Inline Editing for Salesforce Reports
Hello Trailblazers,
Up until now, reporting was primarily a view-only tool. You mainly built Salesforce reports to visualize your data in different forms, slice and dice the data, add charts to it, and build dashboards. But as we think about what’s next for reports, what if we were to reimagine the entire concept of reporting? Is reporting primarily a tool to view your data? Or can we make it a single-stop shop where you can act on your data as well? What if we build functionality that lets you edit your data directly from a report? Perhaps in the future, we could also add annotations to parts of your report? The annotations could notify other teammates of a discrepancy or change and even create new tasks and events. The possibilities are endless.
With this vision in mind, we came up with Inline Editing on Lightning Reports. As some of you may have already seen, the Summer ’21 release introduced Inline Editing for Text, Number, and Checkbox fields. Currently, we only allow single field edits, and the report refreshes after every edit.
But this is only the beginning! We have an entire roadmap for Inline Editing ahead of us (safe harbor).
In the Winter ’22 release, we plan to include more data types for Inline Editing, including Lookup, Date, and Picklists. And eventually, we want to support multi-field editing.
Let’s dive into each of these. A Lookup is a Salesforce relationship that connects two objects together using a reference field. Reference fields can be added to the standard, custom, and external objects. The behavior of a lookup differs from the other field types because it can refer to the current entity or another parent entity. For example, in the standard Opportunities report, both the Opportunity Name field and the Account Name field are of the type Lookup. To make things intuitive for end-users, we’re designing Inline Editing so users can change Opportunity Name as text while changing Account Name as a lookup from a list of existing values.
For Date fields, different regions and locales have different formats for displaying dates. For example, the US uses MM/DD/YYYY but Italy’s format is DD/MM/YYYY. We’ve adapted our picker component based on these differences so you can easily edit the date fields in your own locale.
Regarding Picklists, in Winter ‘22, we will support all types except controlling and dependent picklists. Since a report is built across multiple objects, you’ll be able to Inline Editing picklist values across different record types.
Why isn’t a certain field editable in my report?
If a field isn’t Inline Editable (shows a lock icon on hover), it could be due to the following reasons:
- The data type isn’t supported. Check the releases and roadmap mentioned above to find out what’s currently supported.
- The field-level security for the field doesn’t allow you to edit it. Always check to see if you can edit the field in the page layout view. If not, most likely you won’t have privileges to edit it on the report.
- The record type plus page layout combination that’s assigned to your profile doesn’t allow you to edit the field. Inline Editing in reports follows the Salesforce architecture.
- Other restrictions apply. For example, you can’t edit the Amount when the Opportunity is closed.
More restrictions are documented here.
What’s Next?
So what’s next after we allow you to Inline Edit different data types? With Multi-Field Editing, you’ll be able to Inline Edit a number of fields in consecutive order before saving your changes. This will be helpful when you want to make multiple changes on the go at once, such as updating work item status in a work item report or assigning bugs to a user. Rather than the report refreshing after each edit, you can make a bunch of changes and then refresh your report.
How do I enable Inline Editing?
Inline Editing is currently (Summer ’21) in Closed Beta so we can test out the feature with a limited set of customers. To enable Inline Editing, follow these steps:
- Submit a ticket with Salesforce asking to enable Inline Editing for your Org. Most customers prefer testing the feature out in a sandbox before enabling it in Production.
- Enable the Inline Editing perm in your org by going to Settings → Reports & Dashboards. Select the checkbox “Enable Inline Editing in Reports”.
Once enabled, Inline Editing will be enabled for all users in your Org. It’s not controlled by a user perm.
Have we missed any use cases that you’d like to see? Are there particular scenarios you’re concerned about? Do provide feedback and let us know how we can improve the product.
Forward-looking Statement
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For a particular profile can we give this Inline edit permission?
@Sudharsan – Right now this is not profile based. But it’s activated for the entire org. What is your use case for activating it per profile ?
We have a use case for profile-based inline edit permission. The Salesforce application we use has a data entry page where end users can submit items for processing. The vendor for our application customized the data entry page (lots of Apex code) to perform validation that is too complicated to be performed by features that are built-in to Salesforce. The end users have edit permission to fields that are on the data entry page, but we only want end users to update items using the data entry page. All other locations where the end users can see the data fields are set to “read-only.” We do however want administrators to be able to edit the data fields inline in reports. Profile-based inline edit permission would handle our use case. It would also be extremely helpful to be able to specify whether any particular field on a report should be editable. The default should be “not editable” for backward compatibility.
My AE is having trouble signing me up for the closed Beta, can you help?
