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In today’s velocity-driven business climate, executives, managers, and field teams can no longer afford to dig through spreadsheets or dashboards for critical information. Decision-making often happens between meetings, in transit, or mid-call. The mobile revolution in enterprise systems hasn’t just changed how work is done—it’s reshaped how insights need to be delivered.
Salesforce’s Report Highlights in the mobile app represent a seismic shift in how business intelligence travels. It’s not about replacing full dashboards. It’s about distilling the signal from the noise—surfacing only what demands immediate attention.
Let’s unpack what Report Highlights are, why they matter, and how to implement them effectively.
What Are Report Highlights in Salesforce?
Report Highlights are compact, visually prominent metrics that appear at the top of a report in the Salesforce Mobile App. They’re designed to summarize key data points—typically one to three numerical fields that capture performance at a glance.
Unlike traditional charts or dashboards, these highlights are unobtrusive yet impossible to ignore. They live right where users need them—above the fold, inside reports viewed on mobile.
The Purpose Behind Report Highlights
The core philosophy is simple: speed-to-insight.
Highlights help users skip the interpretive work and instantly grasp what matters—sales figures, support loads, revenue deltas, case aging—without navigating tabs, filters, or charts.
For executives, it means fewer dashboards. For reps, it means one-touch access to targets. For managers, it means agility in decision-making. And in all cases, it means better focus.
Evolution of Mobile Reporting in Salesforce
Salesforce has been steadily evolving toward mobile-optimized intelligence. What began as simple report views has matured into fully responsive dashboards and now purpose-built highlights.
The rollout of Lightning Experience paved the way, but the real inflection point came when highlights became native to the mobile experience—no additional development required.
When to Use Report Highlights
Highlights aren’t for all data—they’re for mission-critical metrics.
- Field Service Updates: Number of open work orders
- Sales Manager KPIs: Quota attainment, daily bookings
- Customer Satisfaction: CSAT average, survey completions
- Opportunity Pipeline: Deals closing this week, forecast accuracy
If it can change how someone acts in the next 5 minutes, it’s a candidate for a highlight.
Report Highlights are not intended for every type of data. They are best reserved for metrics that are mission-critical—those that demand immediate awareness and drive real-time decisions. For instance, in the context of field service, these highlights can display the number of open work orders, enabling supervisors and technicians to prioritize resources efficiently.
Sales managers can benefit from highlights that reflect key performance indicators such as quota attainment or daily bookings, helping them stay on top of targets without needing to dig through complex dashboards.
Similarly, customer satisfaction teams can monitor performance with metrics like the average CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) or the number of survey completions. These indicators allow quick interventions when satisfaction dips.
In sales operations, the highlights can summarize opportunity pipeline metrics—such as deals closing this week or forecast accuracy—giving teams a clear sense of urgency and alignment with quarterly goals. In each scenario, Report Highlights become a lightweight yet powerful lens for strategic decision-making.
Where to Find Report Highlights
Users can access highlights in:
- The Reports tab of the Salesforce mobile app
- Custom Lightning pages with report components
- App-specific tabs configured for mobile navigation
They appear at the top of the report before any rows or charts—no scrolling required.
Users can access Report Highlights in several key areas within the Salesforce mobile experience. The most direct route is through the Reports tab, which is optimized for mobile and presents highlights at the top of each applicable report.
These summaries provide instant context before a user even scrolls through detailed data rows.
Additionally, custom Lightning Pages that include report components can be configured to display highlights natively on mobile devices. App-specific tabs, which can be prioritized through mobile navigation menus, also serve as effective locations to surface these KPI summaries.
In each case, Salesforce ensures that the information appears prominently—immediately visible when a report is accessed on the mobile app, without requiring any additional taps or navigation.
Key Metrics Ideal for Report Highlights
Report highlights shine when they show trend-sensitive metrics like:
- Closed-Won Revenue This Month
- Open Escalated Cases
- Average Case Resolution Time
- Lead Conversion %
- Deal Velocity by Team
Each of these gives a pulse reading—what’s working, what’s not, and what’s urgent.
