My Blog of Salesforce Stuff

Visual Studio Code error while fetching extensions. XHR Failed.

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 14:12:20 GMT

"XHR Failed" error when attempting to install VS Code Extension

Brand new Windows 10 Dell out of the box.

Installed VS Code then tried to install extension, specifically the 'Salesforce Extension Pack', but I see reports of this error for other extensions too.

It failed to install with 'XHR Failed'.

Just on home wifi here, no corporate firewall, proxy, VPN or anything.

Got it working with the help of this post

Press Windows key and type 'Network Connections'
Select 'View Network Connections'
Right click the network that you are connected to and select 'Properties'
Click 'Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and 'Properties'
Click 'Use the following DNS server addresses' and enter

Preferred DNS Server: 8.8.8.8
Alternate DNS Server: 8.8.4.4
(These are Google's DNS servers)

Click 'OK', 'Close'
Press Windows key and enter 'cmd'
Click on 'Command Prompt'
Type
ipconfig /flushdns
enter
Restart VS Code and try again to install extension

What is '$A' in Lightning Component Aura Framework?

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 07:33:43 GMT

Whilst learning about Aura components, you will come across $A.

E.g. When making a call to the server from your javascript client controller to retrieve data from the Apex server controller, you queue up the action with '$A.enqueueAction(action)', or when you create a framework event you use '$A.get("e.force:createRecord")'

What is '$A' and where can I find out more about it?

The $A namespace is the entry point for using the framework in JavaScript code. It allows you to interact with the framework.

The methods available are listed here - https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.lightning.meta/lightning/ref_jsapi_dollarA.htm

OAuth 2.0 Authorisation with JWT Bearer Flow

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Fri, 08 May 2020 13:26:09 GMT

In a server-to-server integration, there is no user to interactively log in to provide authorisation. In this case OAuth 2.0 JSON Web Token (JWT) bearer flow can provide the authorisation.

There are numerous online resources explaining how to set this up. I used a pinch from one and a sprinkle from another to arrive at a process that worked for me which I will share here. All of those sources will be referenced.

Ingredients

A Salesforce Org
OpenSSL
Apex or Node or Python
Postman

If you don't have all of those in your cupboard, don't worry, neither did I when I started.

Method

The first part is to generate a X.509 certificate. Most of the resources that I visited assumed that the reader already had OpenSSL installed, which I did not.

You can check if OpenSSL is installed from the command prompt (I'm using Windows throughout this):

> which openssl

Installing OpenSSL on Windows looks pretty complex, and a DuckDuckGo search returns lots of questions about errors encountered. However, a comment in a post on the community pointed out that the git installation for Windows includes OpenSSL, so you can access it from Git Bash. I already had this installed, so Thanks Kaushik Ghosh !

If you don't have OpenSSL or git on Windows, just install git , it looks much easier tha installing OpenSSL, and open the Git Bash application which gets installed.

Now we can generate the certificate, ' straight outta Trailhead ':

• Create a new directory, e.g. cert, and switch to it.

• Generate an RSA private key:

> openssl genrsa -des3 -passout pass:SomePassword -out server.pass.key 2048

• Create a key file from the server.pass.key file:

> openssl rsa -passin pass:SomePassword -in server.pass.key -out server.key

• Delete the server.pass.key:

> rm server.pass.key

• Request and generate the certificate:

> openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

• Enter all requested information.

o    Press Enter when prompted for the challenge password.
o    The Certificate Authorities use this password to authenticate the certificate owner when they want to revoke their certificate. Because it’s a self-signed certificate, there’s no way to revoke it via CRL (Certificate Revocation List).
o    Enter a period (.) to skip entering an optional company name.

• Generate the SSL certificate:

> openssl x509 -req -sha256 -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt

• In your directory, you will now find server.crt, server.csr and server.key.

Next we create a Connected App in Salesforce.

Go to Setup, and then -

- In Classic, go to Create - Apps and click 'New' next to 'Connected Apps' related list

- In Lightning, type 'app m' in Quick Find, click on 'App Manager' and click 'New Connected App' button at top right

Fill in the blanks like this, using your own details.
- ‘Callback URL’ can be anything.
- Make sure ‘Use digital signatures is checked’ and browse to ‘server.crt’ that was generated above.

Save your Connected app.

Click ‘Manage’

Under ‘OAuth Policies’ set ‘Permitted Users’ to ‘Admin approved users are pre-authorized’

Save, and under ‘Profiles’, add a Profile, e.g. System Administrator

Now we can generate the token that will be used for authorisation.

