Saving a Custom Report and Sharing Saved Views

A saved view on a report is a snapshot of how that report is set up. Views are shared with everyone at your dealership who can open the report — they are not private to you — and applying one can permanently replace the report's field selection. This article covers what a view does, who can change it, and what the orange Partially Saved message means.

Questions this answers

• "Another user deleted a saved view I set up on one of our custom reports. Aren't saved views private to the person who made them?"
• "I applied a saved view on a report and it wiped out the fields I had picked. Can I get my old setup back?"
• "I edited one of my custom reports, renamed it and changed who can see it, and now I'm getting an orange 'Partially Saved' message. Did any of my changes actually go through?"
• "The Saved Views menu tells me views are only for custom reports when I try to save one on a built-in template. Is there another way to keep my filters on it?"

This article is about saved views and saving a report's setup. If a report opens with filters you did not choose, see the article on remembered filters and briefing drill-downs.

Saved views are shared, not personal

A saved view is stored on the report itself, not against your user account. Everyone at your dealership who can open that report sees the same list of views, can apply any of them, and can rename or delete any of them — including views someone else created. The person who created a view is recorded, but that does not stop anyone else from removing it.

So a colleague deleting your view is the system working as designed, not a permissions fault. If a view matters to your process, agree on naming with the people who share the report — a view named for its purpose is much less likely to be cleared out than one named for a person or left with a default name.

Applying a view can overwrite your field selection

Views come in two strengths, and only one of them is destructive.

• Light changes apply immediately — filter, sort, and column layout switch over with no confirmation and nothing is lost.
• A view that changes the selected fields or the chart setup rewrites the report's saved definition. This one asks you to confirm first, and the warning is literal: the configuration you had is not recoverable unless you had saved it as a view beforehand.

If you are about to apply a structural view and you want your current setup back later, save your current setup as its own view first. That is the only way back — there is no undo after the fact.

"Partially Saved"

A report is written in two steps: first its layout — the fields, filters, sorting and column arrangement — and then its details, meaning the report's name, who it is shared with, and its role settings. The orange Partially Saved message means the first step succeeded and the second did not.

So your layout changes are safely stored, and your rename and sharing change are not. The message says so directly: the report layout was saved, but its name and scope settings were not. Save again — the editor deliberately stays in an unsaved state so you can. If the second save keeps failing, your layout work is still safe in the meantime.

Saved views on built-in templates

Saved views only exist on reports your dealership created. On a built-in template the Saved Views menu tells you views are limited to custom reports, and there is no setting that changes this.

The way to keep a setup on a built-in template is to make it your own report: build the equivalent report yourself, and it will support views like any other custom report. Note that built-in templates do still remember the filters you last used, personally to you — see the article on remembered filters — so a template you use the same way each time will already reopen the way you left it.