Hi Steve. I’ll reach out to you via email.
very good feature!
Here a suggestion: Within listviews it is possible, to select multiple records and change them all at once. The same function within reports would boost productivity!
Hi Stefan,
That is something we’re working on for the next release. As you can see, multi field edits is the next feature the team is looking into.
Hello Ankita,
I can’t see this option in reports and dashboard settings so, what to do?
Hi Snehal,
Which release is your org on? You can submit a ticket with Salesforce to help enable this feature and they should be able to guide you. Let me know if you run into any issues.
I can see on our sandbox winter 22 release, however date inline editing is not part of it. Has it been pushed back?
Hi Mona,
What do you mean its not a part of it ? Have you enabled it via Reports & Dashboards settings as mentioned above ?
What is the timeline for task object fields to have inline editing enabled? This would be a huge productivity boost for users who manage large projects.
Unfortunately that is out of scope. There is a lot of complexity associated with Inline Editing task fields as it fires of downstream workflows etc. We don’t have Inline Editing for those fields in listviews as well.
Is there a way I can track how much inline editing functionality is being used to modify fields?
I have enabled inline editing and have the permissions to change the field but probability is still locked for me in reporting. Any idea why?
Hi Elliot,
Inline editing isn’t supported for these fields and field types.
Task and event object fields
System fields such as Record ID and Created Date
Compound fields, including name and address fields
Picklists
Custom date/time fields
Encrypted text fields
Formula fields
Standard fields of type date/time, auto number, rollup summary, record type, master-detail, long text area, rich text, or hierarchy
Other fields where editing isn’t permitted due to restrictions in the page layout or record type
Thanks for the reply Ankita. On the new help page it says this is possible:
https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=release-notes.rn_rd_reports_inline_editing.htm&type=5&release=232
Is the help page incorrect?
Inline editing is very powerful, and even if users can edit individual records, admins may not want to give them ability to change records inline on reports without the full picture of the record.
A permission on profiles would be extremely helpful. Especially once batch edit is possible! That will make this a potentially dangerous superpower.
Has anyone had issues with specific fields that should not be editable in inline editing within list views per Salesforce but are? i.e. Parent Campaign (Campaign object), Lead Status (Lead object), etc.
Are there any plans to allow admins the ability to turn off inline editing for specific objects and/or fields? We have a couple custom objects that have a lot of validations and other customizations that we don’t want users to be able to change from within a report interface, but every other object would be a huge win for our organization.
With the latest release, this appears to be skipping validation rules? We can change a stage to closed won and other required fields ignored in the update.
Hi Anitka,
so no inline editing in reports for any of the ‘larger’ text fields, commonly in use for ‘comments’ or ‘description’ fields?
We have inline editing enabled in our org.
While updating the ‘Next Steps’ field of Opportunity, the pencil icon is visible, After entering the value in the text field, the ‘Apply’ button is still greyed out. Any lead on this?
We had intermittent success/failure with this feature from one report to another. Through a lot of trial and error we discovered the reports where this wasn’t working needed to have the record Name (or auto number) field in the details of the report in order for a given field to be editable. Actually, it’s not even all objects – but let’s just say, if a field isn’t working for you, try this and see if it works. One report this feature didn’t work on at first was a custom report type with 4 different objects built into it. Fields coming from the Contact record were editable, but fields coming from a custom object were not. Once we added the record field auto# Name to the details, inline editing was now turned on for all fields from that object.
Hi Ankita,
I’m a Salesforce Admin, and I’m doing a lot of data clean-up now. I’m a little concerned about enabling the Inline editing on Reports since it is still in the Beta version. Is it safe to use in Production Org? Thank you.
We have a custom field on a custom object of Type [Text(80)]. I am not seeing the pencil icon rather it shows the locked icon. The sandbox is in Summer’22. Anything specific that i’s locked on the report?
The Inline editing is not honoring the Profile/RecordType field Read Only restrictions on Page layouts for the user.
Use Case
We have a Custom App to Add and Edit Product Amounts and Attributes on Opportunity Product. We do not allow our users to directly edit the Opp Line Amount fields via standard layout. The user has to dit amount via a custom app. The user needs the edit permission on the field via their profile as they are updating the values but on the Record Page layout we have set the fields as Read Only. This way they can still see the record values and edit the field but cannot bypass our Data entry process/calculations done via the app.
Without the ability to control which field are allowed for inline editing for a profile we cannot use this otherwise great feature
Can this be permanently left on for a report? – for example the button on the report seems to need to ce clicked on each time you want to inline edit a report.