Summary field Count distinct

This is possible. 
But its tricky to set up.


To get a true accounting and summary of orders like this, you need to have a joined table with summary records.

So if you have 10 companies and you want to track each of them by month, you'll have to create 10x12=120 summary records to get the data.

You will need a months table, and your "Order Summaries" table that will have all the joined records.

There are more details to follow if this is the route you want to go.

(I'm sure somebody will suggest just making 12 summary fields and doing a rolling 12 month report, but that will only solve your immediate ask, and any future reporting will be stunted.  I'd go the summary table route)

This can be done with 12 summary fields.

The first one would be for the count of orders in the previous month
The next would be a copy of that but During the last 2 months and not during the Previous 1 month.
The next would be during the previous 3 months and not during he previous 2 months.

Then you would build your final formula using those 12 fields.

Count(
[# orders month 1]>0,
[# orders month 2]>0,
[# orders month 3]>0,
.
.
[# orders month 12]>0)

Mark,

Another question: Lets say that I create 12 summary fields.......and I want to create a formula field that will show me which customers sales are trending up and which are trending down (based on the summary fields) --- any suggests for what this formula should look like? or how best to go about this?

Well, Assuming that your regular business is not highly seasonal I would make a new summary field for the Average sales in the last 3 months and then another summary field for Average sales in the last 12 months but excluding the recent previous last 3 months and then calculate the % increase or decrease  

Use script and underscorejs. This is a simple application of the method _.countBy():

http://underscorejs.org/#countBy

Why create all these extra fields which just clog up your application? Using script will allow you to solve this specific problem and open up a general way to solving all the other unique reports you want. Underscore has ever manner of data manipulation method you could desire including

filter, reject, reduce, sortBy, groupBy, indexBy, countBy

Are there any better solutions available today around this issue? I'm trying to do the same, but my countd is by person and week so creating artificial table(s) to aid in the summary, or plugging in javascript are not good options.

Can you explain your full question as to your objective?

I have Contacts a parent table to Emails. Emails load in a filtered number of emails received/sent and uses Zapier to integrate. I'm trying to get a report answering, "How many people have I contacted (sent/received one or more emails) per week. Summing #emails would give me the total sent/received per week and I'm trying to get a distinct count of number contacts that I emailed every week,.

hmmm I�m sure I posted a response but it did not get saved.

A partial solution.
Make a formula numeric field with a value of 1
Summary report on Maximum of that field.

That will give the counts but not the total by week as the Total will in fact be a Max.

Export to Excel

Make your totals in excel.

We will be releasing a native count distinct summary field in February or March.