I found various options online for performing this step using

- Apex

- Node

- Python

I recommend having a look at each as there is a lot of useful information there. In my case, I had difficulty with the certificate format for the Apex one, and I’ve not used Node, so I went for Python which I have used a little. It's pretty easy to install and use.

If you don’t have Python, you can install it from here .

Run this command from command line to install needed extensions:

> python -m pip install pyjwt cryptography requests

The python code from booleangate's github page is shown at the foot of this page. Paste it into a new file and save it as ‘generate-token.py’. Put it in the same directory as the .crt and .key files.

Modify these lines:-
IS_SANDBOX – True or False
KEY_FILE – the filename of your .key file. Include the path if not in the same directory
ISSUER – paste the consumer key from your connected app
SUBJECT – the username of the authenticating user

At the command line make sure you are in the directory containing the .py, .crt and .key files, then issue

> python generate-token.py

All being well you will receive a response like this:

PS C:\Users\Mike\cert> python generate-token.py
Loading private key...
Generating signed JWT assertion...
Making OAuth request...
Status: 200
{'access_token': '00DZ0000000cZFp!ARcThisIsNotARealToken5CeekNFm5o8pQfKVNlZoCmTo4mVWOPzR_WrMfbUAcQCH40cuc9rJm9XS4onzrEjhN7JIpAlXYRAGw', 'scope': 'api', 'instance_url': 'https://my-domain.my.salesforce.com', 'id': 'https://login.salesforce.com/id/00Dd0000000NotReal/005d0000000NotReal', 'token_type': 'Bearer'}

Copy the access token value, starting 00D…, without the quotes, and use it in Postman. Postman is a tool for developing and testing APIs and can be freely downloaded here . See this post for an intro to Postman.

Use this for a GET request:

https://my-domain.my.salesforce.com/services/data/v47.0/query/?q=SELECT+Id, Name+From+Account+LIMIT+1

On the ‘Authorization’ tab, choose ‘Bearer Token’ as the ‘Type’ and paste the access token into the ‘Token’ field. Press ‘Send’ and you should see a JSON response:

Python code for generating JSON Web Token (from booleangate )

from datetime import datetime
import jwt
import time
import requests

# *** Update these values to match your configuration ***
IS_SANDBOX = True
KEY_FILE = 'salesforce.key'
ISSUER = 'the consumer key from your application'
SUBJECT = 'your-sf-user@email.tld'
# *******************************************************

DOMAIN = 'test' if IS_SANDBOX else 'login'

print('Loading private key...')
with open(KEY_FILE) as fd:
    private_key = fd.read()

print('Generating signed JWT assertion...')
claim = {
    'iss': ISSUER,
    'exp': int(time.time()) + 300,
    'aud': 'https://{}.salesforce.com'.format(DOMAIN),
    'sub': SUBJECT,
}
assertion = jwt.encode(claim, private_key, algorithm='RS256', headers={'alg':'RS256'}).decode('utf8')

print('Making OAuth request...')
r = requests.post('https://{}.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token'.format(DOMAIN), data = {
    'grant_type': 'urn:ietf:params:oauth:grant-type:jwt-bearer',
    'assertion': assertion,
})

print('Status:', r.status_code)
print(r.json())

Salesforce OAuth 2.0 Web Server Flow Authorisation with Postman

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 20:49:30 GMT

As it says at postman.com ‘Postman is a collaboration platform for API development. Postman's features simplify each step of building an API and streamline collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster.’

It’s a free, downloadable client app currently used by 10 million developers across 500,000 companies.

To demonstrate the process I’m going to use the Connected App from the Trailhead module ‘ Build a Connected App for API Integration ’ and the ‘ Use REST API ’ unit.

Once you have downloaded and installed the Postman client, open it and click on ‘Create a request’:

Now we need some values from the OAuth settings of the Connected App. To get back to those settings in your Salesforce org, go to Setup and click on App Manager, then click the dropdown next to your Connected App on the far right and select ‘View’:

You will need the ‘Consumer Key’, ‘Consumer Secret’ (click to reveal it) and the ‘Callback URL’:

Whilst in the org, click on App Manager again and this time click ‘Manage’ in the dropdown on the right next to your Connected org. For this demo, set ‘Permitted Users’ to ‘All users may self-authorize’ and set ‘IP Relaxation’ to ‘Relax IP restrictions’. These may have been set to different values during the Trailhead module.

