
as Notepad++) as a backup, then hit the Cancel button to redo and edit the
dashboard JSON.
You may also see the “Invalid JSON” error with some messages, which
may be caused by some dependency issues or missing items, such as a step
or query is deleted or renamed but is still used in a widget, see Figure 9-14;
manually renaming a step in JSON mode will not rename the step in the
widget automatically; therefore, the system will not exit from JSON mode
as well.
Figure 9-14 Invalid JSON error
Recipe
When we build a recipe using the graphical interface and produce the
nodes, CRM Analytics will store it in JSON format. You can download the
recipe into a JSON format file on the local computer (see Figure 9-15),
open the file with a text editor to edit the JSON, and upload it back to
overwrite the existing recipe.
It is always best practice to back up the original JSON file downloaded
before making changes, then store the updated file as a new JSON file.
Figure 9-15 Upload and download recipe as a JSON file
Ideally, you do not need to update the recipe in JSON manually; however, it
would be useful and faster to edit the recipe JSON for scenarios, such as
mass adding fields to multiple nodes or removing fields that no longer exist.
Another scenario for downloading a JSON file is to back up a working
recipe locally.
Dataset
The Dataset’s Extended Metadata File is also stored in JSON format. You
make changes to the dataset metadata by exploring the dataset and editing
the field, such as changing the number format; the changes will be stored in
the Extended Metadata File.
To download the Extended Metadata File, edit the dataset (not explore),
and look for the Extended Metadata File at the upper right (see Figure 9-
16), download the file to your local computer, then use a text editor to open
and change the JSON file. You can replace the Extended Metadata File by
uploading the edited JSON file.
As mentioned earlier, it is always a good practice to back up the original
JSON file before making any changes.
Figure 9-16 Download and upload the Extended Metadata File
SAQL
Same with JSON, we have discussed SAQL many times in this book. While
JSON is used in CRM Analytics to store dashboards and other configuration
items using industry standard format, SAQL is CRM Analytics’ proprietary
query language. If you come from a Salesforce developer or technical
background, please do not relate SAQL with SOQL, SOSL, or SQL.
SAQL stands for Salesforce Analytics Query Language. CRM Analytics
uses SAQL to query the dataset and produce the result in the widget for a
dashboard or lens. When you build a widget with clicks in the dashboard
designer, CRM Analytics builds the SAQL at the back end. You can see the
query by clicking Show Details from the widget, then selecting the “View
more details” icon and the “Final Query” tab, see Figure 9-17.
Figure 9-17 Sample of SAQL behind a dashboard widget
Let us walk through each line from the preceding SAQL:

First Line: Load data from the Dataset
Second Line: Group data by Account.Type field
Third Line: Project Account.Type field and number of records for each
Account.Type
Fourth Line: Order the data loaded by Account.Type field in ascending
order
Fifth Line: Limit only for 2000 lines
We can also use SAQL when building a dashboard; let us open the
Global Account dashboard that we built in earlier chapters:
1. Click the Edit button or hit the “e” key.
2. Click the number widget and click the pencil icon at the bottom to edit
the widget.
3. Click the Query Mode icon at the upper right of the lens window. You
should see something similar to JSON as follows:
q = load "Open_Opportunities_more_than_0";
q = group q by all;
q = foreach q generate count(q) as 'A';
q = limit q 2000;
4. Let us add a filter after load:
q = load "Open_Opportunities_more_than_0";
q = filter q by 'StageName' == "Closed Won";
q = group q by all;
q = foreach q generate count(q) as 'A';
q = limit q 2000;
5. Click the Run Query button; you should now see the result change to
show only the count of Closed Won opportunities.
6. Click the Update button, and the widget will be updated with SAQL.
Because the widget has been updated using SAQL, we are no longer
able to configure the widget using a click, but we have to use SAQL.
If you go to the dashboard JSON by pressing Ctrl+E or Command+E,
you will find the SAQL for the query that is used by the widget:
"query": "q = load

\"Open_Opportunities_more_than_0\";\nq = filter q
by 'StageName' == \"Closed Won\";\nq = group q by
all;\nq = foreach q generate count(q) as 'A';\nq =
limit q 2000;",
Binding and Custom Query

