• mfe
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Hello Salesforce community,

 

I have a general question concerning the development of Salesforce customisations.

 

Our Salesforce setup has different custom objects. Very often the user wishes to display some data from object "A" on a layout of object "B". In the simple cases, we could achieve this using formula fields that just reference to the content of directly related objects, via "mergefields" functionality. There are, however, cases where the data is not directly related, or the relationsship is so complex that mergefields don't offer "paths" to the desired data.

 

We tried to work around this by building triggers that copy some of the data between objects, but this led to  lots of overhead and data redundancy what is just wrong from a technical point of view, and also not feasible for long-term maintainability of the software.

 

What we basically would like to have is kind of a formula field on a layout but with real (apex) code behind to retrieve / calculate the field content).  What would be the "official" solution for a problem like this? Are there any examples? Would it also be possible to use such a "generated" field content in regular object validations, or forumulas of the object again, as if it was a normal field?

 

Any help / hints are highly appreciated!

 

 

 

 

 

Message Edited by mfe on 11-18-2009 12:44 AM