Postman will also need values for an Authorization URL and Access Token URL:

Find your ‘domain’, it’s the part between ‘https://’ and ‘.lightning.force.com’ when you look at the address of a page in your org. E.g. for an Account in my Trailhead Playground –
https:// cunning-bear-pw9vyc-dev-ed .lightning.force.com/lightning/r/Account/0011t0000081O5vAAE/view

For the Auth URL, Replace ‘MyDomain’ with your domain here:
https://MyDomain.my.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/authorize

Do the same for the Access Token URL:
https://MyDomain.my.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token

Now you can fill in the blanks in Postman for the OAuth 2.0 values:

Token Name can be anything you like, it allows you to retrieve the token later
Fill ‘Client ID’ with your ‘Consumer Secret’ and ‘Client Secret’ with your ‘Consumer Secret’
For ‘Scope’ I matched the values with the ‘Selected OAuth Scopes’ of my Connected App, using the value in brackets for each one, separated by a single space

Click on ‘Request Token’. You will be prompted for your org login. Login and allow the connection if prompted.

Now, from the ‘Available Tokens’ dropdown, select the token just generated. They are named by the ‘Token Name’ that you gave it when generating it:

A request, based on the ‘ Use REST API ’ Trailhead unit can now be sent to get details of an Account:

For the ‘Get’ request, enter
https://MyDomain.my.salesforce.com/services/data/v48.0/query/?q=SELECT+Id, Name+From+Account+WHERE+AccountNumber='CD656092'

Use a query filter which will return data for your org and replace ‘MyDomain’ with your domain:

Press ‘Send’ and you will get the JSON response:

Hopefully you will have that very satisfied feeling when it works ��

To take it a step further and get a little deeper into Postman, click where it says ‘Learn more about variables’:

Find out about variables and environments, then instead of having to paste in all that pesky guff each time you want a token, you can refer to variables like this:

How to create a Lightning tab menu with dropdown sub-menu

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 22:20:35 GMT

No out of the box option so I built my own

Display a row of tabs. When one of them is clicked, it displays a dropdown sub-menu, allowing the user to click on one of the options.

This is the component:

Here is the controller:

and here is the helper:

Month by Month Trend Chart Showing Year on Year Comparison

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 10:42:05 GMT

How to show month by month trend for a year, with multiple years shown on same chart?

Thanks to Evan Ponter for a neat solution to this trending chart requirement over on the success community https://success.salesforce.com/answers?id=9063A0000019easQAA

SFDC Expiring Certificate Notification

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 15:16:20 GMT

What to do if you receive emails about expiring certificates

There are a lot of questions on the communities about what to do when you are notified about expiring certificates.

Fortunately, Fabrice Cathala has put together a very helpful explanation here

Deserialising json in Salesforce

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 20:43:14 GMT

Process json strings when working with integrations

You can learn about methods for processing json on Trailhead, such as in the Apex Integration Services unit.

If you need some more insight into processing json, here are a couple of great resources that I turned to whilst completing the Apex Specialist Superbadge :

- DeadlyPenguin - Thanks Patrick!

- OpFocus - Thanks Brenda!

The lightbulb moment for me was spotting that I needed to deserialise into a list, not a record!

How to copy appointments between accounts in Outlook

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 20:06:52 GMT

If you're switching email accounts you can copy appointments from one calendar to the other

Choose the list view for the calendar. Then you can select all the appointments that you want, copy (ctrl-c), switch to the other calendar, also in list view, and paste (ctrl-v). Done!

Outlook 2016 Search - Which Folder is that email in?

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 19:23:05 GMT

When you search in Outlook 2016, how do you see in which folder you filed an email in the results?

It's so simple when you know how - just hover your mouse on the result!

Error: You cannot deploy to a required field

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Thu, 10 May 2018 16:25:22 GMT

Avoid required fields in profiles and permission sets

Since API version 30.0 a change set or ant deployment will fail if a field that is required in the field definition is included in a profile or permission set that is being deployed.

If you create a new custom field and check 'Required', Field Level Security automatically becomes 'Visible' for all profiles. Similarly, if you edit the definition of a custom field which is not visible to all profiles and check 'Required' then it automatically becomes visible to all profiles. Therefore there is no need to reference it in a permission set. Try it!

How to count the number of child records under a parent using Apex

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 19:43:17 GMT

No need for any counter, use a Set and an Aggregate query

No content of my own here, just a pointer to someone who really knows what he's talking about, Peter_sfdc, the mighty Peter Chittum, check out his reply here:
https://developer.salesforce.com/forums/?id=906F0000000AcdaIAC

(Of course, if you don't have a good reason to use Apex, you can always go with Flow, as explained by the equally mighty Mike Gill:
http://www.salesforceweek.ly/2015/02/how-to-create-roll-up-summaries-using-flow.html
http://www.salesforceweek.ly/2015/02/how-to-create-roll-up-summaries-using-flow-part-2.html )

Displaying summarised values in Visualforce table

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 16:36:26 GMT

Use an inner class with aggregate SOQL function

Thanks to Keith Clarke for the code posted here:
https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/84256/counting-query-results-and-displaying-them-in-v...

