Salesforce reports are powerful—but they’re typically limited to showing the current state of your data. If you’ve ever asked, “How did our case backlog evolve last month?” or “What did our pipeline look like at quarter’s start?” you’ve likely struggled to get a retroactive answer out of standard Salesforce reports. As soon as a record changes, the old data is lost; your reports are always up-to-date, but you lose critical historical insights.
That’s where Salesforce Reporting Snapshots become invaluable. Acting as a “time machine” for your data, Reporting Snapshots allow you to automate data capture over time, build historical data sets, and unlock true trend analysis—eliminating manual effort and minimizing risk of error.
Salesforce data is dynamic. For example, when a case status moves from “New” to “Closed,” it disappears from your open case reports. Traditionally, teams would run manual exports (e.g., to Excel) each week to keep a history—a process that wastes time and is error-prone.
Reporting Snapshots automate this process by “taking a picture” of a Salesforce report at scheduled intervals (like every Monday at 8am) and storing the frozen data in a custom object. This enables you to track how metrics change over days, weeks, months, or years.
Setting up a snapshot involves a few essential steps:
Build the Source Report: Decide which data you want to track and build a summary or matrix report (such as opportunities by stage, cases by status, etc.).
Create a Custom Object: This is where snapshot data will be stored—think of it as a historical log. Common fields include:
Setting up Reporting Snapshots in Salesforce typically takes less than 10 minutes, but the historical data you collect will compound in value over time. Whether your needs are simple or complex, Reporting Snapshots lay the foundation for advanced trend analysis and AI-powered insights.
If you’re ready to unlock deeper business intelligence and want help identifying the best metrics for your organization, or want to leverage AI tools for automated trend analysis, consider working with experts who can accelerate your journey.
From my initial call with Spencer through project implementation with John and Evan, my experience with the SOLVD team was excellent. They were quick to understand our business needs, clear when explaining the reasoning behind proposed solutions, transparent when reporting on progress and timeline, and all around enjoyable to work with. Would highly recommend and looking forward to continue working with them in the future!
SOLVD was very straight forward with everything needed to complete the project. No surprises, no issues, and cost was aligned with the estimate. They made implementation easy and quick.
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