In life, there are certain things that simply belong together. Things like how peanut butter and jam belong together in sandwiches. Or how ketchup belongs on hotdogs. Or how the Sedin twins belong on the same line for my beloved Canucks.
In Maximizer CRM 11, there is a new ability to attach column setups to catalog searches. This is really useful functionality, not only because it formats the results of a search in the way that you want it, but it also sets you up to export to excel, which is my favorite kind of report.
So what I would usually recommend people do is take one of their excel spreadsheets that they need to take on the road or into meetings. Admit it; you have THAT Excel spreadsheet that has all your information on it. Everybody has one of these sheets.
With that Excel spreadsheet, backwards engineer it into a column setup in Maximizer, where you can. This can include things like revenue numbers for opportunities, or phone numbers and addresses for Address Book entries. You can also include any user-defined field that you need like size of company, revenue per employee, etc. The end goal is to have your column setup to look like your excel spreadsheet.
Then, you need to create your search by going to the All Fields option, in the Search By group on the Search tab. Configure your search will pull all pertinent records, whether that be all entries in your territory, all entries by state, all of your accounts, or any combination of any basic or user-defined field information. Constructing a solid search is key.
Once you've constructed a good search, hit the Catalog button, and click Add to create a catalog search. Give it a name and set its access permissions. If you want the search to ask you for values each time you access it, select the "Prompt for values when search is retrieved" option. This is useful for things like date ranges, or if you want to make the catalog flexible for other people to use. Before you hit OK, choose the column setup you created earlier from the drop down.
So the next time you use the catalog search, it not only will pull up the results of the search, but it will also format the results in the column setup that you created earlier. After you've populated the screen, click the Export to Excel option and you get yourself a simple report, formatted with the fields that you want.
You can do this in previous versions, but you will just need to search and then change column views or vice versa. In Maximizer CRM 11, however, the two functions have been fused together. Like a Liger.