How to Create a Public Group and Share Report With Group in Salesforce

While working as a Salesforce admin, the sales manager asked me to send lead reports to all sales representatives. Since sending reports to each rep would be very time-consuming, I created a group of sales representatives to whom I wanted to send lead reports and then sent the report to the group so that it reached all sales reps.

Here, I will explain the public group in Salesforce, where we can use public groups, and then I will show you how to create public group and share a report with the group in Salesforce using a step-by-step explanation.

Table of Contents

Public Group in Salesforce & its Uses

In Salesforce, public groups consist of a set of users, and these groups are created to group users who are in different profiles.

Public groups can be used in sharing rules to share the record. That means whenever you want to share a record using the sharing rule, you need to specify that with which users you want to share in that situation, we can create a group of users to whom we want to share records and share records with that particular group so that every user which is present in that group can access shared records.

Public groups can also be used to access reports and dashboards in reports and dashboard folders. The access to reports and dashboards is controlled by the folders in which they are. So, if you want to share the access to a particular folder with certain types of users, we can also create a public group and share a report with the group so that all the users who are inside that public group can get access.

In the public group, we can add the following user types:

Users: You can add different profile users to the same group.
Roles: When you add a particular role to the group, all the users who were assigned that role are added to that group.
Roles & Subordinates: When you add any role to the group, all the users of that role and the other roles that are under the selected will get added to the group.
Other Public Groups: When we select this, we can select another public group that we created before.

Create a Public Group and Share Report With Group in Salesforce

For example, you created a lead report and want to send it to users with different profiles. To do that, we will create a group of users, and then we can share that report with the group so that we can share the report with all users at once.

Create a Public Group in Salesforce

1. Open the Home Page, then in the Quick Find Box, search for the Public Group, then click on it. You will see the public group setup page and group names that you already created. Now, to create a new group, click the New button.

2. Enter the Label, and the Group Name will automatically populate it as an API name.

When you checked the Grant Access Using Hierarchies option, in that case, the user that you add to the group and the record or report that you share the access for that particular information will automatically apply for the upper positional users in the role hierarchy.

As you click the dropdown arrow in the Search field, you will see public groups, roles, roles and subordinates, and users. You can select any option above them.

3. Here, I selected Users so that you will see all active users in the Available Members column. You need to choose the users you want to add to the group and then click the Add button. Afterward, you will see the selected users in the Selected Members column.

Then click the Save button to create the group.

How to Create a Public Group and Share Report With Group in Salesforce

4. Now, in the created groups list view, you can see the group name that we created.

In this way, we can create a group of particular users so that we can share records or reports with that group in Salesforce.

Share Report With Group in Salesforce

So now, we will create a report to share it with the created group and check whether all users within the group received the shared report. In Salesforce, we can share report folders only, and we cannot share a single report directly. To share a single report, we need to move it to a particular folder, and then we can share that report folder.

1. Click on App Launcher -> Search “Reports” -> Click on Reports. Then click the New Report button to create a report.

2. Here, we need to create a report on the lead or select any report folder that you want to share with other users. To share the report, go to the folder in which the report is available, then click the dropdown arrow and select the Share option.

3. As you select share, the share folder window opens. Here, you need to enter the following information.

Share With: Here, we need to select with whom we want to share the report; in this option, we can select users, roles, roles & subordinates, and public groups.
Names: The name option is dependent upon the share with the option; the option in share with you choose the names option will display information accordingly. In the share with, I selected Public Group, so in this field, you will see the group name that you created, as shown in the 4th step.
Access: Here we can give access to the user or role, like view, edit, or manage.
- View: the report we shared they can only view reports.
- Edit: Here, they can edit the report but can’t delete it.
- Manage: can perform all the operations with the file (read, write, update, and delete).

Then click on the Share button.

4. Here, you can see the group names. From here, we need to select the group name with which we want to share the report.

5. Here, we can see to whom we are going to share the report and which access we are giving them. After that, click on the Done button.

6. Now, we will see by logging in with the user to whom we shared the report; here, we will log in with a different user.

Here, we logged in with the user to whom we shared the report. Now, navigate to the report tab and scroll down; you will see the “Shared with Me” option under the All Folder. Click on it. There, you will see the reports shared by other users.

Here, you can see Shared With Me > Share Report Folder > Report.

In this way, we can share records or reports with public groups in Salesforce so that each user receives information at the same time.

Conclusion

I hope you have an idea about public groups in Salesforce. In that, I explained what a public group is and where we can use it so that it will be easy to share reports, records, and other information with different profile users at the same time. Later, I explained how to create a public group and share a report with the group in Salesforce using a step-by-step explanation.