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Salesforce Basics 101

Ryan J.

What is an Object? 

In Salesforce we have Objects you can think of these in terms of containers for your information in the form of tables which are kept in the Salesforce database. The two most common types of objects are Standard and custom objects.     

Standard objects are objects that are included with Salesforce. Common business objects like Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity are all standard objects.

Custom objects are objects that you create to store information that’s specific to your company or industry.

Every standard and custom object has fields attached to it, fields are like columns in a spreadsheet and they have different data types according to what information they will hold such as checkbox (for fields that require a simple yes or no answer), Date or DateTime, Formulas (for calculations).

A standard object comes with a set of prebuilt standard fields. You can customize standard objects by adding custom fields, and you can add custom fields to your custom objects just take into consideration what kind of data you will be saving when you create a custom field. 

 

Create a Custom Object

  1. Click the Object Manager tab.
  2. Click Create | Custom Object in the top-right corner.
  3. For Label, enter Property. Notice that the Object Name and Record Name fields auto-fill.
  4. For Plural Label, enter Properties.
  5. Check the box for Launch New Custom Tab Wizard after saving this custom object.
  6. Leave the rest of the values as default and click Save.
  7. On the New Custom Object Tab page, click the Tab Style field and select a style you like. The style sets the icon to display in the UI for the object.
  8. Click Next, Next, and Save.

 

Great job! You just created your first custom object. Now, let’s talk about adding fields to this object.

If you are using custom user profiles in Salesforce, you will need to give your users access to the objects that are in the Formstack Documents managed packaged.

To update the permissions, go to Setup > Users > Profiles and then click the link under Profile next to the profile that you would like to update.

Scroll down to the Custom Object Permissions section in the settings and you'll need to give the profile Read, Create, Edit, and View All access for the following objects:

Screen_Shot_2020-06-29_at_2.13.56_PM.png

Create a Custom Field

  1. From Setup, go to Object Manager | Property.
  2. In the sidebar, click Fields & Relationships. Notice that there are already some fields there. There’s a name field and some of the system fields we talked about earlier.
  3. Click New in the top right.
  4. For data type, select Currency.
  5. Click Next.
  6. Fill out the following:
    1. Field Label: Price
    2. Description: The listed sale price of the home.
  7. Check the Required box.
  8. Click Next, Next again, and then Save.

You’ll see your new Price field in the list of Property fields. In the Field Name column, notice that it says Price__c. The “__c” part is an easy way to tell that a particular field is a custom field.

 

Best Practices for customizing you org:

  • Give your objects and fields descriptive, unique names so that it does not become confusing when it comes to mapping.
  • Include descriptions for custom objects and fields for your users. 
  • To avoid incomplete data make essential fields required. 

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