Salesforce reporting uses live Salesforce data when producing reports, while dashboards show data based on the latest dashboard refresh—either manual or scheduled. In Chapter 2, Managing Data in Salesforce.com, we discussed how to back up data in CSV files with weekly data exports or using the AppExchange product, and how to build your own custom sync application with local database.

In this chapter, we will discuss various options for accessing historical data in Salesforce, but without using backup data, which we discussed in Chapter 2, Managing Data in Salesforce.com. We will start with field history tracking, where you can track the changed field values, what the values were before and after, and who changed it and when. Then, we will continue with Chatter feed tracking for collaboration, and reporting snapshots, which is used to store a snapshot of data in a custom object. Historical trend reporting is the latest feature added to Salesforce out of...