When building CRM Analytics dashboards, we often need to give our users
more flexibility when exploring our dashboards, such as using the same
widget and grouping by different fields, such as Region, Type, or Status.
Typically, we need to have multiple widgets, and each has a different
grouping. However, we have limited space for a dashboard, and it is not
lovely to have too many widgets in a dashboard. With binding, we can use a
widget and let users switch the grouping based on their selection.
When we drag a widget to the dashboard designer and select a field,
without our awareness, CRM Analytics creates a “query” at the back end to
power the widget; you can check this by flipping the dashboard to JSON
mode; this is the standard step that auto-creates for the widget. But we can
also manually create a query, select a dataset, group, and filter as necessary,
and then drag the query created into the widget that has no query yet.
The other type of query is called Custom Query; with this query, we can
apply our own defined values, including filters, groups, measures, order,
and limits. We can use this query to facet other widgets using binding. To
make it easier for you to understand both binding and static queries, let us
have a hands-on that covers both in an exercise.
Hands-On Binding and Custom Query

1. Open CRM Analytics.
2. Create a new dashboard and select Blank Dashboard.

3. Click the “Create Query” button at the upper-right panel.
4. Click the “Create Custom Query” link at the bottom left of the window,
see Figure 9-18.
Figure 9-18 Create Custom Query
5. This exercise depends on your dataset fields, but for this sample, I will
enter the following details:
a. Change the label at the center from “New Custom Query” to
“Static_Group.”
b. Add the following to the table, see Figure 9-19.

Figure 9-19 New Custom Query
6. Click the “Done” button.
7. Notice that a new static query called “Static_Group” has been added.
8. Drag a toggle widget to the upper left in Dashboard Designer.
9. Drag the static query created to the toggle widget; now you should see
two values in the toggle: Account Type and Stage.
10. Select the widget, click the Query tab at the right, and select “Single
selection (required).”
11. Drag a chart widget to the dashboard designer.
12. Click the “Chart” icon inside the widget.
13. Select an Opportunity dataset and it must have the Account Type and
Stage fields.
14. Select Account.Type as the grouping.
16. Save the dashboard as “binding.”, see Figure 9-20.

Figure 9-20 A dashboard with toggle and chart widgets
17. Switch the dashboard to preview mode, but when you click the toggle,
the chart grouping is not changed because we have not linked the
toggle with the chart. Next, we need to create a binding for the chart
to use the value from the selected toggle.
18. Switch back the chart to edit mode (hit the “e” key), click the chart,
and click the “Advanced Editor” button below the Widget tab.
19. Under the Widget tab, look for “columnMap” under that widget, and
delete the whole group of columnMap, as columnMap does not
support binding.
20. Click the Query tab and do the same to delete the whole group of
columnMap.
21. On the left panel, select Source Query = “Static_Group_1” and Source
Data, as shown in Figure 9-21, and Interaction Type = “Selection.”
Figure 9-21 Advanced Interaction Editor
22. Click the Copy button and change “Account.Type” to

{{cell(Static_Group_1.selection, 0,
\"Value\").asString()}} under groups and orders.
23. Click the Save button, and it will go back to the dashboard edit mode.
24. Hit “e” to switch to Preview mode. Now, let us try to change the
toggle to Stage, and you should see the chart now grouped by Stage,
see Figure 9-22.
Figure 9-22 Binding in action
25. Notice that “Modified” and an arrow appear next to the dashboard
title; this is the same when you filter or facet from the widget. You can
click the arrow to restore to the initial selection.
With this hands-on experience, I hope you understand the concept of

how binding works; you can make use of binding in many areas, such as
changing grouping, filters, sorting, chart type, comparing data, etc. The
preceding sample is binding using a selection, but we can also do binding
from a result, so the binding is based on the result from another query.
Widgets
We discussed most of the widgets available in CRM Analytics in Chapter 3,
but there are three more that have not been discussed, which are newer and
considered more advanced.
Input
There are a few settings that you can set for the input widget:
Input Type: Slider or Freeform Input
Display Format: None, Percent, Currency
Minimum Value, Maximum Value, and Start Value
Input Style
Different from other widgets, when you add an input widget, it will not
ask to link to a dataset. How to use this widget? Let us do a quick hands-on.
Scenario: Calculate a formula based on the number of rows divided by
two times the input value.
1. Create a new blank dashboard.
2. Add an input widget and set the following values:

a. Minimum Value = 1
b. Maximum Value = 100
c. Start Value = 10
3. Add a number widget and link it to a dataset.
4. Edit query of the number widget created in step 3.
5. Click the + button under Count of Rows.
6. Click “Add Column” and select Input, see Figure 9-23.

