Salesforce CRM

I’m a huge fan of “My” style views.  However, what do you do if you have multiple user fields on a form.  Maybe a “outside rep, inside rep, engineer” type of situation?  Had a similar case with a client where we had multiple users on an opportunity.  Not just the owner, but OTHER users which we wanted to see these opportunities when on the “My Opportunities” type of view.  So, we created a formula checkbox which turns true when the user is listed in any one of the fields.  Here’s the code for the formula:

    IF(   Owner.Id   = $User.Id ||
     Salesrep__r.Id  = $User.Id ||
     Salesrep_Add_l__r.Id = $User.Id ||
     Sales_Rep_Additional_2__r.Id = $User.Id ||
     Engineer__r.Id = $User.Id ||
     $UserRole.Name = "Sales Manager"
    , TRUE, FALSE)

It’s long IF/THEN formula, but it’s basically evaluating if the current user is in the rep1, rep additional, the rep2 additional field, or engineer field.  I won’t go into how you make the formula field as that’s pretty straight forward.

Once you’ve got this, just change the “My Opportunities” view to be “All opportunities” but where the field is TRUE (in the image below, we just changed the “opportunities” module to “projects”, hence the difference).

Got a client that didn’t like the existing calendars and activity lists on the home page.  So, what we did was add in a custom tab (at the top) that actually just loads the calendar page by itself.  It’s pretty easy to do actually – here’s how (we’re doing the “activities list” as the example here).

This one gets a bit above me, but we have to start with a visual force page.  Go to the setup area, search on “visual force” and choose “Visual force pages”.

Then click “New” at the top to create a new one.  Give it a label, a name, etc.  The markup is the kicker and that’s where we need to put this in here:

    <apex:page action="/00U/c">
    Please wait...
    </apex:page>

For calendar, use the code above, for activities, use this:

    <apex:page action="/007">
    Please wait...
    </apex:page>

Save it and we’re about half way there.  Now we need to find “tabs” under “create” in the setup tree.

Scroll to the “visualforce tabs” section near the bottom of the screen.  Click New.

Choose your page (the activity or calendar page), give it a name, etc.

Choose the visability rules on the next page couple of pages and you’re all set.

I will get requests all the time to add fields to child objects (i.e., contacts) that belong on the parent account, but because we want to see it at the child record they want it there too.  For instance, you have account type (Customer, Prospect, Competitor) and when looking at a contact you want to see that account type at the person level, giving you the quick snapshot instead of navigating to the contact’s parent account.

I think you can do this (haven’t tried) in the process builder where you would add a field on the contact levels, then create a process to update the contact when changing the account’s type field.  You would also have to create a process to update the parent account’s type as well if changed on the contact (which would fire the first process to update all the contacts).  Confused yet?  I think you may even need a trigger.

So let’s go simpler shall we?  What I ALWAYS do is just try to teach my users that certain data belongs here and certain data belongs there.  For instance, customer type or account type is not something that belongs at the contact level.  It may be nice to see at each contact, but it belongs at the account level since it’s company data.  To DISPLAY the data at the contact, you can use a formula field – very easy to do.

To start, find your object or just search for it in the setup area (click Setup, then start searching – again, don’t hit enter as I always warn, just type).

Once I see what I need, I go to “Fields”, which I’m going to then scroll down and create a new field called “Account Type”.  When in the type of new field area, just choose “formula”.  Click next.

On the next screen, give it a name (label), the API name and choose the type of data that will be displayed.  When in doubt, choose text.

In this case I’ll just build the formula quickly, but I use the formula builder to insert the right field.  When you find it, click “Insert” to see the value.

In this case, because it’s a picklist I get an error when I save it.  So, I have to add the “text” formula function to just grab the value.  Now it looks like this:

Click next to add to the correct layout (and edit who can see it) and you’re all set.  Go ahead and move the field to where you want it on the contact record.

Your users can all now see the right account type at the contact level, however, to change it or modify they still have to navigate to the account record – again, the place where it belongs.

If in the lightning experience, customizing Salesforce is a bit different but all the object changes are still there.  To get there, click on set-up home -> Explore Objects

On the top right corner, you will find a link to create objects and workflows.

If you want to change some things in existing objects, just click the links to the object on this screen as well.  Here you have the ability to work on all details of that object from a single page.

If you would like to search the setup area (as I always do), use the search box in the upper left.  This is a very useful piece to jump quickly to what you need (such as “users” shown here).

Written by Prabha Krishnamurthy and Corey Babka

On the other screen that we jumped (to activate the approval process, you also had the option to set additional approval processes.  Once activated you’re not able to add other steps (unless you deactivate the process first).

You can either do the additional steps from here or skip and save as one-step approval and later modify the approval process.  Here we’re going to just add another approval process based on probability (so as to not throw off the forecast).  Other examples might be a state code or a country value where accounting has to approving shipping rates, taxes, etc.

After we run through the same “create approval process”, we end up with a new one like so:

After we activate it and go back to our approval processes, for the opportunities there are now two listed.  Here we can adjust the order if is matters.  Simply change the number, then click Re-Order.

Then you’ll see it reordered.

Written by Prabha Krishnamurthy and Corey Babka

As part of the Winter ’16 release all users get App Launcher with Lightning Experience. As an individual choice, each user can select whether they use the lightning experience or the classic experience.  However, the app launcher is intended to gain more users on the lightning experience, making it easier and easier to use.

To access App Launcher, go to upper right corner of the SalesForce page and click on the colored square blocks (you need to be in the Lightning Experience – get there under your name drop down if in the classic view).

You will be displayed with in-lay screen with access to all Apps, all items (SalesForce objects) and link to AppExchange as well.

If you have built custom applications, they will be in here as well.  You can also access various records as well within this screen such as opportunities and accounts, but you would most likely use the tabs at the top for this.

Written by Corey Babka and Prabha Krishnamurthy