Organize your CRM Online Solution by Categorizing Reports

Reports are a handy tool in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2011. They provide great insight into the Marketing, Sales, Service, and Administrative areas of your organization. As the number of reports you create grows, you may find proper categorization quite helpful. This will allow you to organize different report types into logical groupings and make it easier to find the report you need fast.

By default, there are four categories available in Microsoft CRM Online under which you can file your reports:

• Administrative Reports
• Marketing Reports
• Sales Reports
• Service Reports

System administrators can create new categories if needed (not covered in this walkthrough).

In this walkthrough, we are going to categorize a custom report called “Active Opportunities by Owner.” This task requires permissions found in all default security roles in CRM Online.

1. In the Workplace module, click Reports in the left navigation pane (see below). Select the report you wish to categorize by checking the box next to the name. In the ribbon, click the Edit button.

2. When the Report form opens (see below), scroll down to the Categorization section. In the Categories field, click the … (ellipsis points) button.

3. Once the Select Values dialog box appears (see below), notice that there are four default categories from which to choose. For the purposes of this walkthrough, select Sales Reports, click the >> (right arrows) button to move Sales Reports into the Selected Values list, and click OK to close the dialog box.

4. On the Report form (see below), verify the Categories field says “Sales Report”. Next, click the Save and Close icon in order to save the category selection. 

The report has now been categorized. In the Reports view, in the view selector, select Sales Reports (see below). The “Active Opportunities by Owner” report now appears in the Sales grouping.

If you wish to learn more about Reports in CRM Online, such as generating new reports through the Report Wizard or creating custom categories, xRM.com invites you to sign up for our CRM Success Portal. Here you will find many tutorial videos featuring various tasks and functions in CRM Online.