Figure 9-23 Add Column in a query
7. Select the input query that was created in step 2, then click the Add
button.
8. Repeat steps 5 and 6, then select Formula under “Add Column.”
9. You can add the Column Header, for example, Formula Result. Under
the formula, enter A/(2*B); note that A = Count of Rows and B =
value from the input widget. Click the Apply button, then the Update
button.
10. Add another number widget; do not create a new query (click 123
Number in the widget), but drag the query created in step 3 to this
new number widget.
11. You will see the same label and value as the existing Count of Rows
widget; look at the right “Measure Field” and change the drop-down
value from Count of Rows to Formula Result, then also change the
Title to Formula Result.
12. Click the Preview button to test; as you drag the slider, the formula
result will be updated, see Figure 9-24.
Figure 9-24 Input widget in action
The input widget can also be used in SAQL and binding, so that the query
result is filtered based on the selected input value.
Repeater
The concept of the Repeater widget is to show a query result as an
individual value. There are two areas to configure for a repeater widget:
1. In the widget itself, configure the “Items per row.”
2. In the repeater content, four types of widgets can be added: text,

number, chart, and image. Styles such as Columns, Row Height, and
Cell Spacing can also be configured.
Let’s have a quick hands-on exercise to use the Repeater widget.

Scenario: Create a dashboard showing the Opportunity Total Amount
for each Account in gauge charts; the target for each Account is 1,000,000.
1. Create a new blank dashboard.
2. Add a repeater widget and click the Repeater icon at the center of the
widget.
3. The system will create a query; for this example, I will group by
Account Name and change the Bar Length to the Sum of Amount.
4. Click the Done button, and we will be in the Editing Repeater Content
window.
5. Change the Columns to 3.
6. Add a Text widget, remove the default “Add text…,” click the “Add
Query Data” button, select Account Name from the “Dynamic Text
Field,” and click the Done button. To make it look better, change the
text color to dark red; you need to select the [Account_Name], then
select the color.
7. Add a Chart widget to the repeater content; change the chart widget to
occupy the whole repeater, which is three boxes in width with four
boxes in height; and change the chart type to Gauge. Notice that the
available charts here are fewer than the standard chart widget.
8. Set the Title = Total Amount, Title Font Size = 12, Range Values Min
= 0, and Max = 1,000,000.
9. Under the Gauge panel, uncheck “Show band range” and “Show band
label.”
10. Click Done at the upper-right corner to exit from the repeater content.
11. Resize the repeater content to occupy the whole dashboard width.
12. Update the “Items per row” under Content Layout to 6.
13. Here is your result, and you can switch to preview mode, see Figure
9-25.
Figure 9-25 Using the Repeater widget
Component
The Component widget is different from other widgets, where usually a
widget is only built within, and for a dashboard, however, a Component can
be used in multiple dashboards. So, you create a “mini dashboard” that
contains a collection of widgets and reuse it.
When you update a component, it will update all dashboards that “use”
the Component; by using the Component, the dashboard builder can
maintain dashboards more easily.
Let’s have a quick hands-on session using the Component widget.
Scenario: We need to create two similar dashboards, one for managers
and one for team leads; the one for managers needs to have additional
widgets.
1. From Analytics Studio, create a new Component, see Figure 9-26.
Figure 9-26 Creating a new Component
2. You will be landed in Component Designer; it looks very similar to

Dashboard Designer.
3. Add two charts using the same dataset.
4. Add a global filter to filter only closed won opportunities.
5. Save the Component as “Won Opportunity” – notice from Figure 9-27,

a component looks very similar to a dashboard, except the label at the
top left is called “Component Designer,” and you don’t see the
component icon at the left widget panel.
Figure 9-27 A ready-to-use Component
6. Create a new dashboard and name it “Dashboard for Team Leads.”
7. Drag the Component widget to Dashboard Designer and click the

