How to Use Salesforce List Views to Organize Your Employee Data

Being an HR professional means working with a lot of data: employees, contracts, absences, feedback forms, candidates, files, etc. You need to filter it, sort it, and extract it in different forms. Usually, when you use Salesforce, you think of reports which are indeed very powerful and helpful. But there is one thing that Salesforce users often forget: list views and kanban.

Using Salesforce List Views

You can easily create a different representation or segment data with list views.

Some examples of how you can use list views include:

• Displaying all employees who are starting next month.
• A list of pending absences.
• Direct reports of a specific manager.

All of these views can easily be achieved with Salesforce list views.

Let's try with the example of employees starting next month:

Step 1: Employee Object Tab

In your Salesforce Lightning Experience, open an Employee object Tab:

Step 2: Create New List

Usually, Salesforce shows a special list view called Recently Viewed. You can create and customize a new List View by clicking the gear icon, then in a dropdown menu, choose New.

Step 3: Name New List View

You can define the name of your custom List View to use in the future. In our case, we can name it "Starting next two months."

Step 4: Set Up Visibility

If you are a salesforce administrator, you can set up visibility and sharing settings by deciding which group of users can view this List View. Also, you can change the API name if needed.

Step 5: Filter

Now, open a filter by clicking on a funnel icon on the right to define your filter criteria.

Choose a field you would like to filter by. Salesforce is smart enough to show different field type values automatically.

For example, it will show picklist values if the type of the field is Picklist. As we want to filter by start date, we need to choose "Start Date."

Step 6: Customize Value

Now, it’s time to write a special value for our filter.

Salesforce has great functionality by providing filtering with words in your language. For example, we can write "NEXT 2 MONTHS" to filter all employees starting within the next two months.

Step 7: Save View

Click Save. You will see that the data in the table was updated.

As you can see, it is not complicated at all but yet powerful. You can also select fields to display and choose which makes sense for your use case.

Let's create another list view for direct reports of a manager.

Step 1: Create Another New List

Again, you can create another list view by clicking on list view controls and choosing New in a dropdown menu.

Step 2: Add Filter

Add a filter by clicking the funnel icon.

We will choose a different field, “Manager”, to filter all direct reports this time. We use equals operator and type name of our manager.

Step 3: Save New View

Click Save, and we will see all employees of this manager in the list of records.

Step 4: Choose Visible Fields

Don't forget to choose visible fields in list view controls.

Filtering, sorting, and showing fields are not the only features of list views. Another powerful and helpful thing is inline editing.

Imagine that you need to open a single record in a new tab to edit multiple records! But remember that inline editing works only when all records belong to the same record type.

The list view chart is another exciting feature you can use without going with reports. Yes, you can add a new chart right in the list view. Click on a chart icon and define which one you would like to use.

Salesforce list views can be easily integrated into your existing workflow. Once learned, you can use it daily to increase your productivity. Sales reps are already using them a lot in their sales processes, but as we could see, HR and Recruiters can also benefit.

Don't forget to set a view name for future selection for a specific list view. If you have many list views, Salesforce offers a search input.

You can manage public list views for a specific group of users. For example, you can create one list view per job offer. Then you can use a kanban view as well.

List views are not something new in Lightning Experience. They are also available in Salesforce classic. For example, you can see built-in list views in the opportunities tab.

You can learn more about list views by completing several trails in myTrailhead.