Reporting: Bulk/Mass Edit

Hi Kieth,

Thanks for posting. Its definitely a strong productivity usecase for admins where you don't have to hunt down each and every report to change a field. A couple of questions:- 

• Would you have the field you want to swap already in the object when you built the report, or would you introduce it later to the object? It would help if you can give an example or 2 of this. 
• Is this ask only limited to Reporting or would you prefer to change the field in other modules as well? 

@rakesh  thank you for the quick response!

I would be interested in the following: 

• Bulk remove field
• Bulk Add field
• Bulk field “swap” or find & replace

Use Case (field swap):  Yearly segmentation updates from Salesforce have resulted in new “Territory” and “Segment” designation fields. If there was a utility to “swap” fields across the platform and could be scheduled that would be ideal

Use Case (field remove):  An existing integration will no longer be in existence and resulting data will be stale or erroneous. Once the field is retired from the source system, the ability to “remove field everywhere” would be ideal.

I understand “everywhere” is a bit obtuse and my primary concern is anything presented to the users, as you mentioned, reporting would be a great start?  Bonus points to be able to clear out rules and merges automatically! 

Please let me now if I can provide any more details or info.

Interesting use case Keith. 

Some potential complications that would have to be solved for with bulk remove/replace actions: 

• How will filtering logic be handled - both the selections that exist in filters as well as advanced logic for filters? Especially if the new field is a different data type.
• How will dashboard global filters be handled? Especially if that field is one of the source filters on the global dashboard?
• How will aggregations be handled in cases where the field being removed is in the “show me” and there is a grouping on that report? 

There might be more, but those are just a few that come to mind as currently manual steps that need to be done today when fields are added or removed from reports. 

It’s likely that an admin would want to manually verify each report regardless to prevent users or execs from getting broken reports in their dashboards if the automation did not make the correct assumptions on filtering and aggregations. 

@dan_ahrens  As an Admin, I would 100% expect to have to verify and/or configure each removal/or remapping that would take place in such a tool or process… almost similar to dashboard global filter associations on a dashboard with 20 reports :) 

I would be willing to invest the time and patience to achieve the desired outcome. Perhaps starting with a dependencies report on a field and then using that as a baseline for a workflow of what needs to be reviewed and updated.

My current approach is to filter my report builder as best possible and open up one tab per report, update, save and close. Just trying to see how we can best improve the quality of life for Admins :) 

If there is anything I can do to keep this convo going or additional feedback please let me know.  Thank you for responding so quickly Dan.

My initial reaction was similar to @dan_ahrens - that has potential to complicate (break) existing reporting (at least for us where we rarely have reports that are so similarly structured) and, if you have to go manually validate/tweak each one anyway, I don’t really see it as a valuable/time saving feature.

I DO agree it’s a pain to identify where and how all the fields are being used in Reports (and elsewhere in Gainsight) which is why I keep pressing for enhancements to Object Analyzer.

Hi!
I originally started writing a post directly in the Community after looking for an associated one without luck, but afterward I moved to a notepad to proof the text and I did some changes in the title and I was prompted with this post… I submitted a very similar idea, but focused in a bulk swap in the case the “old field” exists only in the breakdowns. Leaving the link here for consideration.
Thanks!