Question

Including Lead Description field on a Report

  • 20 March 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 41 views

Userlevel 1

Is it possible to include the Description field for Leads in a Report?  I don’t see the option for including the field anywhere in the Insights Builder. 

 

We use this field to provide a summary/notes for who the lead is, why we are targeting them, etc, that isn’t captured well by other fields - and it would be extremely helpful to include on table-style reports on leads/lead activity.


5 replies

Userlevel 2
Badge

Hey @JordanIB,

You are correct, it is nowhere to be found because there is no default support for including the Description field for Leads in a report. You can see all available attributes (and their respective record types) that are usable in reports through this link: https://support.copper.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005009921-Reports-Dashboards-Reference-Documents-Attributes

One thing you could try is making a custom text field (named whatever makes the most sense), and adding it through the settings on the Insight page. If you need some assistance in doing that, this article on custom fields in reports is a great refresher of that info: https://support.copper.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005078042.


Keep in mind it usually takes a 24-hour period for this field to appear in your reports once added.

Let me know if that works for you, or if you have any other questions regarding this!

Userlevel 1

Thank you for the response @Ashar from Copper .  Out of curiosity, what is the logic behind not supporting Description being included in a report?  Seems odd that it would be supported but I’d be able to create a CF that mimics it and include that field in reporting.

 

What would be the best way to transfer all the data currently in Description, to the new CF?  Best I can think of is to export all leads, copy the column over in Google Sheets or Excel, and then import the new CF column back into Copper.  Any other way that I’m missing?


One thing you could try is making a custom text field (named whatever makes the most sense), and adding it through the settings on the Insight page. If you need some assistance in doing that, this article on custom fields in reports is a great refresher of that info: https://support.copper.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005078042

 

Hi @Ashar from Copper

thank you for your help. That worked for me!

Userlevel 1

Also @Ashar from Copper , just to be clear, are you saying this would work only for text field and not for text area?

Userlevel 2
Badge

Also @Ashar from Copper , just to be clear, are you saying this would work only for text field and not for text area?


Hey @JordanIB that is correct, in the second article I linked, it says that the following custom fields are currently not supported: Multi-Select Dropdown, Connect Field, Date Field, Text Area. 

However, if you still wanted to move forward with the custom text field being updated with the description, this is an example of a formula you can use to do that:

 

You will need to generate a field key for your custom field so the name for your custom field may be a little different for the second trigger.


This workflow automation (WFA) checks to see if the description is not blank, and also checks to see if the description is currently different from my custom text field. Then if everything is true, it updates my custom text field with the details value, which is tied to the default description field in Copper.

Please keep in mind that a text field has a limit of 250 characters, whereas a text area has a limit of 10000 characters. It is entirely possible for your text area text to get truncated if it exceeds the text field limit.

If you wanted to move the lead descriptions you have already filled out to the new custom text field, you can create the same WFA with this trigger instead for the initial scan so you don’t have to do it manually.

 

Make sure to delete or get rid of the “Check Once a day” WFA after it runs once because the other WFA will be able to handle its checks a lot more efficiently once the old descriptions are transferred over!


Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions regarding this solution.

 

Reply