Book Image

Force.com Enterprise Architecture - Second Edition

By : Andrew Fawcett
Book Image

Force.com Enterprise Architecture - Second Edition

By: Andrew Fawcett

Overview of this book

Companies of all sizes have seen the need for Force.com's architectural strategy focused on enabling their business objectives. Successful enterprise applications require planning, commitment, and investment in the best tools, processes, and features available. This book will teach you how to architect and support enduring applications for enterprise clients with Salesforce by exploring how to identify architecture needs and design solutions based on industry standard patterns. There are several ways to build solutions on Force.com, and this book will guide you through a logical path and show you the steps and considerations required to build packaged solutions from start to finish. It covers all aspects, from engineering to getting your application into the hands of your customers, and ensuring that they get the best value possible from your Force.com application. You will get acquainted with extending tools such as Lightning App Builder, Process Builder, and Flow with your own application logic. In addition to building your own application API, you will learn the techniques required to leverage the latest Lightning technologies on desktop and mobile platforms.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Force.com Enterprise Architecture - Second Edition
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Understanding the custom field features


Custom fields carry many more features than you might think; they are much more than simple field definitions you find on other platforms. Having a good understanding of a custom field is the key to reducing the amount of code you have to write and improving the user experience and reporting of your application's data.

Default field values

Adding default values to your fields improves the usability of your application and can reduce the number of fields needed on the screen, as users can remove fields with acceptable defaults from the layouts.

Default values defined on custom fields apply in the native user interfaces and Visualforce UIs (providing the apex:inputField component is used) and in some cases, through the APIs. You can define a default value based on a formula using either literal values and/or variables such as $User, $Organization, and $Setup.

Let's try this out. Create a Year text field on the Season object as per the following screenshot...