Written by Alessandro on 2 Apr 2007 — Tagged with: Fields, IDs, Structure, URLs

Often people ask me how to get fields IDs in order to build their custom links. I thought it would have been helpful to write a post about this. Let’s see how to get a field ID for custom and standard fields.

Custom Fields

In order to get the ID of a custom field proceed this way:

• Click on Setup, then on Customize, select the Object you desire (e.g.: Leads) and click on Fields;
• Click on the name of the custom field you previously created
• Look at your browser’s address bar, you’ll see something like:
  https://emea.salesforce.com/00N20000000thpj
• The 15 digit code that appears immediately after https://emea.salesforce.com/ is the ID of that custom field; in this case the ID of the custom field I selected is 00N20000000thpj

Easy enough, isnt’t it

Standard Fields

Salesforce.com provides a list of the field’s name for its standard fields, which can be found attached to the solution “How do I create custom links?” and that I decided to paste here as a quick reference:

Questions?

Written by Alessandro on 31 Jan 2007 — Tagged with: Custom Links, Formulas, Script, URLs

In my last post I explained how to build a simple web custom link; more complex custom links can be used to pass data from your Salesforce records, user information, or company information to another website or application; it can also be used to pass variables from one Salesforce object to another.

Let’s see how to create a custom link to pass fields values from a Salesforce object to another.

Scenario

We give support to different companies and accordingly to what kind of support type a company has, their cases have to be handled differently. We’ve created a custom field for the Account object called Support Type, of type Picklist, containing the variables: “Silver, Gold, Platinum“; we created the same Support Type field for the Case object, same type, same picklist values. We now need to create a custom link in the Account object so when we click on it, we get redirected to a Case page where Account Name and Support Type are filled accordingly to the values present on the Account record.

How to proceed – a step by step guide

First of all we need to find out where in the Case record page our values are going to be “written” to; we basically need to find out the ID of the HTML INPUT fields: Support Type and Account Name.

UPDATE: In order to find a field’s ID please check this post

Let’s now move to: Setup > App Setup > Customize > Accounts > Buttons and Links, click on the New button, specify a Label (eg: “New Case”), the Name will be filled in automatically, select the Display Type, the Behavior, make sure the Content Source is URL.

We’re now about to start writing our custom link; the last thing we need is the Object’s code for the Case object: 500 (where did I get this from? Did you read all the old posts? ).

1. Our custom link will start with: /500/e? which points to the edit page of a new case record.
2. Now we can pass the variables: cas4, the ID of the Account Name INPUT field in the Case object, will have to contain the actual account name, so we can write cas4= and select Account Name from the Insert Field drop-down list. This will automatically insert {!Account.Name}.

   So far we have:

   /500/e?cas4={!Account.Name}

3. We have to add an & (ampersand) within the variables.
4. 00N20000000thpg, the ID of the Support Type INPUT field in the Case object, will need to contain the value of the selected account’s Support Type field, so we can write 00N20000000thpg= and select Support Type from the Insert Field drop-down list. This will automatically insert {!Account.SupportType__c} in the textarea. So far we have:

   /500/e?cas4={!Account.Name}&00N20000000thpg={!Account.SupportType__c}

5. Doesn’t it look good? And it’s almost complete. We can add a retURL to point the user back to the account’s page when the case is saved. Just add retURL=/{!Account.Id} and we’re done! All together!:

   /500/e?retURL=/{!Account.Id}&cas4={!Account.Name}&00N20000000thpg={!Account.SupportType__c}

This should give you an idea of how a custom link works. I hope I’ve been clear enough, if you have any question, just add a comment.

Written by Alessandro on 11 Jan 2007 — Tagged with: Structure, URLs

UPDATE: Public apologies to Mike Schinkel, this post was inspired by Mike’s “URL Structure“. I decided to write a similar post to include the full list of known instances, mine wasn’t certainly a way to get credit for something you wrote first Mike! Sorry!

Finally found the structure to delete a record in SF, adding it below. Eoin

Here’s a quick introduction to understand the structure of all the URLs in Salesforce:

Instances

Salesforce’s organizations reside on multiple instances, to find out what instance you’re on, once you logged into Salesforce, have a look at the address bar; you’ll notice the URL starts with something like:

ssl – North America #0 (aka na0)
na1 – North America #1
na2 – North America #2
na3 – North America #3
na4 – North America #4
na5 – North America #5
emea – Europe, Middle East, Africa
ap – Asia, Pacific
tapp0 – Sandbox #0
tapp1 – Sandbox #1

https://xyz.salesforce.com

where xyz is the name of the instance your organization is on.

Objects’ specific URLs

Every Salesforce’s object has it’s specific URL, here are listed the links to the standard objects:

Basic action URLs

Use the following URLs to perform the listed operations on a specific object. Note this is fundamental to then understand how to create internal custom links.

Object’s overview page
https://[instance].salesforce.com/[object]/o
ie: https://emea.salesforce.com/500/o

Create a new record
https://[instance].salesforce.com/[object]/e?retURL=/[object_code]/o
ie: https://emea.salesforce.com/500/e?retURL=/500/o

Edit a record
https://[instance].salesforce.com/[object]/[recordID]/e?retURL=[recordID]
ie: https://emea.salesforce.com/50020000000chRD/e?retURL=/50020000000chRD

Clone a record
https://[instance].salesforce.com/[object]/[recordID]/e?retURL=[recordID]&clone=1

Delete a record
https://[instance].salesforce.com/setup/own/deleteredirect.jsp?delID=[recordID]

where:

• [instance] is the instance’s name your organization resides on;
• [object] is the object’s code;
• [recordID] is the ID of the record itself.