This video brought to you by at salesforcedocs! Welcome to Record Types, part of the Who Sees
What series on data visibility and access in Salesforce.
You often need the ability to organize and gather data in different ways and at different
times, around the same object. For example, you may have one case object,
but have 2 variations: Internal and External. They might need to gather slightly different
information and need different picklist choices
even the business processes that each goes through might be different.
Record Types are the answer. They’re incredibly versatile tools that help you collect and
manage data about an object. Record types control 3 things:
business processes Page layouts
and Picklist values Business processes are represented by special
picklist fields that capture the lifecycle of a standard object such as an opportunity,
case or a lead, or a lifecycle of a custom object.
Page layouts let you select and organize groups of fields related to an object.
Picklist values are the lists of choices that you define when you create a picklist field.
You define a master list, with all possible choices, and use record types to display a
subset, depending on the situation. Let’s take a look at this in the app. We’ll
create the business processes, page layouts, and record types we’ll need, for internal
and external cases. Then we’ll create and assign our picklist values.
First, lets add any values we need to the Status field. The status field is used by
Case support processes. We type in any new field values we need, for
either internal or external cases and Save
into the Support Processes to define the processes that are unique to each type of case.
We create a process for internal
and external
Next Page Layouts: We’ll create the Internal layout first
Before you do this, make sure you’ve created any custom fields you need. The custom fields
we’ll use in this example have already been created for us.
We’ve got a custom field for location, so we know if the employee logging the case is
in headquarters, or in a satellite office. Lets drag that onto the layout, along with
employee ID.
For internal cases, instead of the Contact field, we’re using a custom lookup field,
that looks up to the User table. Let’s remove fields that aren’t necessary
for internal cases, like Account. We can’t remove contact name field but we
can move it to a new section, so it's out of the way.
Notice that there is no field for record type yet. As soon as we create at least one record
type, the system generates a field called “Case Record Type” and we can then add
it to the page layouts. This isn’t necessary but your users may
find it useful to see which record type they are using, especially if they have access
to more than 1 type. We save the Internal layout.
Now let’s create the External layout We’ll base this on the existing Case Layout
We can add any necessary custom fields, delete fields we aren’t using, and organize everything
into sections. And save.
Now we’ll create 2 Record Types. We name this record type Internal, choose
the Internal Support Process we just defined, give it a description and make sure it is
Active. Now, let’s make this record type available
to the profiles that will use it. Only our Support Users create internal cases,
so we select that just profile On this screen, we choose which page layout
to use. We select the Internal page layout we just created.
And click Save and New Now let’s create the External record type.
Both our Sales Users and our Support Users create cases for customers, so we’ll check
both these profiles. and Save
Next, we create all the picklist values we need. We go back to the fields section, and
add some values to the “Type” field We can assign these values to the appropriate
record type.
and Save. The last thing we’ll do is add the record
type field onto both the internal and external page layouts so any user that has access to
more than one record type can quickly see which type they are using.
We go back to page layout, and edit both the internal and external layouts.
Done! Let's log in as a Support User to see what this looks like from the perspective
of our end users.
When Lars creates a new case, he can switch between the record types, if necessary.
The description field for each record type displays here, making it easy for him to choose..
And selecting a record type provides Lars with the fields, picklist values, and business
process that he needs for that type of case. He isn’t overwhelmed with choices he doesn’t
need, or fields that don’t apply. Here are some things to watch out for:
Once you have created and assigned record types, you can edit those assignments by profile,
in the Manage Users | Profiles section of the Setup pages.
If any records have already been created in your system before you created and started
using record types, those original records won’t have an associated record type. You’ll
need to retroactively assign the proper record type ID.
You can use Data Loader to extract your cases. Be sure to include at least one of each record
type so you have the ID. Then you apply the correct record type ID and update the records
using the Data Loader Update button.
To learn more about visibility and access, check out all the titles in this video series.
You can also search for these topics in Salesforce Help
And come join us on the trail at trailblazer dot salesforce dot com