Tutor and Tricks

For those of you who are quick studies, I’ll lay out the general concepts here in bullet form, and we’ll dive into the details in subsequent posts.

Dynamic Reports (DR) is a Salesforce.com custom object, designed specifically to allow users to quickly launch commonly used reports, passing variables like User Name or Account Name to the reports.

The List View is the main user interface for Dynamic Reports.

Fields in the DR object are primarily 3 things:

Security

We’ll get into more details on the next couple posts!

Let’s face it, if you are reading this blog, then you are a Salesforce geek, at least to some extent.  While I’ve got responsibility at work for a wide range of sales operations functions (sales compensation, sales process, budgeting, etc.), I will admit I still geek out on Salesforce.  I love the platform, and I often challenge myself to come up with creative solutions to business problems.

To quote some TV commercial, the concept presented here, – Dynamic Reports – is my “A-ha!” moment!   Once this idea came to me, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.

Using standard Salesforce functionality, with a couple tricks, I was able to create a simple, easy to use solution that would save my users lots of time, literally every day!

Now it may not seem that simple if it takes a 5-part post to explain, but I want to make sure I fully explain the concept and how to implement it, so you can take advantage of it in your organizations.  (Honestly, it took me more time to write these blog posts than it did to create the Dynamic Reports object).

So now…. on with the post…

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The Challenge…

Some of my best ideas come while I am sitting in on sales account reviews.

About six months ago I was in an account review, watching a sales manager go through the same six reports with eight different sales reps.  For each rep, the manager would pull up a Salesforce report, change the sales rep name, and run the reports to look at key sales metrics like opportunity pipeline, recently closed opportunities, new pipeline added, etc.

As I was sitting there, I wondered if I could build a web page, maybe in Google sites, to allow the Sales manager to just click a few links and launch ALL the reports he needs to assess the sales rep’s performance.  Maybe there was a way could leverage the custom report links that I’m sure many of us have used on page layouts (as documented in this Salesforce.com Tip Sheet.)

But that would require a lot of maintenance – adding and deleting hyperlinks on the Google page as sales reps come and go.

Then it occurred to me that any variable (like Sales Rep name) that I would want to report onalready exists in Salesforce.  Could I build a custom object to manage these report variables?  l knew I could launch an Opportunity page from a List View… But could I launch a report from a list view? And could I pass a variable to that report?

After a couple hours tinkering around in my Sandbox…. A-ha!  I got it! 

The Solution:

A new Dynamic Reports object, with secure, custom List Views for each Sales VP or Manager, that acts as a report launcher for our most common sales reports.  AND the concept can be extended to just about any custom or standard object, all within the same Dynamic Reports object.

There a sneak peak of the Dynamic Reports main page at the top of this page.  Hopefully, you’ll see the value in it right away.  On the next post, I’ll explain how it works, and then I’ll tell you how to build it.

Ok, maybe the title is a little dramatic, there is a chance you know about some of these tricks... but I bet you don't know all of them! If you do, I'll give you your money back. So, these are just some cool tricks that I've picked up from the salesforce community and I thought it would be cool to pass them along. Enjoy.

Myth: Auto-number fields only ever contain the numbers which the field has generated on its own. The truth is, you can jam anything you want in there! The loophole you use to do so is that you can change the "field type" of a field from Auto-number to Text or from Text to Auto-number. So for instance, you can change an Auto-number to Text temporarily so you can modify some of the numbers that had been assigned previously, and then change it back to Auto-number so it will continue assigning numbers to new records. I have done this during migrations before so I can allow the migrated data to retain their assigned numbers in the previous org. Give it a whirl, it's fun! Be careful though, while you have the type set to anything other than "Auto-number" records will be created without getting a number assigned.

Usually, when you change the email address on a user record an email is sent to the new value asking the user to confirm the change. Only when the confirmation link in the email is clicked will the change be reflected in salesforce. This happens regardless of how you update the email address... manually, API, etc. There is no way around it... or so I thought! Turns out, if you change the email address AND check the "Generate new password and notify user immediately" checkbox (all the way at the bottom of the edit screen) then the email address gets committed right away, no confirmation needed! Obviously the catch is that the user then gets sent a new password... so it's not any better in some situations. I use this trick a lot in sandboxes.

You know how it is, you tell a user what their username is in the sandbox and tell them to use whatever password they were using in production when the sandbox was last refreshed... and they don't remember and ask you to reset it... so you'd have to explain that they need to confirm a change to their email first... you get the picture. Now you just update the email and get them a new password in one shot.

The scenario is that you send mass email to leads or contacts, and you select the option to "store an activity for each mail". Then after the mailing completes, you check out the activity history on one of the recipients and see the subject of the task shows as "Mass Email:" as illustrated below. The colon in there lets you know that something is meant to be there, but didn't quite make it there. Spooky...

So the secret (I found out years later) is that the activity stored reflects the description of the email template you send. Strange right? So give your email templates descriptions from now on before you send any mass mail... your activity histories will thank you.

This one is an oldie but goodie. Although you probably know the deal, I'll give the background info in case you don't. Salesforce gives all records an 18 character Id, but sometimes they show up only as 15 characters. This is because if you are working in a case-sensitive system, the first 15 characters is enough for it to be a unique Id... but if you have the last three characters also, then even if you ignore the case the Id is still unique. Ok, so obviously to go from 18 characters to 15 you just drop the last 3 characters. The cool part is, that if you have the 15 character Id you can generate the last three characters to compose the 18 character Id. Here is an apex snippet that does the conversion.

