Record types

Record types are a feature of Salesforce CRM that allow you to provide different sets of object picklists, different page layouts, and custom business processes to specific users based on their profile. Record types can be used in various ways, for example:

  • Create record types for opportunities to differentiate your internal sales deals from your field sales deals and show different fields and picklist values
  • Create record types for leads to display different page layouts for your telesales leads versus your internal sales prospective functions

Creating a record type

The record type called Master is always set for every object and contains all the picklist and process options. It is not, however, listed under the record types list and it can be assigned a record type for a profile, provided it is only assigned as a record type for that profile.

As each record type is assigned to one page layout type per profile, the numbers of page assignments can easily increase. This means that, if you have two custom record types for an account and five profiles, you will have 15 page assignments (5*2 for each custom record type and five for the Master record type).

Selectable record types are assigned per profile, and field-level security is configured separately for each record type. Consider the following when creating a record type:

  • Which record types are associated with the current profile?
  • If more than one record type is associated with the current profile, prompt the user for record-type selection
  • If only one record type is associated with the current profile, select that record type without prompting (this would be set as the default)
  • Based on the record type and profile, assign the appropriate page layout
  • Based on the record type, assign the appropriate process and picklist values

By associating different record types with different page layouts, fields, and picklist values, you can formulate a set of object-specific processes. In Salesforce CRM, the following are available:

  • The Lead process using the Lead object, which is governed by the Status field (which is configured to be open, closed, and so on)
  • The Sales process, which uses the Opportunity object and the Stage field (set to be won, lost, and so on), plus the Amount and Probability fields
  • The Support process, which uses the Case object and is controlled by the Case Status field (this might be set to open, closed, and so on)
  • The Solutions process, which uses the Solution object and the Status fields (set to be draft, deployed, and so on)

For example, your sales team creates an opportunity that represents a sales deal. Your sales support team then upsells this deal. You can then create two sales processes with two different record types and two different page layouts: Sales and Support.

You would want to create a lookup relationship from opportunity to opportunity and only require or display this relationship for the support team profile.

You would also be able to configure the sharing rules so that they cannot modify each other's opportunities. This is covered in detail in Chapter 4, Data Management.

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