Component icon at the center of the widget.
8. Select the “Won Opportunity” Component and click the Done button.
9. You should see charts added to the component.
10. Drag a toggle widget to use the same dataset and group it by Account
Type.
11. Drag a chart widget, change to Maps, select Location to Billing

Country and Projection Type to Equirectangular, and enable Auto
Zoom.
12. Click the Done button and switch to Preview mode.
Now, if you click the toggle widget, it will filter charts inside the
component, and the same thing happens when you click the chart inside the
component; it will filter other widgets, even if they are not part of the
component, but using the same dataset, see Figure 9-28.
Figure 9-28 A Dashboard with a Component
For the other dashboard for managers, switch the existing dashboard to edit
mode, clone the dashboard by clicking the arrow at the upper-right corner
and selecting “Clone in New Tab,” rename the dashboard to “Dashboard for
Manager,” and add more widgets as needed for the manager.
When you edit the Component, both dashboards will be updated, which
makes it simpler and easier to maintain the dashboards.
Summary
Now, we have reached the end of this chapter, which is also the end of this
book. I believe that by now, you have gathered basic skills in CRM
Analytics and the ability to build powerful dashboards for your clients or
your employer.
CRM Analytics is becoming popular as it is integrated well with
Salesforce and also has the ability to get data from external sources. With
Salesforce reporting and dashboard, you can only build a simple dashboard
with many limitations; however, with the CRM Analytics platform, the
power is limitless; you can build dashboards as per your creativity and also
give your users the power to analyze, and slicing data easier with
outstanding performance.
The more dashboards you build and the more challenges you face, the
more skill you will acquire; practice makes perfect.
One more thing before ending this book: The CRM Analytics
community is very powerful and massive; currently, it has more than 73,000
members. I would advise you to join the community:
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/trailblazer-
community/groups?tab=all. Click Log In with your Salesforce
credentials, and search for CRM Analytics. There is a lot of information on
Groups, from new features in every release, or you can ask questions about
the technical issues or best practices, and you can also answer questions
from other community members.
I wish you all the best in building awesome dashboards by applying the
new skills acquired, and see you around!
OceanofPDF.com
Index
A, B
Analytics Studio app
Application programming language (API)
C
Comma-separated values (CSV)
browse tab
dataset
fields panel
field type
mapping/reference
pencil icon
Sales Rep Quota
upload file button
CRM Analytics
analytics tab
components
apps
architecture
dashboards
dataset
lens
concepts/data integration
CSV files
dashboard
See Dashboard
dashboards
data manager
dataset
data sources
See Data sources
data visualization
definition
environment
JSON format
lens
license information
lightning page
mobile app
permissions
recipe
reports/dashboard features
Salesforce
See Salesforce platform
security
step-by-step instructions
Studio user interface
Customer relationship management (CRM)
See CRM Analytics
D
Dashboard
data source connection
exploring
See Exploring dashboards
faceting options
global filter/filter properties
layout
multiple datasets
pages
adoption/maintenance
dashboard tab
dataset pages
performance
sharing widget
templates
time series template
user permission
widgets
chart
container
date field
filters
image widget
link
list widget
navigation
number
queries
range
record values/compare/pivot table
text style/widget style
toggle
Dashboards
binding/custom query
binding
Custom Query
designer/field
details
interaction editor
preview mode
toggle and chart widgets
widgets
component
gauge charts
input
query
repeater
Dataflow
conversion
older version
save/run button
source information
Wave/Einstein Analytics
Data Manager
accessing data
connections tab
data assets
data usage
external data
jobs monitor
recipe/dataflows
user interface
Datasets
actions configuration
display fields
record action
types
extended metadata file
configuration
edit field values
fields panel
format numbers
grain label
hide fields
rename
set default fields
fields
information/actions
properties
replace/restore
Data sources
API enables
existing datasets
external data source
multiple connections
salesforce trend report
E, F, G, H, I
Exploring dashboards
annotations
feature
hands-on
icon
dashboard inspector
details
features
icons
performance bottlenecks
query details
explore action
hands-on
learning process
Salesforce
SAQL
set notifications
features
lightning
monitor
number widget
share widgets
show details action
Extended metadata (XMD)
J, K
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
dashboard/lens
error message
extended metadata file
upload/download recipe
L, M, N, O, P, Q
Lens
analyze data
chart mode
clip/designer button
clone
collection
completeness
conversational exploration
CRM Analytics apps
creation
run app button
sharing
types
favorite feature
present mode
quantity/quality
save button
sharing data
download data
posting/feed
URL tab
subscription
values table
Lightning app page
home page
dashboard
hands-on
properties
recipe/dashboard
recipe pulls data
options
record page
account page
dashboard
dashboard modification
hands-on
properties
R
Recipe
aggregate node
append node
backup/restore JSON file
dataflow
data transformation
filter node
hands-on
input data
join
connecting node
cross join
datasets
inner join
left join
LookUp
nodes
outer join
right join
types
objects/fields
opportunities
output node
in progress
search dataset
Transform node
update node
user interface
version history
Recipes
nodes
append node
clean duplicate
connecting nodes
custom formula
deleting links
drop columns
duplicate names
edit attributes
filter node
formula editor
input nodes
joining nodes
options
transform node
value lookup
S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z
Salesforce analytics query language (SAQL)
CRM Analytics
Salesforce platform
direct data queries
dashboard
stage
integration
Lightning page
local vs. external data
retrieve data
sharing inheritance
trend report
benefits
configuration
dashboard
fields
hands-on
monitor trend progress
opportunity report
schedule report
snapshot date
trend job progress detail
Security
apps level sharing
learning process
permission set assignment
predicate
definition
exception
flatten node properties
flatten transform
hands-on
role hierarchy access
syntax
sharing inheritance
Sharing inheritance
configuration
coverage assessment
definition
enable option
standard objects
user process
OceanofPDF.com

