Category Archives: Salesforce Configuration

Tip#17 – Accessing “User License” field on User Object

07 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Salesforce Configuration

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If you want to access User license field which determines the type of license that user is on(ex: Salesforce, Salesforce Platform etc), you can access it in apex  as follows:

User.Profile.UserLicense.Name

Suppose, you want to create a validation rule in User object to make a custom field mandatory based on the license, it could be as follows,substitute Customfield with the actual field name(API name):

AND(ISNEW(),ISBLANK(Customfield), OR(Profile.UserLicense.Name=’Salesforce’,Profile.UserLicense.Name=’Salesforce Platform’)

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Flow creates duplicate records during bulk update!

24 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Salesforce Configuration

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I faced a strange issue w.r.t Flows which was creating Duplicate records when I did bulk update of records. Details are as follows.

We have a custom object Rate Card which stores information related to rates(Currency fields) based on the service and the account(master detail relationship between Account and Rate Card). Let’s say for physiotherapy service and the account (let’s say ‘HomeCare’), we capture several rate fields(Daily Rate, Half-a-day Rate, Hourly Rate etc). Also, we have Validated flag and once the record is validated(by checking the flag), we trigger a flow(below screenshot) from the process and it will create Pricebook, Product and Pricebook entry records since we want to create Opportunity and Opportunity Product from the Rate Card record.

flow screenshot

Each Pricebook corresponds to an account and Products which will be the services(e.g. Physiotherapy) that we provide to the account.

First step in the flow is to check if the pricebook exists and if it exists, create the product. If it doesn’t exist, create the pricebook and create the product.

Then, create a Pricebook Entry record for Standard Pricebook and a Pricebook Entry record for custom pricebook(associate the pricebook and product created in previous steps).

This works absolutely fine when I validate Rate Card records manually one by one in UI. But, we have around 500+Rate Card records for which we need to create Pricebook, Product and Pricebook Entry records. So, I went ahead and used dataloader.io to update Validated flag and unfortunately, flow created duplicate Pricebook records and this issue happens only for the account which has more than one Rate Card.

When I investigated further, I could find this link https://developer.salesforce.com/forums/ForumsMain?id=906F0000000ArtkIAC which highlights the same issue.

When I checked the logs, it looks like the flow runs in parallel for all the records that I updated so the first step Lookup Pricebook did not find the Pricebook for the  updated records, hence created duplicate entries.

Then, I found a workaround by extracting the accounts which has more than one Rate Card. From the list, make sure that I extracted Rate Card records which has unique account ids and update the Validated flag.  System created Pricebook, Products and Pricebook Entry as expected without any duplicates.Then, updated the Validated flag for the rest of the records and system created Pricebook, Products and Pricebook Entry records.

Has anyone else faced this issue before? Is it a known issue and if so, is there an idea for it in Salesforce Success community? Please let me know your comments.

 

Tip# 15 – Matching Rule

27 Tuesday Oct 2015

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Recently, I have got chance to work in Matching rule for Account, Contact and a custom object.
Have a look at these videos to get an introduction about Duplicate Management and Matching rules:
http://salesforce.vidyard.com/watch/PdYJPLbTqiI-kCXlWrr32w

Few points to note:

a. A matching rule can have only one lookup relationship field.
b. We cannot have a Date field in the matching criteria. Work around is to have a text field which has the date in text format and use it in the Matching Criteria. Suppose, you have a DOB field and to use it in the criteria, create a text field which will hold the date in text format. You can have a workflow to update this field when DOB is not empty(use TEXT() function).
c. We cannot have multi select field in the matching criteria.

Please let us know your comments.

P.S: When you use TEXT function, Dates are returned in the form of YYYY-MM-DD, that is, a four-digit year and two-digit month and day.

Tip#9: CASESAFEID and Converting 15 Character Salesforce Id to 18 Character Id

22 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Salesforce Configuration

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Salesforce has 2 versions of Id, 15 and 18 characters. Originally, all Salesforce IDs were 15-characters and case-sensitive whereas 18 character Id is case insensitive.

Suppose, we are exporting report data from salesforce onto excel and using the Excel VLOOKUP function to match up records. Since VLOOKUP doesn’t handle case-sensitive data well, we would have to convert 15 character Salesforce Id to 18 character Id.

As part of Spring ’12 release, Salesforce introduced a new formula function CASESAFEID, which accepts a 15-character ID as a parameter and returns the 18-character version. For instance, CASESAFEID(Id).

Also, I use the link https://www.adminbooster.com/tool/15to18 to convert 15 character Id to 18 character Id instantly.

