CRM - it's all about the joins in the data right??

[REByers]

So why, oh why, oh why, is it impossible to report over field that contained linked data (such as the campaigns field).

I have some serious need to report over this field and other linked fields I have created, but cannot.

Surely this is a key feature of a CRM package?

[eNick]

So why, oh why, oh why, is it impossible to report over field that contained linked data (such as the campaigns field).

I have some serious need to report over this field and other linked fields I have created, but cannot.

Surely this is a key feature of a CRM package?

Surely it's a key feature of a reporting package, not a CRM packahge as such?

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what you mean by "report over"? Can you give an example of what you're trying to achieve?

[REByers]

I am trying to get the fields visible to report over. For example if you create a report on the accounts module the 'Member of' field is not available to report over.

Same with 'Reports to' in Contacts and 'Campaign' in Opportunities.

The same thing happen when you create custom fields of type 'relate'.

[eNick]

In which edition? Using which reporting tool?

For example, the built in reports module in Professional edition allows this as standard. Quoting from the user guide...

"To define a report, you first select a primary module and, if necessary, one or more
related modules. You can choose to include data from the related modules only when
applicable. You then specify additional filters to narrow down the data, and select the
columns that you want to display in the report.

For example, to run a report on all contacts and opportunities related to accounts, you
would choose Accounts as the primary module, and select contacts and opportunities
as related modules."

If you're using community edition, which 3rd party reporting module are you using?

[REByers]

Sorry, Enterprise version (5.0.0g), and using the built in reporting tool.

I can confirm that these fields do no appear in the list of fields that can be reported over in the reports module.

Thanks for the feedback so far, Rick

[eNick]

I suspect this is because the fields you mention, "reports to" and "member of" are self referencing relationships - ie. it's a relationship between accounts and accounts and a replationship between contacts and contacts. This requires very different SQL thn a normal module to module relationship does.

However, you could create an sql based report which would resolve the relationship with a correlated sub-query.

[REByers]

I guess this makes sense, except for the campaigns field in the Contacts and Leads modules.

Doesn't make my life easier trying to explaing to normal end users that they need to become SQL operators in order to gather information, which, to them, seems very straight forward.