the need for speed: building reports that fly

Building Reports That Fly

Sean Regan, salesforce.com, @SFDCSReganJohn Tan, salesforce.com, @johntansfdcIrena Miziolek, NTT CenterstanceJeannette Liu-Deza, NTT Centerstance

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Your company uses Salesforce/Force.com …

You are a developer or architect maintaining your org …

Slow reports return unreliable data that hurts user productivity

and leads to mistakes …

You need to make these reports faster and trusted …

Agenda - Building reports that fly!

1. Governance• Configuration Access• Sharing Access• Data Architecture

2. Frequency• Dashboard & Report Refreshes

3. Efficient Reports• Tuning Reports• Data Archiving/Aggregation

4. Customer Case Study

Sean ReganArchitect Evangelist@SFDCSregan

John C. TanArchitect Evangelist@johntansfdc

View Our Content On Developerforce

http://developer.force.com/architect

Irena Miziolek & Jeannette Liu-DezaTechnical & Solution ArchitectsNTT Centerstance

How Many Of You Have …?Run a Salesforce report … and waited forever?

1. Governance

Configuration access

Governance

Even Pilots Need Help

Restrict Report And List View Creation

Report & list view governance helps you …• Increase user adoption• Increase employee productivity• Decrease employee mistakes• Save money

Sharing Access

Governance

Architect Sharing Based On Business Requirements

Global Organization Sharing

What’s the impact of sharing access?

Data Architecture

Governance

Is the correct end result really enough?

Understand Your Schema

When It Isn’t Necessary, Get Rid Of it.

Architect Your Data Model For Performance

VS.

2. Frequency

Dashboard/Report Refreshes

Frequency

More Is Not Always Better

Push Data To Users: Force.com Streaming API

Scheduled Reports

Visualforce Pages

Workflow Email Alerts

Chatter Feeds

Key Takeaways✓ Governance ensures efficiency & accuracy✓ Know your object model✓ Push data to users to drive workflow✓ Architect your sharing model based on business requirements

3. Efficient reports

Efficient reports

• Tuning reports• Data archiving/aggregation

Tuning reports

Efficient reports

What is the Force.com query optimizer?Generates the most efficient query based on:▪ Statistics▪ Indexes / Skinny Tables▪ Sharing

Best Practice: One+ Selective Filter Per report

Selective Filters: Four Components1. Filters - add filters to reduce data2. Operators - avoid 2 inefficient filter operators3. Thresholds – ensure filter meets selectivity threshold4. Index Creation - index the filter field

Filters Reduce The Scope Of Reports

Fields That Often Make Good Filters▪ Date fields▪ Picklists▪ Fields with wide and even distribution of values

Non-Deterministic Formula Fields Aren’t Good FiltersCan’t indexFor example:

▪ References related object▪ CASE(MyUser__r.UserType__c,1,”Gold”,”Silver”)▪ Create separate field and use trigger to populate

Force.com SOQL Best Practices: Nulls and Formula Fields

Use Selective Operators In Filters

Avoid Negative OperatorsQuery for reciprocal values instead

✖ NOT EQUALS (“closed”)✔ EQUALS (“open”, “in progress”)

Avoid Filters With A Leading % WildcardCONTAINS ‘%searchstring%’

✖ CONTAINS (“district”) – equivalent to LIKE ‘%district%’✔ STARTS WITH (“district”) – equivalent to LIKE ‘district%’

Ensure Filters Meet Selectivity Thresholds

Standard Index Selectivity ThresholdA standard index is selective when it returns:▪ < 30% of the first 1 million records▪ < 15% of returned records after the first 1 million records▪ No more than 1 million total records

Standard Index Selectivity ThresholdSelectivity threshold for Created Date index

Standard Index Selectivity ThresholdFor 750,000 Account records▪ < 30% of the first 1 million records▪ 750,000 x .30 = 225,000

Standard Index Selectivity ThresholdFor 3,500,000 Account records▪ < 30% of the first 1 million records▪ < 15% of returned records after the first 1 million records

▪ (1,000,000 x .30) + (2,500,000 x .15) = 675,000

Standard Index Selectivity ThresholdOver 5,600,000 Account records▪ No more than 1 million records▪ 1,000,000

Custom Index Selectivity ThresholdA custom index is selective when it returns:▪ < 10% of the first million records▪ < 5% of returned records after the first million records▪ No more than 333,333 records

Create Indexes Selective Filter Fields

Trusted traveler program

Standard Fields With Indexes▪ Id▪ Name▪ OwnerId▪ CreatedDate▪ SystemModstamp▪ RecordType

▪ Master-detail fields▪ Lookup fields

Custom Indexes• Discover common filter conditions• Determine selective fields in those conditions• Request custom indexes

A filter condition is selective when …

… it uses an optimizable operator… it meets the selectivity threshold… selective fields have indexes

Skinny Tables: Last Resort For Non-optimizable Reports

Skinny Table▪ Single Object. No cross-object joins▪ Maximum of 100 fields▪ Not aggregate/summary data. 1:1 recount between source

and skinny▪ Skinny updated automatically▪ Minimal joins▪ salesforce.com will analyze and create

Tell me more about skinny tables … Webinar: Inside the Force.com Query Optimizer

Data Archiving/Aggregation

Efficient reports

Data ArchivingReduce the # of records the query optimizer needs to consider▪ Determine strategy during design phase▪ Move older records into a different object▪ Soft deletes still count towards record count

Data Aggregation▪ Report on historical data▪ Save tabular or summary report to a custom object▪ Use Analytic Snapshots or Batch Apex▪ Gists:

• Batch Apex Class - https://gist.github.com/johntansfdc/7044473• Trigger - https://gist.github.com/johntansfdc/7044570

Key Takeaways✓ Reports should contain at least one selective filter✓ A filter is selective if…

✓ the field is indexed ✓ the filter does not use an inefficient operator ✓ the filter meets the selectivity theshold

✓ Implement data archiving/aggregation strategies

Introducing customer case

Irena Miziolek & Jeannette Liu-DezaTechnical & Solution ArchitectsNTT Centerstance

AgendaWhat’s the problem

How to troubleshoot

What’s the solution

Client

ChallengeReports & dashboards timing out

Errors in Data Loads

Information Overload

In the beginning….Note: no real data is used in this presentation

Account information is very slow: Sales Rep

Sales information is too overwhelming: Sales Rep

Dashboards are slow or timing out: Execs

Approach to troubleshooting

Reports and dashboards are slow or timing out

Storage usage

Reduce data volume

Reduce data volume

Batch jobs

Data Sampling Frequency

Compound keys

Workbench

Workbench, Deleted records

Update instead of delete/reload

Full Nightly Delete & Reload

Update/Insert

Upsert

Data loads failing

Error logs

Rollup summary fields

A littlehousekeeping

Report tuning

Governance

In the end….

Account information is timely: Sales Rep

Sales information is useful: Sales Rep

Dashboards are responsive: Execs

Storage usage: greatly reduced

Session Summary

Building Reports That Fly• Govern users access to reports and data• Manage reporting frequency• Add at least one selective filter per report

Related DevZone Hands-on, Mini-workshop

Wednesday 1:00-1:45 PM

Thursday 1:00-1:45 PM

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