Category Archives: Knowledge Nugget

Improving Lookup Search Results

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Hi my fellow citizen developers.  Lookups are a great way to relate objects together but can lead to a bad user experience if the lookup search isn’t configured well.

In this post we will be looking at a simple example of using a lookup field to define the instructor for a class.  So below shows the instructor field where we enter the last name of the instructor to be assigned to the class.

LookupExample1

When we click on the lookup icon we see several results from our lookup search.  Unfortunately we have no additional information to determine which Ben Smith is the one we need to assign as the instructor.

LookupExample2

To help users find the right instructor we need to include additional information in the lookup search to help them choose.  To do that we need to modify the Search Layout on the object that is holding our instructor information.

LookupExample3

Go to the search layouts for the object you are using, in this case I am using Contact.  To help my users find the right contact record I am adding the contact’s title, department, reports to and email information in the Lookup Dialog.  So when a lookup search is done, more information is displayed.

LookupExample4

Now with this information my user should be able to select the correct contact to assign as instructor for the class.

Hope this helps you with your configuration setup and user experience design.

 

 

 

Changing How a Date is Displayed

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Dates are formatted differently depending on the country.  If you find that the dates are displaying in a format that you are not familiar with or do not prefer, you can change it by changing your locale.

date-formats1a

Go to My Settings – > Personal -> Language & Time Zones

Change Locale and save.

Example:

I logged into my org and entered a date.  It displayed as 29/11/2016. (DD/MM/YYYY)  Although I can understand what it means, it is not my preferred way of viewing dates.displaydate1

So I went to  My Settings -> Personal -> Language & Time Zones

sfmysettings

sflangtimezonemenu

Here is what I saw:

sflangtimezones1

I changed Locale to something more appropriate for me

sflangtimezones2

So going back to the same record the date now looks like this:

displaydate2

Manage Business Hours Holidays

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For this installment of my permission series we are going to review the Manage Business Hours Holidays permission.  Before we see what this permission allows a user to do, we first need to review Business Hours and Holidays as defined within a Salesforce organization.

Overview

Business HoursHoursOfOperation1

The hours when your support team is available to serve customers.

  • By default business hours are set 24 hours, seven days a week in the default time zone specified by your organization’s profile.
  • Several sets of business hours can be defined for an organization so that different service hours can be related to holidays, cases and other areas.
  • Salesforce automatically calculates daylight savings times for the time zones available for business hours
  • The Business Hours field cannot be included in list views or reports.
  • The Business Hours field can be added to CASE layouts to allow users to view and define a specific set of business hours to a case.
  • Business Hours on a case are automatically set to your organization’s default business hours unless an escalation rule associated with a different set of business hours is activated due to matching criteria
  • Escalation rules only run during the business hours with which they are associated
  • Business hours included in escalation rules must first be removed from these rules before being deactivated
  • Hierarchy of Business Hours:
    Business hours applied to a milestone override business hours applied to an entitlement process, which override business hours applied to a case. If no business hours are set on the milestone, then the Entitlement Process Business Hours are used. If neither the Milestone Business Hours nor the Entitlement Process Business Hours are set, then the business hours on the case are used.

Holidaysholiday1

Holidays let you specify the dates and times your customer support team is unavailable. After you create a holiday, you can associate it with business hours to suspend business hours and escalation rules during holiday dates and times.

  • Up to 1000 holidays can be associated with each set of business hours.
  • Holidays automatically acquire the time zone of the business hours with which they are associated.
  • You can only add business hours marked as Active to holidays.
  • Holiday names don’t need to be unique.
  • Report results do not take holidays into account.
  • A holiday can be set to recur on a specific day of every month (20th or first Monday, etc).

What Can You Do With This Permission?

A user with a profile or permission set having the Manage Business Hours Holidays enabled can do the following:

  • Define business hours
  • Edit business hours
  • Define holidays
  • Edit Holidays
  • Associate business hours to holidays

A user with the Customize Application permission enabled as well can also do the following:

  • Add Business Hours field to the Case Layout page
  • Associate business hours to milestones in entitlement process
  • Associate business hours with escalation rules
  • Associate business hours with entitle processes

References

Guidelines for Setting Business Hours
Set Business Hours
Setup Support Holidays
Guidelines for Creating Support Holidays