by Andy Murdoch 
As a business user you often access the same reports. Data is a key driver in decision-making, so you should care about seeing the latest report data.
Salesforce offers the ability to schedule a report, offering a snapshot of the latest data without having to run the report manually. The report is then emailed to selected users. This is a great feature for up to date figures delivered to your inbox…. but what if that information is sensitive?
The only option at present is to have the report emailed to a user. As a business, you may not want your latest financial figures to be forwarded on once they have been read. Much like any email you send, the person receiving it could forward it on without your knowledge.
Another drawback of scheduling a report is that the export is not in a format that you can work with in Excel. It’s all well and good if you are scheduling a report for yourself and trusted recipients, but what use is it if you can’t further manipulate the data?
Customers have asked us how they can automatically run editable reports using current data, with the ability to securely save them. The official answer would be to either schedule the report (not secure!) or manually run the report and export it (very time consuming!).
We saw a problem, and have come up with a solution!
Using custom metadata records (data about how the system needs to behave), a report is selected and scheduled at your discretion. Any report type can be used, at a time that suits you! The system then works its magic in the background, and CSV files are created using your current data. The files are then saved within Salesforce itself – No need to risk emailing sensitive information in a far from ideal format!
If you think that you would benefit from a secure, automatically scheduled reporting system, don’t hesitate to get in contact to hear more.
Salesforce offers a powerful suite of reporting tools that work together to help you understand and act on your data.