Salesforce Basics – Create Salesforce Custom List Views and Increase Productivity

You could see Salesforce List Views as mini Salesforce Reports. Because List Views work somewhat similar to Reports in a way that you can set filter criteria and thus focus on the Records that matter most. The biggest benefit is that Users can work directly from List Views without having to open individual Records unless required. Plus, Users can create their own custom List Views without any admin support. Let’s look at the different types of List Views and how they support daily productivity.

Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce

Salesforce List View Types

There are three main types of List Views, the Table View, the Kanban View and the Split View.

In the old Salesforce Classic days, we only had Table Views available. With the introduction of Lightning Experience, Salesforce added Kanban Views. And now, we also have Split Views which were originally limited to Service Cloud viewing features, but is now generally available to pretty much any Salesforce Cloud. This gives Users different ways of working with their records depending on what they need to accomplish.

Table View

List of records with inline editing capabilities of single or even multiple records at a time.

Kanban View

Summarized views allowing Users to manage things like their sales pipeline. Kanban Views can be displayed in different types of groupings such as Status, Industry, Priority, and others.

Split View

Users can work on individual records. At the same time they can still see a list of remaining records on the side, or new records being added. It’s almost like working through a to do list.

As you can see each type of List View has a different purpose, but they also have different editing features.

Salesforce List View Controls

List View Filters

You can add filter criteria just like in Reports and only display records that matter.

List View Charts

Adding a visible display of the results can provide a different perspective. Just clicking on the chart icon will open a pre-defined chart. You can choose different chart displays or even create an entirely new chart.

List View Search

When you have a long list of records in your List View but need to find a particular record, Salesforce now gives you a search field just for the List View right in front of you.

List View Inline Editing

Users can edit single or multiple records right from the List View. Kanban Views have even more editing options. Simply hover over the field and a pencil icon will appear.

🌶️ Beware editing of multiple records at a time! This can lead to accidental changes which are hard to identify. Admins can choose to turn off “Mass Edits from Lists” on relevant User Profiles or Permission Sets. This is particular relevant for data clean ups.

🌶️ List Views which contain a mix of Record Types are not editable. Either add a filter for the Record Type or create multiple List Views by Record Type.

Data Security and Sharing of Salesforce List Views

Any data security settings always apply! It doesn’t matter how Users look at records, whether it’s through Reports, List Views, Dashboards (except Static Dashboards), Search Results and so on. If they don’t have visibility to certain records, they won’t get them just by changing their view or display. 🤓

The same applies to sharing. Users can share List Views they created themselves by selecting the relevant sharing options. What they share is the design of the list view not the data. The results of records always depend on the type of record access set up in your Salesforce org.

🌶️ Beware proliferation! If you enable Users to create their own custom List Views your Salesforce org may end up with loads of redundant and irrelevant List Views. This can cause confusion and inconsistency. Hence, Admins can choose to turn off the “Manage Public List Views” permission on User Profiles or Permission Sets. Especially in larger organizations, List Views are often pre-created by Admins or by a small selection of Users, such as Team Managers.

And now, let’s take a look at List Views together and understand how you can build your own custom List Views specific to your business needs. You can follow along from your own Trailhead Playground or Developer Org.

VIDEO TUTORIAL WALK-THROUGH SCRIPT

  1. Open the Sales app and go to the Opportunity tab. By default you will see the Recently Viewed list view. 
  2. Let’s select All Opportunities for now. Remember you can use the pin icon to make this your default view if you prefer this over Recently Viewed. 
  3. By default you will see the standard table like list view. 
  4. On the top right you will find a little table icon which you can expand. This is where you can choose your display options. 
  5. Let’s select Kanban which gives you the same results but with more information such as the process bar and sub-totals. Your records display as action cards under the related category, in this case the status. This little drop-down arrow allows you to edit, delete or change the owner of this particular record. 
  6. This Kanban is grouped by stage which means if you want to edit the stage you can simply drag and drop the opportunity action card. Hover over the card until your mouse turns into a little black cross, then click your mouse and drag the card over. It automatically updates the number of records and sub-totals.
  7. You can manage how the grouping and sub-totals display. Go to the gear icon and expand. We will look at the other options shortly. For now go down to Kanban settings and select. You will see a pop-up with two drop-downs. Under the first one you can choose from the numerical fields available on your opportunity records. Here, we have two available. Let’s leave this as is. Under Group you can choose from picklist fields or the owner field. This will change the way how your process bar will look. Feel free to play around with this.
  8. Let’s switch back to the table view. We want to see how you can create your own list view. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating it from the table or kanban view, this is more a personal preference. 
  9. On the top right go to the gear icon and expand. You have various options, such as new or clone the existing and simply edit into a new version. 
  10. Select New for this example. Let’s call this one “My Pipeline”. Click into List API name which will populate automatically. 
  11. Under Who sees this list view you can choose to keep it to yourself, or share with everyone or choose from groups of people based on their role. We will go with the first one for now and click Save.
  12. The list has been created and now we need to add some filters to make sure it includes exactly what we want. In this list we want to see opportunities that belong to yourself and that haven’t been closed yet, meaning they are still in the pipeline. 
  13. You’ll notice that the filter pane on the right is already open and contains one filter. This comes up automatically. You can click on this filter and change the selection if you wanted to. However we’ll leave this as is. When you look at the Stage column you’ll notice that closed opportunities are listed as well as we haven’t added the filter yet. Since we want to see open opportunities only, we will add another filter on the Stage field to exclude closed opportunities. 
  14. On the right we’ll click Add Filter. This opens a pop-up on the left. From the top dropdown you’ll select the field which contains your filter criteria. In this case we’ll scroll down to Stage and select. 
  15. We’ll change the Operator to Not Equal To. And from the Value drop down we’ll select Closed Won and Closed Lost and then click Done. Once we save this you’ll get to see opportunities that belong to yourself and do not have the status closed won or closed lost. 
  16. Now click Save and notice how the list applies your filter settings. Let’s close the filter pane, click on the filter icon. 
  17. Let’s take a look at the column settings. Go to the Gear icon again and go down to Select Fields to display. On the right you can see the fields or columns displayed already. If you don’t want some of these, for example the Alias field, select it and click the arrow pointing to the left. On the left you can select fields you’d like to add as columns, for example the Delivery Status field. Select it and click the arrow pointing to the right. It’s automatically added to the end. However, you can use the arrows on the right to change the order, select and click the arrow up or down. 
  18. When you’re done, click save. Your new list view has been added to the list view dropdown and can also be viewed as a Kanban view.
  19. Switch to Kanban. And one more thing. Notice the chart icon, you can even add a chart view on top of your list or kanban views. 

And now go ahead and try one on your own. The more you play around with this the more you deepen your expertise. 🤓

Let me know in the comments what type of list view you created. I’d love to know!

WHAT ELSE…

This video tutorial is part of our Complete Salesforce Certification Courses. They cover everything from Salesforce Basics to advanced Salesforce features and functionalities every Salesforce professional should know about.

We provide you with different types of study materials, so you can choose what works best for you. This includes well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooks and realistic Practice Exams.

And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, I’d recommend to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: