Conditionally Highlight Salesforce Reports

If you are searching for a quick and easy way to highlight data in a report, to distinguish between rows based on certain criteria, then Conditional Formatting feature in Salesforce is the way to go!

In this article, we dive deep into how conditional formatting is achieved and what are the things to remember when using this feature.

What is Conditional Highlighting?

Conditional Highlighting in Salesforce allows users to view rows of summarized data  on a report with different colours based on different logical criteria.

For Example: The report below shows a summary report grouped by the Stage field on Opportunities and the highlighting is on data range based on sum of amount on opportunities that match that stage.

How to  Highlight Rows in a Report?

The following steps must be followed to successfully highlight rows of data in a report:

1. Create a new report or open an existing report and group by the field you would like to summarize.

2. Create a summary formula in the report or use a summary field on the report to allow conditional highlighting option to become available.

3. Click on Conditional highlighting button and add conditional formatting rule.

4. Add rules based on your custom criteria and select range.

5. Select the data range and row colour through the colour picker.

6. Apply the rule by clicking on Apply button.

7. Confirm that the conditional highlighting has worked according to the rule specified. Save and Run Report.

Things to Consider

The following will need to be considered when using conditional highlighting on reports in Lightning:

• It only works on Summary or Matrix Reports
• It must contain either a summary field or a report summary formula.
• up to 5 rules can be defined for conditional highlighting.
• When you apply more than three conditional formatting rules to a report, conditional formatting can be viewed and edited only in Lightning Experience.
• You can subscribe to reports with conditional highlighting, but conditional highlighting doesn’t appear in the subscription email.
• The rounding of data values for conditional formatting differs slightly for Lightning Experience versus Salesforce Classic. The following table shows some sample differences.

Conclusion

Conditional highlighting is a big hit with users of salesforce as it makes a mundane report better to look at. Salesforce allows conditional highlighting in classic reports as well.