There is a knowledge article on converting 15 to 18 character Id and the link for the same is https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewSolution?id=000005288&language=en_US

Tip#8 : Troubleshooting “cannot create a new Master-Detail relationship” error

21 Monday Sep 2015

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To demonstrate the case, let’s say that we have a custom object called “RateCard” and it has got a lookup field “Account”. We want to convert the lookup relationship to Master – detail, as we can have more than 1 Rate Card per account(1:M relationship). I tried changing the lookup to Master Detail for the account field and got the error “cannot create a new Master-Detail relationship”.

This is due to the reason that the lookup field(Account) in all RateCard records did not have a value. Once I populated the value for Account field in the records that didn’t have it, I could convert the Account relationship to Master – Detail. Please note that Master – Detail relationship requires Detail Record (Child) ALWAYS have a Master (Parent) record since the detail record inherits security and ownership from the parent record.

Let me know your comments.

Tip#7: Adding Hyperlink in the flow

16 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Flow, Salesforce Configuration

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UPDATE:

Thanks Evan for your comments!!

In more recent versions of Flow, you can simply have your URL point to /{!RecordId} and Salesforce will correctly navigate to the record. Obviously, RecordId variable in the flow should hold the Id of the record. I did a quick check on this in my Dev edition org and it worked.

Here is how you can do it in the new flow builder:

Create a screen element with the Display text as Link(or whatever you name the text) and give the hyperlink as /{!RecId} where RecId is the flow variable which holds the Id of the created record or the Id of the record to be navigated to, after the user clicks on the Display text(Link). Screenshot is given below for your reference:

Link screenshot2

How to achieve this in Old Flow Builder:

For example, there is a flow which gets inputs from user and creates a RateCard(Custom object) record, if it doesn’t exist in the system. Once created, it should show the URL(clickable) of the record created.

This is possible by editing the screen(which is the last step in the flow) and the Display text field there is a little button which shows T(marked in yellow colour in the screenshot below) with what looks like a selection box around it. Type the text you want (View the RateCard record here). Highlight it, and in one of the fields that showed up you can put in the url,something like https://cs5.salesforce.com/{!RateCardIdcreated}

Adding Hyperlink in the Flow

Clickable link
P.S: RateCardIdcreated holds the Id of the RateCard record created.

Please let me know your comments.

Adding months to a Date field

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Adding months to a date using Salesforce formula, Salesforce Configuration

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Requirement:

In my current project, based on Commencement Date of Resource, I need to send out email notification to several departments(HR, Payroll etc) and I need to do it if Resource completes 6, 12, 24 and 36 months. Basically, I had to add 6, 12,24 and 36 months to Commencement Date field and based on that date, I need to trigger Workflow notification(Time Trigger).

Analysis:

Salesforce help site https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=formula_examples_dates.htm has a formula and it is as follows, but unfortunately it throws compilation error(Compiled formula is too big to execute (5,503 characters). Maximum size is 5,000 characters) when tried:

IF(
MOD( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6, 12 ) = 2,
IF(
DAY( Commencement_Date__c ) > 28,
DATE( YEAR( Commencement_Date__c ) + FLOOR( ( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6 ) / 12 ), 3, 1 ),
DATE( YEAR( Commencement_Date__c ) + FLOOR( ( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6 ) / 12 ), 2, DAY( Commencement_Date__c ) )
),
IF(
OR(
MOD( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6, 12 ) = 4,
MOD( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6, 12 ) = 6,
MOD( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6, 12 ) = 9,
MOD( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6, 12 ) = 11
),
IF(
DAY( Commencement_Date__c ) > 30,
DATE( YEAR( Commencement_Date__c ) + FLOOR( ( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6 ) / 12 ),
MOD( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6, 12 ) + 1, 1 ),
DATE( YEAR( Commencement_Date__c ) + FLOOR( ( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6 ) / 12 ),
MOD( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6, 12), DAY( Commencement_Date__c ) )
),
IF(
MOD( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6, 12 ) = 0,
DATE( YEAR( Commencement_Date__c ) + FLOOR( ( MONTH( date ) + 6 ) / 12 ) – 1, 12, DAY( Commencement_Date__c ) ),
DATE( YEAR( Commencement_Date__c ) + FLOOR( ( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6 ) / 12 ),
MOD( MONTH( Commencement_Date__c ) + 6, 12), DAY( Commencement_Date__c ) )
)
)
)

Solution:

Thanks to Chris (http://www.salesforceweek.ly/author/chris) and the link http://www.salesforceweek.ly/2015/01/how-to-formula-add-months-to-date.html gives a good post about adding months to a Date.