Also, check out this blog post from @ekenigsberg and @AstadiaAShan that gives a formula to do the conversion and explains the mechanics of how the conversion is done... sweet.

This is a neat trick that came to me from @arrowpointe. As you know, when you create custom objects you can easily create a custom tab which allows you to create views from which you can view and manage the records in the object. Well, it turns out you can do this even if you haven't created a tab. All you have to do is go to your URL bar, and after the ".com/" enter the 3 character prefix of the object. The prefix is easy to find, it is the first three characters in the Id of any record in the object. You do this, and you'll be on a "secret" tab that otherwise you can't navigate to. Here is an example, note the cool little cube logo that shows up :-).

In Salesforce , Cloning is the process of creating records with the same details. Salesforce provides the out-of-box feature to clone object records. It’s a way to create record with similar data and save your precious time. Now I am coming to the point, if some one say’s that they want to clone account with opportunity then you will first think about apex Trigger but no there are other ways this.e Visual Workflow. In this article I will demonstrate how efficiently you develop a deep clone feature for your org.

Business Use case :- Business users in Universal container want a way to clone account with opportunity (Only closed won) and set Close date on the new opportunity to today plus 15days. They have only one closed -won opportunity on each account.

Solution of above business requirement

I took above example only for demo purpose. It may possible your organization maintaining accounts in different ways as mentioned in above business use case. In this blog I will use Visual workflow to solve above business requirement. First of all list down all fields that required to create an account and opportunity, for me to create an account and opportunity it’s required below fields it may vary based upon the custom validation rule

• Drag and drop a Record Lookup ( Give the name Account Clone) on the window, to save account field values in variables that you created, as shown in below screenshot

• Likewise drag and drop another Record Lookup ( Give the name Opp Clone) on the window, to save opportunity field values in variables as shown in below screenshot

The next task is increment  CloseDate variable by 15days, to do this drag and drop an Assignment(Give the name Increment date by 15 days) on the window, and add 15 days as shown in below screenshot

• Now we will create account record first, to do this drag and drop another Record Create ( Give the name Craete new account) on the window, pass the variable values in the fields and store new account id in a variable in my case it’s  NewAccountID as shown in below screenshot

• Final steps creates opportunity record. to do this drag and drop another Record Create ( Give the name Create opp) on the window, pass the variable values in the fields. In the AccountId field pass the newly created account id i.e. NewAccountID and select Stage as per your choice, as shown in below screenshot

Finally our flow will look like below screen shot

In the last few articles I have gone through various ways to use Visual Workflow in Salesforce. In this article I will discuss few concepts related to Visual Workflow, that is mentioned below

Business Use case :- Universal container is creating a Child Donation Screen by using Visual Workflow, Screen contains Name (Text), Phone Number (Text) and Amount (Currency) fields. They want to write a validation rule  onName so user can’t enter any word other than alphabets. For Phone Number field they want a way so the user can’t able to enter more than 10 digits.

Solution of above business requirement

You can use standard Salesforce formula syntax in two places within a flow:

We have to create a new flow.  To develop this functionality follow the below instructions

• Now navigate to Error Message section and write the message you want to display when the formula statement evaluates to False, You can take help from below screenshot

• You can also use Rich text editor to define error message in a different  font, size and color.
• Likewise you can create Phone Number (Text) field and write validation rule, you can take help from below screen shot

• Create Amount (Currency) and make this field require by selecting Required check-box.

• If flow contains an invalid formula, then You can’t activate that flow.
• The formula expression must return a Boolean value.
• If the user leaves the field blank, and the field is not required, no validation is performed.
• A formula in a flow can’t contain more than 3,000 characters
• Formulas in flows don’t support the below mentioned functions. Using these functions results in your formula returning Null (GETRECORDIDS, IMAGE, INCLUDE, INCLUDES, ISCHANGED, ISNEW, ISPICKVAL, PARENTGROUPVAL, PREVGROUPVAL, PRIORVALUE, REQUIRE SCRIPT, VLOOKUP)

–> Branding – How to use Image in Visual Workflow

• Navigate to Resource tab, and create a variable with name ImageURL, Select data type as Text and under Default Value define an image tag as shown in the below screenshot

• Create Amount (Currency) and make this field require by selecting Required check-box.

• If flow contains an invalid formula, then You can’t activate that flow.
• The formula expression must return a Boolean value.
• If the user leaves the field blank, and the field is not required, no validation is performed.
• A formula in a flow can’t contain more than 3,000 characters
• Formulas in flows don’t support the below mentioned functions. Using these functions results in your formula returning Null (GETRECORDIDS, IMAGE, INCLUDE, INCLUDES, ISCHANGED, ISNEW, ISPICKVAL, PARENTGROUPVAL, PREVGROUPVAL, PRIORVALUE, REQUIRE SCRIPT, VLOOKUP)

–> Branding – How to use Image in Visual Workflow

• Navigate to Resource tab, and create a variable with name ImageURL, Select data type as Text and under Default Value define an image tag as shown in the below screenshot

–> Improve Visual Workflow UI

1. buttonLocation :- You can define location of navigation buttons in the flow user interface. Available values are Top, Bottom and Both.
2. buttonStyle :- You can define style to the flow navigation as a set. Can only be used for inline styling, not for CSS classes
3. FlowText :- You can define A field label.
4. FlowCurrency :- You can define A field label.