USE CASE: Ensuring Salesforce Field Values Follow Required Formatting

Problem: Certain field values lack the correct format and need proper standardization

Certain text field values on a record must follow particular, pre-established patterns. There may be a specific naming convention (whether words or numbers), or they may require case sensitivity. If these formats aren’t followed by Salesforce users, various systems will not recognize the data. This can result in serious problems and confusion within the company.

Solution: Automatically warn the Salesforce user to follow the properly accepted format for text field values

Using the Free Edition of the Data Quality Helper app, an Admin can easily create hard or soft validation rules to address various situations and inform users of the required or desired elements. Especially unique to this app, Admins can create validation rules that use regex (regular expressions) functionality to ensure certain patterns are followed.

Salesforce default functionality only allows hard validation rules—if records are not properly created/updated, the save/submit is prevented. With the added functionality of Data Quality Helper, including soft validation and regex pattern recognition, Admins have more flexibility to design unique validation rules that better serve organization goals across a number of situations, beyond this example field value formatting. In addition, Admins can craft warning messages, customized by content and formatting. Finally, the app can provide a list view of all new and existing records with unresolved data validation issues—making future data cleanup easier. (Check out the Data Quality Helper Admin Guide for step-by-step instructions on how to set up validation rules.)

In this particular use case, the Admin has chosen to use a soft validation rule with regex and customized warning empowering the Salesforce user to make a decision on how to proceed.

This warning says: “The Account Number does not seem to follow the proper format. Account Numbers are expected to have three sets of numbers separated by two hyphens (ex: 12-345-67).”

Ideally, you want all the information you can get in the correct format, but in some cases not having it may not be worth the cost of not being able to create/update the new Account (like with Salesforce’s default hard validation). The choice whether to use this app’s soft or hard validation is an Admin and organizational decision.

The good news is that, with Data Quality Helper, unresolved validation issues remain attached to the record. They aren’t one-time-only and just disappear. So it serves as a reminder to add the missing information later.

Besides enhanced data validation, this app also offers duplicate data detection and resolution that exceeds default Salesforce functionality. Plus, don’t forget to take advantage of the list view that shows all validation and duplication issues detected by the rules Admins created. Install the free version today!