Creating Report Highlights in Salesforce
To build highlights:
- Choose a summary or matrix report.
- Ensure at least one field is summarized—like COUNT, SUM, or AVG.
- Use report formatting to choose fields for highlighting.
- Optionally, apply conditional formatting (e.g., red if SLA breaches exceed 10).
Once saved, these highlights are automatically surfaced on mobile.
Supported Report Types for Highlights
Highlights work best on:
- Summary reports (with grouped rows)
- Matrix reports (grouped rows + columns)
They do not currently work with:
- Joined reports
- Tabular reports without summarization
Choosing the right report type is foundational.
Limitations to Consider
No feature is without trade-offs. Highlights:
- Can’t be clicked for drill-down
- Don’t support formulas natively
- Show only what the report is configured to expose
- Rely on summarized fields—raw detail rows won’t qualify
Still, the value they bring for top-line awareness is enormous.
How to Enable Highlights for Mobile
Admins should ensure:
- The Lightning Report component is enabled in mobile
- Reports are built with summarized numeric fields
- Profiles have visibility into the relevant data
- App navigation is optimized to surface key reports
This is a configuration task—not development work.
Designing for Mobile Attention
The small screen forces clarity. Highlights should:
- Use color cues (green for growth, red for issues)
- Limit to 2–3 KPIs max
- Be updated regularly (use relative date filters like “THIS MONTH”)
- Prioritize trend-impacting fields over vanity metrics
Design with distraction in mind—every pixel matters.
Real-World Use Case #1: Sales Leaders on the Move
A VP of Sales walks into a weekly pipeline meeting and, with two taps, sees:
- $1.2M in booked revenue this month
- 86% quota attainment
- 24 new opportunities created this week
That’s all it takes to guide the meeting—not a single spreadsheet involved.
Real-World Use Case #2: Support Managers
A Support Director reviewing highlights at 9 AM can view:
- Escalated Cases: 8 (vs. SLA threshold of 5)
- Average CSAT: 4.2/5
- Unassigned Cases: 3
With that, they know where to focus resources for the day.
Real-World Use Case #3: Executive Stakeholders
Boardroom dashboards are overkill for executives. Report highlights inside the mobile app offer:
- Net Revenue YoY Delta: +8%
- Avg Deal Size: $24,200
- Churn Rate: 1.1%
No need to wait for a BI team to prepare slides.
Governance Best Practices
Admins and analysts must establish:
- Ownership of highlight configurations
- Naming conventions for highlight reports
- Change logs for critical reports
- Visibility audits to ensure sensitive metrics aren’t exposed
Metrics without context or governance are dangerous.
Performance Optimization for Mobile
Fast-loading highlights require:
- Narrowed date ranges
- Minimal filters
- Use of indexed fields in report criteria
- Avoiding overly complex custom report types
Lightweight reports lead to lightning-fast insights.
Security Considerations
Report highlights obey:
- Field-level security
- Role hierarchy visibility
- Sharing rules
Ensure that KPI reports don’t inadvertently expose sensitive information by verifying object- and field-level access.
What’s Next: The Roadmap for Report Highlights
Expect the future to include:
- Clickable highlights leading to drill-downs
- AI-powered suggestions for which metrics to surface
- Anomaly detection directly in mobile highlights
- Push alerts based on threshold violations
We’re only at the beginning of what mobile intelligence can be.
Conclusion
In a world driven by mobile urgency, the enterprises that win are those that can measure faster, act sooner, and adapt in real time.
Report Highlights in the Salesforce Mobile App empower users to cut through complexity and focus on what matters—no laptop, no dashboard, no delay.
Whether you’re enabling sales reps, supporting executives, or streamlining support triage, this feature delivers surgical insight with surgical speed.
CloudVandana helps organizations like yours build Salesforce reporting ecosystems that balance power, precision, and portability. From designing the right metrics to enabling mobile-first visibility, we ensure that your business intelligence is always within reach.
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Digital Marketing Manager at Cloudvandana Solutions
