SEE DATA IN MULTIPLE PLACES USING ADVANCED FORMULA FIELDS

Business Scenario:  As a user, you want to spend less time filling out forms and spend more time creating value.  You want your users to be able to see all of the important information on one screen instead of having to flip from page to page to find things like Customer names, phone numbers, Opportunities, etc.  The goal is to re-create fields from other objects on a single page in order to shorten the amount of time spent searching for the right data.

Solution: Use Formula Fields on objects to reference information from other objects, without having to re-enter data anywhere!

Benefit: Cross-Object Formula Fields are powerful in that you can reference any fields from any other objects in SalesForce as long as they are linked either with a Lookup field or a Master-Detail field.  They help to simplify user experience in that there is less clicking to get to important business information, which helps save company time.

Lets assume that you have a field on Accounts that ‘s called “Main Contact”.  In order to show the contact’s details on the Opportunity:

1. Create a formula field that is of type “text”

2. In the Advanced Formula editor, type: “Account.Main_Contact__r.FirstName + Account.Main_Contact__r.LastName”

3. Alternatively, you could use the “Insert Field” button and navigate to the Account –> Main Contact –> FirstName and so on w/the last name.

This will show the Name field from the contact.  You could just as easily add the email address and phone number as well.  Basically any field from the Contact record would be usable for viewing via this method.  This allows for all of the contact information to be easily accessible from one page rather than having to go from Opportunity to Account to Contact info