Salesforce Analytic Snapshot

Sometimes Business Analysts have a requirement to have a better GUI for reporting on particular set of data which must refresh by itself. So this use case can be solved by Salesforce awesome feature known as “Analytic Snapshot”. An analytic snapshot lets you report on historical data. The user have to create a custom object and then authorized users configures tabular or summary report results to fields on the custom object, then map those fields to corresponding fields on a target object. They can then schedule when to run the report to load the custom object's fields with the report's data. Analytic snapshots enable you to work with report data similarly to how you work with other records in Salesforce.

     
     Steps to setup Analytic snapshot:

1. Create a report into salesforce (and you can use various reporting features like grouping, custom summary formulas etc.) using appropriate filters.
2.      Create a new custom object which is mainly used to capture to capture data/information from report at scheduled time intervals. You need to create the schema for the custom object like fields to be added on this object to capture various information from report ;e.g. the number of records appearing on report, Date on which the snapshot was taken etc.
   
3. Then you need to create analytic snapshot, go to Setup > Admin Setup > Data Management > Analytic Snapshots. Select the Source report and the target custom object. Finally map the fields from the source report.
   
   
   
4. Furthermore, you need to schedule the analytic snapshot job to schedule at desired frequencies.

To analyse the historical data stored in the custom object, you‘ll need to create another report (make sure to group them by snapshot date so that the analysts can have a graphical view for the same). Finally you can schedule the report or display them on the record detail page layout.