As per the above link, I tried the following formula which adds n months(6,12, 24 and 36 month) works perfectly fine(including leap years) where n means :

DATE (  /*YEAR*/  

YEAR(Commencement_Date__c) + FLOOR((MONTH(Commencement_Date__c) + n - 1)/12), 

 /*MONTH*/  
 
CASE(MOD(MONTH(Commencement_Date__c) + n, 12 ), 0, 12, MOD(MONTH(Commencement_Date__c)+ n, 12 )),  

/*DAY*/  

MIN(DAY(Commencement_Date__c),  CASE(MOD(MONTH(Commencement_Date__c) + n,12), 9, 30, 4, 30, 6, 30, 11, 30, 2,  

/* return max days for February dependent on if end date is leap year */  

IF(MOD(YEAR(Commencement_Date__c) + FLOOR((MONTH(Commencement_Date__c) + n)/12), 400) = 0 || (MOD(YEAR(Commencement_Date__c) + FLOOR((MONTH(Commencement_Date__c) + n)/12), 4) = 0 && MOD(YEAR(Commencement_Date__c) + FLOOR((MONTH(Commencement_Date__c) + n)/12), 100) <> 0  ), 29,28), 31))  )

Please let me know your comments as always.

SFDC Developer interview questions

26 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in Salesforce Configuration, Salesforce interview questions

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Recently, I took the interview with a Consulting company and it was a pure technical round of interview. I thought of sharing the questions and please find them below:

1. What is Cloud computing and salesforce?
2. 3 Best practices of SOQL
3. Whats the difference between 15 and 18 digit Id?
4.  What is without sharing option and why is it given by SF?
5. Purpose of static resource
6. Suppose there is a field called priority in accounts and if its greater than 5, we need to update associated contact records. how will you do it?
7. Following the previous question, what will happen if you write the trigger on before update?
8. What is Cross object workflow and its limitations?
9. Can you check null pointer exception in try catch block?
10. Can you check DML governor limits in try catch block?
11. Is apex always run in system mode?
12. What are standard controllers, controller extensions and custom controllers?
13. What’s the issue in the below code :

for (Account a : trigger.new) {

for (Contact c : [select id,otherphone from contact where accountid =:a.id]) {

c.OtherPhone= a.Phone; 

update c;

}

}

14.  Given the following Force.com page markup and assuming the controller and each extension include an action method named “go,” which class method will be invoked when the user clicks on the commandButton? 

Screen Shot 2015-04-26 at 10.06.29 pm

15. A Force.com page has a command button that directly calls the doSomething() method shown below, where the MyCustomException is a class that extends the System.Exception class

 public void doSomething(){
} throw new MyCustomException(‘An error message.’);
Where would the exception be displayed to the user?

16. How do you make a Web service callout(outbound)?
17. How do you call a method in the class asynchronously in SFDC?
18. What is @isTest(SeeAllData=true)?
19. How do you make sure that your test class covers +ve and -ve scenarios?
20. Whats the advantage of using inline CSS?
21. If there is a trigger on account object and if you insert data through data loader lets say 200 records and on 200th record, the trigger fails, will it roll back or will it commit 199 records?
22. How do you get the contact name from accounts when you write SOQL?
23. Force.com has already provided functionalities OOB, so when you get the requirement, how do you approach it?
24. What is SaaS, PaaS and IaaS?
26. What is the action attribute in command button signifies in VF page?
27. What is batch apex, apex scheduling?

Incorrect User Name/Password error

07 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Salesforce administration, Salesforce Configuration

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Issue:

Last week, I faced a strange issue when I worked for one of the client and 2 of their users were not able to login into Salesforce. They were getting incorrect user id/password error though they tried with the correct user name and password.

Analysis:

Raised Reset Password request and they changed the password by following the instructions given in the email sent by Salesforce. Then, they logged out and tried log back in with the correct user name & password, system didn’t allow them to get into it. It has thrown incorrect user id/password error.

Strangely, the login history didn’t show anything for userid/password error (the login attempts user tried after the password reset).

I tried logging into Salesforce using their logins in my machine and I have got the same user id/password error even with the correct credentials.

Solution:

I raised a case with Salesforce and they have shared the following Knowledge article:

https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewSolution?urlname=Troubleshoot-log-in-issue-Invalid-username-or-password&language=en_US

The issue in our case was that the user name created for those 2 users in question were having trailing spaces at the end of the username. After we corrected the username and set the new password, they were able to login into Salesforce successfully.

Your comments are most welcome.