Patent ID: 7185279

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a report generation request within a customer relationship management (CRM) software application; in response to the request, invoking a spreadsheet application from the CRM software application using an application programming interface (API) to automatically generate an electronic worksheet viewable by the spreadsheet software application; invoking the spreadsheet application from the CRM software application using the API to automatically generate a pivot table within the electronic worksheet; presenting the pivot table to a user with the spreadsheet application; receiving within the spreadsheet application a user selection of the CRM data within the pivot table; in response to the selection, automatically creating a worksheet that displays the CRM data as a number of rows in columnar format according to fields within the CRM database, wherein each row represents a single CRM record stored within the CRM database; receiving within the spreadsheet application a selection of one or more of the rows from the user; and in response to the selection, automatically invoking the CRM software application from the spreadsheet application to display the corresponding CRM records of the selected rows.