Functionality Wishes (05/2006)

May 12, 2006 @ 5:25 pm · Filed under Wish List
By Scott Hemmeter

I have been delving into some new areas lately and I keep coming up with more and more functionality wishes. Some bigger than others, but I want to keep documenting them as I collect bunches of them. These are more configuration and development related.

Sorting QueryResultSets

When querying data using SOQL, you cannot perform an ORDER BY. I assume this is to protect system performance, but it’d be great if there was some way to perform sorts on your data in the API. Maybe this is having ORDER BY as a parameter in SOQL. Alternatively, there could be a sort() method that can be called once you actually have your QueryResult in memory. This method should allow you to provide a multi-column sort order.

I have seen some sorting functions on the message boards, but they are a bit over my head. It would be nice to have this built right into the product.

Configuring Partners

I echo Gokubi’s recommendation for the ability to configure the Partners object. It would be great to be able to add additional information regarding the relationship between 2 accounts.

More Description fields when configuring

It would be nice to have more areas to input a description when you are configuring. Also, when there is a description field, it’d be nice to be able to see that when viewing the data in a list. For example,

  • Display the Description when listing the Fields for an object
  • Include a description on the Sharing Rule page and display it when viewing Sharing Rules. Some organizations have 100s of Sharing rules and it’s hard to keep them straight sometimes. Display this field on the Sharing Rule list
  • Display the Description field when listing the Profiles
  • etc.
Utilize Views in more places in the Setup area

Setup Views on pages like Fields, Profiles, Sharing Rules, etc. so you could include any fields you want on there. You might have a view for Formula Fields that shows you all the formulas right there in one page. Or a Profile view that displays the profiles and all of their Tab permissions. Views exist today when Managing Users. Apply the same concept in other areas of the application so we do not have to drill into each record to see details all the time.

Where is this Public Group Used?

Publis Groups can be very useful for administering access to Reports, Dashboards, Documents, etc. However, it is difficult to know where a Public Group is being used unless you click into every folder. It’d be nice to have a view from the Public Group page to see where it is being used.

Picklists in Formula Fields

Right now, you cannot simply grab the value of a picklist field in a formula. You have to know the value you are looking for and use the ISPICKVAL function. Alternatively, you need to create a formula field for the picklist and go through every possible picklist value and output its corresponding text. This can be burdensome. There should be a way to simply reference the picklist field in a formula and use its value.

Formula Field Length

The workaround to the issue with picklist fields is to create a formula field that does an ISPICKVAL function on every possible picklist value and then outputs the equivalent text. The max formula size is 1000 characters, so sometimes you need to create multiple formula fields to accomplish this. If the Picklists in Formula Fields wish isn’t fulfilled, then the max length of a formula field should be increased.

2 Comments

  1. Steve Said,

    May 15, 2006 @ 7:26 am

    Great ammendments to your list, Scott.

    Sort on SOQL would be great. Because Query works in batches, the sort would have to happen after all the results have been returned, which would be fine by me. I’ve looked at the code for sorting the results and I too have been stumped.

    As long as we’re talking SOQL, how about joins? When people as about SOQL, I tell them it’s just like SQL–but without joins. A simple join would eliminate many server round trips in my code.

    I’d love a formula field that returns a checkbox. My example is evaluating if Today is between two date ranges, if so I’d set a formula checkbox to true. Right now I have to set a text field to “true” or “active”. Lame.

  2. Rhonda Ross Said,

    February 6, 2011 @ 6:51 pm

    Can’t remember exactly when IdeaExchange came out but I think it was after this post. You may want to post the ones that haven’t been addressed over there to accumulate some votes and Salesforce’s attention.

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