Cross Object Formulas (wow!)
Following Steve’s lead, I tried my own cross-object formula using the Summer ’08 pre-release org I get to use as an AppExchange partner.
One of my (and probably your) pressing needs is the ability to display fields from related objects (e.g. show the Account Number on the Opportunity page). Before Summer ’08, you had to either use Workflow to copy a value over, embed an s-Control to pretend the field is actually on your object or tell users to use the hovers.
Cross Object formulas take care of this. I decided to see how far it went. To start my test, I added a custom Lookup field from Accounts to Cases. I then created a Formula field on the Licenses custom object that I have in my org. My formula traversed the following relationship path:
- From License
- To Contact
- To Account
- To Case
- To Contact
- To Account – finally displaying the City from this Account
It worked! My resulting formula was:
sfLma__Contact__r.Account.Case__r.Contact.Account.BillingCity
I could’ve kept going through more relationships too. The field selector that’s provided made this simple. Just click click click and you’re done.
This fills a huge gap in the product. This simple addition eliminates a big reason for having needed external reporting tools. This handles the traversing “up” relationships (from detail to master), while the custom Report Types rolled out last release handled the traversing “down” relationships (from master to detail). Combined, they solve a lot of reporting problems.
I can’t begin to tell you the headaches this bit of functionality will cure.