Introducing Data Quality Helper—With This App, The Wait Is Over

Since July 31, 2007, members of the Salesforce Community have been clamoring for a new feature to be added to the platform—”soft” data validation rules and warnings. On that date, a post was added to the IdeaExchange, and since then it has garnered some 25,000 points and more than 2,500 votes. The people have spoken, and they overwhelmingly support this idea.

Unfortunately, over the subsequent years, Salesforce has not considered it a priority nor added it to its roadmap for development. But don’t despair, Salesforce Admins and users.

A New Day Is Dawning

On July 10, 2023, enhanced functionality for validation rules became available across the platform—thanks to a new, free, 100%-native app from Passage Technology, Data Quality Helper.

• Admins customize each rule’s criteria and the content/formatting of the warning message.
• Admins set warning conditions: before or after save, prevent or allow save.
• Users resolve the notification and data problem, per Admin-prescribed guidelines

For example, once a rule is configured, here is what a user might see when a validation rule is encountered:

The news gets even better. In addition to the validation functionality that exceeds the default Salesforce offering, Data Quality Helper also offers customizable rules for data duplication resolution (that also exceed default Salesforce functionality).

• Create duplicate rules for any standard or custom object
• Customize matching criteria to define how similar data must be for a duplicate record to be flagged
• Provide users with more control during the merge process

For example, once a rule is configured, here is what a user might see when potential duplicate records exist:

The Salesforce report, “Ensuring Data is of High Quality” found that on average, a customer's contact database has over 25% duplicate records.

One App, Two Powerful Ways to Elevate Your Organization’s Data Quality

Like never before, both types of customizable rules and warnings offer greater Admin flexibility and empower users to act. These rules can apply to newly created/updated records as well as existing records.

When users encounter validation warnings, they may be (as predetermined by the Admin’s rule configuration) allowed to continue with a “soft validation” save or prevented from saving by “hard validation.” Ideally, users address and resolve the issues at hand, but the Admin’s rule may also allow it to be addressed later. With some edge cases, there might not be a clear path to resolution, so ignoring a warning might be necessary. It depends on organizational priorities for that situation.

When users encounter duplicate warnings, if they choose to act, they are given a wide range of options for merging the data into one corrected record. The app recognizes that every duplicate situation is different, as is the unique resolution. 

The warnings generated by these rules stay attached to the record’s detail page until the issue is resolved per Admin-prescribed guidelines. However, if the setting is configured to allow for it, a user may also ignore warnings and prevent them from displaying again to that user. Ultimately, the stickiness of these warnings also allows for a third valuable feature in Data Quality Helper.

Generate an At-a-Glance View of All Data Quality Issues Across the Entire Dataset

A home page lightning component provides a handy list view of all unresolved validation and duplication issues. Salesforce users can choose to fix them as new information becomes available or undertake a project-like effort to reduce the backlog and improve data quality.

A user may decide to Ignore a specific warning and remove it from the individual list view, but the warning is not removed from the system or others’ list views (again, if the Admin’s chosen configuration allows this). 

Don’t Delay—Install For Free Now

Data Quality Helper Free Edition lets you create two enhanced validation rules and one enhanced duplicate resolution rule. The Premium Edition allows an unlimited number of both rules. Get started today on addressing poor data quality with this easy-to-use app. The ROI your company gets from its Salesforce investment is totally dependent on having high quality data to begin with. Everything follows from that.

Bad data quality is corrosive, and the damage compounds daily. We have the solution for you.