Chapter 15. Combining Reports

When you create a new report in CRM On Demand, you select a subject area in Answers On Demand. This subject area contains a set of columns from which you can pull data into your report. Most of the time, the subject area contains everything you need for a report. Sometimes you will find that the subject area doesn’t quite give you access to all the data that you want in your report. Other times you might find that the data columns are there but, due to the configuration or data structure, you cannot get the data into a single report the way you want. It is those situations that bring us to combining reports.

If you are database savvy, you know something about joins between database tables. Typically, if a relationship does not exist in your database, you can create inner and outer joins to build those relationships. CRM On Demand is a hosted environment. The database does not reside on a server within your company or on your computer, so you cannot access the tables directly. The database techniques that you may be accustomed to using, such as adding and dropping tables and creating joins, are simply not available to you. You do not have direct access to the database structure of CRM On Demand.