A List View in Salesforce is a list of records that is set up to display a certain subset of records. These views can have a variety of criteria depending on the object and are an easy way to give users quick access to important records. They also can highlight areas that need attention, provide visibility into a Queue, or give managers access to see what their team members are working on.
In this post, we’re going to learn about some of the best List Views you can create for your users. We’ll also cover some of the common trouble points for List Views, common errors, and scenarios that Administrators should prepare for.
What Objects Need a List View?
This is a great place to start! Generally speaking, any object that has a tab can also have a List View – but which ones actually need them? My general rule of thumb is this: any object where people are going to be reviewing multiple records at once should have list views.
As an Admin, you might not know the answer to this immediately, especially if you’re in a new org, or working with a new team. You might have sales reps who own Accounts, but where do they spend their time? Do they typically look at the Account records, or do they mostly spend time on the Opportunity object? Figuring out what your users need before building is always the first step of an Admin, so spend some time with your users to understand what they need.
Most commonly, I find there’s a need for at least a few custom List Views on Accounts, Leads, Opportunities, and Cases. Depending on how Salesforce savvy your team is, and what your org’s specific needs are, you may need them on Contacts and Campaigns as well. A common custom object is POCs, and those nearly always benefit from some custom list views as well.
In this article, I’m going to cover just the standard Salesforce objects and considerations. You can take these guidelines and apply them to your custom objects in your org as needed.
1. Accounts – My Customers
Out of the box, there are only a few list views to work with on the Account object.
All account records must be owned by a user, not by a Queue. This means the “My Accounts” list view could potentially show the user a lot more than they need to see because users often own a lot more Account records than they’re prospecting to at a given time. You might own 1,000 Accounts, but you’re only targeting 50 of them at the moment. Since a List View can only show 200 records on a single page, it’s not like you can actually see all the Accounts owned at once.
What we need here is more filters and more granularity – not just “My Accounts”, but “My important Accounts” or “My Accounts that I’m actually working on right now”. The exact definition of that is going to vary from org to org, but a good place to start is “My Customer Accounts”. Figure out how your org identifies current customers, and make use of the “My Accounts” filter.
This will give your Account owners quick access to a list of their customers, without any guesswork.
2. Accounts – My Target Accounts
Every org I’ve worked in has had some version of “Target Accounts” – they are usually called “Named Accounts”, “Priority Accounts” or “Tier 1 Accounts”; some sort of high-priority identifier for those very high-value Accounts. This list view is an absolute necessity as we want users to know immediately what those Accounts are and what their current status is.
3. Opportunities – My Open Opps
Opportunities is another object where the out-of-the-box List Views are lacking. The most important one that needs to be created is “My Open Opportunities”.
Make sure to use two simple filters, “My Opportunities” and “Closed = False”. This List View will be the go-to place for sales reps to manage their open pipeline.
4. Opportunities – My Opps Closing (Soon)
Replace “soon” here with your team’s working time period with something like “This Quarter” or “This Year”. This will depend on the length of your sales cycle and the expectations of the management team. It’s a great option to highlight for people what is open and the work that they need to prioritize in time for their deadline.
5. Opportunities – My Past Due
This one is my personal favorite. Oftentimes, when people are looking at open Opportunities, they’re looking at records that close this or next quarter. Many people forget to also look at things where the Close Date has passed, even though the Opp is still left open. If you get a very inattentive sales team, you can end up with hundreds of old Opportunities with old Close Dates that just get perpetually ignored.
The best way to fix this is to point them out for cleaning up.
And then filter your List View accordingly:
6. Leads – My Open Leads
Similarly to Opportunities, the default Lead list views are not that helpful. The most important one to create is “My Open Leads”. Your team members probably don’t need to worry about Leads that have already been disqualified, unqualified, or closed. They should spend their time focusing on the Leads that actually have conversion potential, rather than spending time sorting.
7. Leads – My High Priority Leads (or My MQLs)
Similarly to Opportunities, some Leads are of higher value than others. Maybe your org has ICP criteria, or MQL criteria that have been tagged by your Marketing platform. These Leads are a higher priority than a standard list import or trade show booth list, and probably need more focused attention.
Giving your team a fast and easy way to access these Leads will ensure they can focus on doing what they do best: turning Leads into pipelines for sales.
8. Leads and Cases – Queue Owned Records
Leads and Cases are two objects that can (and often are) owned by Queues. For Leads, this might be new inbound Leads or un-sorted Leads. For Cases, it might be new inbound Cases sorted by SLA or priority level. In any circumstance, it’s still important to customize your list views and exclude any non-important records. You may need to exclude Leads that are disqualified or Cases that have already been Closed.
9. Cases – Critical/High Priority Cases
If you’re using the Case object, then chances are that your org has some sort of indicator for critical, high-priority, or escalated cases (or even all three). These are very important List Views, and management teams especially love them because they can immediately see the status of all current critical open cases.
10. Users and Profiles
Admins, don’t forget about yourselves! Anything that makes your job easier is going to free up your time to help everyone in the org. My personal favorite List View for users is “No Logins Last 30 Days”. After all, Salesforce licenses can be quite pricey and we don’t want any security lapses, like former employees who never got deactivated.
Profiles are important because they can give you a quick snapshot of which profiles have which permissions.
Additional Considerations
While having proper list views can make a user’s workflow much easier, this is also the place where I see the most problems. For example, List Views created for people who no longer work at the company, or List Views created for one specific, time-based project and then never removed or cleaned. Below are a few tips to help you make sure you not only create what you need but keep them cleaned up as well.
- Do not go overboard with List Views – List Views are kind of like water for humans: we need it, and it’s important, but too much can be just as bad as not enough. Periodically review your list views, remove the ones you don’t need, or reduce the visibility so people don’t see clutter.
- Pay attention to who can see each List View – It’s unlikely that every single user needs to see every single List View. Pay attention to visibility when setting up your list views, so people see just what they need to see, and not what somebody else needs to see.
- Pay attention to who can create and modify List Views – when people can modify List Views, they will (even by accident); this happens all the time. Someone may make a change to a List View and assume it only applies to them as the title says “My Opportunities”, not realizing they’ve just modified the view for everyone.
- Community and community user visibility – if you’ve got community users who can see List Views (like “My Open Cases”) be extremely cautious about any edits and who has list view management permissions. It’s bad enough to make a mistake on an internal list view, but making one on a customer-facing list view can be truly problematic.
- Naming conventions and organization – List Views are ordered alphabetically, so if you’re going to create multiple lists with the “My records” criteria, it’s good to use the same naming convention, like a prefix like “My Opps – Open” and “My Opps – Past Due” so that they’re grouped together.
Summary
These are just some of the List Views that I’ve found most commonly needed over the years. Nearly every org I’ve worked in has needed some variation of these List Views. I hope that these examples will help you (and your users) find the records that need attention, and get what they need with ease and convenience! If you have any favorite List Views that aren’t mentioned here, please let me know!
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