How to Create a Custom Field in Salesforce
Fields are how Salesforce keeps track of separate pieces of information.
For each Contact, for instance, there are different fields for name, address, title
and so on.
We also understand that your business has unique needs so Salesforce allows you to create
custom fields so you can track any information you need to run your business
Now we’ll walk through how to create a custom field on a Contact so you can track their
preferred contact method.
We’ll start by clicking the Setup menu in the upper right hand corner of your app.
If you are using Salesforce LIghtning Experience click the cog to access the Setup pages.
Find the Build section in the left side of the page and click on the customize link underneath
it.
Click on Contacts … and then on fields.
You’ll find the Custom Fields section right below the list of all the standard fields.
Click New
If you are using Salesforce Lightning Experience, click the cog and use quick find to locate
the Object Manager.
Once in the Object Manager, find the Contact object, and in the Fields & Relationships
section, click New
Now you can pick which type of field you want to create.
You can create Number fields
Formula fields text fields
You can even create fields that look up information already in Salesforce.
I’ll choose pick list so users can pick the preferred method from a set list of choices.
Pick lists are a great way to make sure everybody enters information in the same way.
This keeps data clean and makes your reports more accurate.
When you’re done selecting your field type click Next and Salesforce will lead you through
how to setup your field.
Keep in mind the number of steps will vary depending on what type of field you’re creating.
Now we’ll enter the field details starting with the label
We want to make it easy for people to know what this field is so we’ll label it Preferred
Contact Method
Now we’ll enter the values we want in our picklist, with each value on its own line
These checkboxes will either present these values in an alphabetical list or let you
choose the first value you typed as the default value.
Now we can add a description to our field and some help text.
The help text is displayed whenever a user mouses over the information icon next to the
field
This is a great way to quickly provide direction to people using your Salesforce org.
When you’re done click Next.
Here we’ll establish field level security.
For example, if we uncheck the visible box next to the General Marketing User profile,
this field will be Invisible to any users assigned to this profile.
Even if this field is displayed on a page layout, or added to a report, it will remain
invisible to users with the General Marketing User profile.
The “Preferred Contact Method” field is not considered sensitive data, so we can leave
it visible to all profiles.
The last step is to choose which page layouts should display this field.
Page layouts are assigned by user profiles.
We currently only use one layout for all our user profiles, so we’ll add our new field
to the layout.
To finish creating this custom field, click Save.
Let’s take a look at our new field.
We’ll open a Contact, and here we see our new field.
In edit mode, we’ll see our help text, and our picklist values
We’ve just seen how to add one type of field, the picklist of the many fields you can add
in Salesforce.
For more information, search for these topics in Salesforce Help.
And for more on profiles and field level security, use the URL below to view the Who Sees What
video series.
Thanks for using Salesforce.