Knowledge Base

In this article, we’ll explore how to use inline editing in reports, along with key considerations to keep in mind when making these updates.

Inline editing is the ability to change the value of a field without needing to navigate to an individual record. This translates into being able to update record values from somewhere other than the record page, usually a list of records, such as a list view or report. The ability to do this has multiple benefits including fewer clicks and greater user adoption of features. 

When this functionality was initially made available as part of the Summer ’21 release, it was great to play around with, but there were a limited number of field types that could be edited. Salesforce has made considerable effort to improve upon this, and in following releases, many more fields became available, as you’ll discover below!

Standard Salesforce reports are something every admin and most users are accustomed to building day-in and day-out to visualize the data in various ways. 

Reports represent the analytics base of Salesforce, as well as a dynamic, user-friendly, and much prettier alternative to pivot tables and many Excel formulas. Until recently, they’ve been the key way to view Salesforce data. However, reports only allow you to view data, not amend it.

One of the most frequent user questions I bump into is definitely “How can I export my Opportunities to update each one in Excel?”.

This presents several problems. For a start, we don’t want users editing data outside of Salesforce! Second, the ‘Export Reports’ permission does not offer granular control over which objects can be exported, therefore with this permission, a user could export any report and its data if they had access to the report. In order to avoid a possible data leak, the alternative was to recommend a list view be used to update various Opportunity fields.

With the right permissions assigned, users are able to edit certain fields for up to 200 records at a time.

There are a few drawbacks to prompting users to use list views:

Check out the other limitations based on field type and object here.

The limitations around list views, as well as a huge demand to improve native reporting capabilities, did make inline editing within Salesforce reports a dream come true. 

With the release of this new functionality, Salesforce upped their user experience game considerably and capabilities have been expanded with subsequent releases. Hopefully, more improvements are to come, but that remains to be seen.

Enabling Inline Editing for Salesforce reports entails just checking one checkbox within the Reports and Dashboards Settings page in setup. Permissions to view and edit records and fields are conditioned by the usual mechanisms, respectively object and field access, as well as layout visibility.

So even if you turn on the setting, your data is safe and sound as this functionality will be completely dependent on the users’ already existing level of access.

Perhaps the first use case that comes to mind is editing Opportunities as if you were a Sales Rep. With multiple Opportunities in their pipeline, your colleagues in the Sales team might be the happiest to hear that they can easily make tweaks while reviewing their items. Picklist fields such as Stage or even Opportunity next steps can be amended by whoever has access to the Opportunity, the fields, and has them on the layout. You can find a list of all currently available data types which can be edited here. 

Additionally, most objects are available for inline editing as well, making this a functionality applicable to all teams using Salesforce – from Sales to Support and Marketing. 

Not only are most field types available for inline editing within reports, but the feature itself can also easily be enabled with the click of a button every time inline editing is needed! 

As you noticed above, multiple values across different records can be modified and will be committed to the database only after the user clicks Save. Additionally, fields dependent on any of the other fields being changed will be displayed as “Pending” and the value will reappear once editing is done or the page is refreshed. Even though I didn’t edit the amounts, the sub-totals do show as Pending as other changes might have impacted the calculation in the end. 

One of the benefits of using reports is that user adoption is likely already pretty high. Your users are already familiar with creating and using reports, therefore adoption of inline edit for reports should be a piece of cake. It’s going to add extra functionality to something they’re already doing, but with fewer clicks! 

Updating the ‘Next Step’ on an Opportunity might prove crucial for Sales Managers to know exactly how the deal will be progressing. Instead of opening individual Opportunities and searching for the field on the layout, Sales Reps can now open the report from their team’s dashboard and enter their notes while even making use of a chart to better filter records.

For more complex organizations, another huge advantage will definitely be the ability to better isolate data with the use of cross-filters in reports, which is not an option when using list views.

Note: Another thing reports and list views have now in common is that editable fields will have the pencil appearing when hovering over them, while non-editable ones will display a lock. This will ensure that users won’t spend time trying over and over again to make a change.

Inline editing in reports isn’t just for the Sales team! The inline field edit can be a time saver for Support and Marketing teams as well. For example, if the Marketing team is using Salesforce Campaigns, there’s surely at least one dashboard used to track performance or perhaps other KPIs. 

With this new functionality, marketers don’t have to drill down into the individual records anymore and then return to the report. Instead, they can make adjustments to the key fields as they go.

Note: Fields used within reports as groupings are not available for inline editing.

This feature is also hugely beneficial for myself and my fellow admins. When troubleshooting different automations triggered by value changes, such as a boolean or perhaps a date, we typically use a report to measure the impact by the number of records.

As long as the field permissions are in place and the field isn’t marked as read-only on the layout, records can be edited one by one to do such testing without having to open 20 tabs and switch between them – if that’s not making our lives easier, I don’t know what is. 

As with any functionality, there are a few considerations to keep in mind and to check when promoting this feature. Let’s go through a few of them:

You can edit a maximum of 12 fields per record and a maximum of 100 fields across the entire report before saving. 

Polymorphic fields are not supported and neither is the Opportunity Amount. 

Columns associated with junction objects, such as Campaign Member, are not supported either. 

Since things may change over time, make sure to take a look at the official documentation prior to making any implementation decisions.

Inline editing in reports is a powerful feature that can boost user adoption by allowing users to stay within Salesforce rather than relying on external tools like Excel.

If you’re new to Salesforce or want to dive deeper into Reports, be sure to explore Salesforce’s dedicated Trailhead modules for more learning opportunities.