Getting Started With Salesforce CRM Analytics 2E - Johan Yu

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Getting Started With Salesforce CRM Analytics 2E - Johan Yu

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Getting Started With Salesforce CRM Analytics 2E - Johan Yu

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Johan Yu

Getting Started with Salesforce CRM

ISBN 979-8-8688-0478-6 e-ISBN 979-8-8688-0479-3

© Johan Yu 2019, 2024

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service

This Apress imprint is published by the registered company APress Media,

1. CRM Analytics: Introduction

CRM Analytics is a visualization platform from Salesforce that allows you

Getting the Right Term

Integration with Salesforce

Why CRM Analytics?

CRM Analytics Report and Dashboard

Environment and License

Note To check if your Salesforce environment has CRM Analytics

Figure 1-2 CRM Analytics license information in Salesforce Company Information

CRM Analytics Permissions

Figure 1-3 CRM Analytics licenses on a user

Navigating CRM Analytics

CRM Analytics Components

Understanding Data Manager

Figure 1-6 Accessing Data Manager from Analytics Studio

Figure 1-7 Data Manager user interface

Recipes and Dataflows

Figure 1-9 Connections user interface

2. Data Preview: Preview data for selected columns.

Getting Data into CRM Analytics

Figure 2-1 A few options to create a new dataset

Figure 2-2 Concept and sample of data integration in CRM Analytics

Hands-On: CSV Data Load

Employee Id Quota Quarter Quota Amount

3. Select CSV File.

5. Click Next to continue.

7. Click the Upload File button; there is no need to change anything on

9. Let’s confirm the dataset created by going back to Analytics Studio,

Figure 2-5 The new dataset is available under the Datasets

Here are a few items that we learned from this hands-on:

Local Salesforce External Salesforce

Whether local or external Salesforce, you need to run/schedule data

Tip You can create multiple “SFDC_LOCAL” connections, but an

Salesforce Trend Report

Hands-On: Trend a Salesforce Report

Figure 2-15 Trend Dashboard

External Data API

We discussed how to get data into CRM Analytics in Chapter 2. We had a

Figure 3-1 The older version of the Dataflow

In some instances, the conversion may not be smooth, so you need to

Figure 3-2 Recipe created from a Dataflow conversion

3. Save and Run

Recipe User Interface

Creating a Recipe from Scratch

3. Determine filters for each object:

4. Determine fields to extract from each object:

Hands-On: Create a Recipe

3. Name the Recipe by clicking the Save button; name it Open

5. Select only “Salesforce Objects” at the upper-left drop-down box, then

6. Click the Next button to continue.

9. Perform the same for Lookup from User to joinOptyAcct to get

To summarize the preceding hands-on exercise, we create a new recipe

Backup and Restore Recipe