I used that and adapted it and it worked a treat :-)

Serious Error in Cloud Flow Designer

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 19:51:42 GMT

What to do if you get "We're Sorry but a serious error occurred. Please don't close the cloud flow designer window. Contact Salesforce Customer support as soon as possible." when trying to save a Flow.

If you see this error when trying to save a Flow, there doesn't appear to be any further information available. But there is!

Click 'OK' and, in Windows, press ctrl-shift-M, or Mac command-shift-m. You will then see diagnostic information. Click each box until you see something useful.

In my case, the Flow had been deployed from another org but the field level security on one of the referenced fields did not allow access.

The flow failed to access the value for myVariable_current.Custom_Type__c because it hasn't been set or assigned

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 13:35:00 GMT

Be sure that the API name of fields in formulae are written with the correct case!

I was building a Process Builder so that if a field on one object is updated, the corresponding field on another object is updated with the same value. Another PB operates in the opposite direction to keep these fields in sync.

The (pre-existing) fields were Object1__c.Custom_Type__c and Object2__c.Custom_type__c.

The PB to update Object1 when Object2 is changed kept failing with 'The flow failed to access the value for myVariable_current.Custom_Type__c'.

I tried many ways of ensuring that Custom_Type__c was not blank before checking ISCHANGED(Custom_Type__c), which is one of the most common causes of this error.

However, I then noticed that the error was reporting on field Custom_Type__c, whilst the actual field API name is Custom_type__c. I amended my formula in PB to Custom_type__c and all is good.

So PB will let you create a formula using a valid API name but with incorrect case, but will then fail at runtime. Nice!

'Dashboard Settings' Button Missing

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Why can't I see the 'Dashboard Settings' button?

After adding a row limit to a tabular report, the 'Dashboard Settings' button should appear. In one client org we just couldn't find the button.

I logged a Case with Salesforce Support and it turns out that 'sometimes it just doesn't get added'!

Support ticked a checkbox somewhere and our lovely 'Dashboard Settings' button was shining brightly.

Which Products are not on any Opportunity?

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 08:47:48 GMT

Reports can't answer this but Workbench can

Knowing which of your products have never been added to an Opportunity is a good thing to know. Unfortunately, you can't get that answer with Reports, but it's easy to find out using Workbench.

You need to be on Enterprise Edition or higher, as Professional Edition and below don't have access to the API.

- go to https://workbench.developerforce.com
- click 'agree to terms' and login
- Select 'SOQL Query' in 'Jump To' picklist, leave 'Object' blank, click 'Select'
- In the 'Enter or modify a SOQL query below' box paste this
select name, productcode, id from product2 where id not in (select product2id from opportunitylineitem)
Click 'Query'
- This is the list of products that are gathering dust (good description @SteveMo :-) ).
- You can copy the results to paste somewhere else
- Copy the url showing in the address bar and save it somewhere. Just paste it back into browser at some later point and it will run the same query.

You can paste the same query into the Developer Console but the results are easier to copy and you can return to the query by revisiting the url when you use the Workbench option.

Creating a New Project in MavensMate

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 11:28:40 GMT

How to select metadata types

MavensMate and Sublime Text are a great combination for developing in Salesforce and moving config between orgs. For installation instructions there's a great resource here:
https://www.xgeek.net/salesforce/sublime-text-3-mavensmate-for-salesforce-development/

However, I sometimes end up in a bit of a loop when trying to create a new project and select the metadata types that I want. So, for future reference, for me and others, here are the steps to create a project in MavensMate and select your metadata types:

From the Hopme tab click on the Menu and 'New Project'. Fill in the blanks and remember to add Security Token to Password
Close MM. Start MM. Open above Project
Menu - Project - Edit Project
Advanced Tab - Select Metadata Types to index. Click 'Update Subscription' then 'Refresh Index' and 'Update Project' at top right.
Click 'Refresh' on the 'Project Metadata' tab
Tick the boxes and click 'Update Project'

Working with filenames containing international characters

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 16:28:31 GMT

How to ensure that international characters are maintained

One of the steps when importing attachments from a data export is to rename the actual attachment files back to their real name because the real name is replaced with a record id in the data export.

If the filenames contain international characters, such as umlauts, these can be replaced with 'garbage' characters when you perform the rename operation at the Windows command line.

To stop this happening, type 'chcp 1252' at the Windows command line before performing the rename. This changes the Code Page so that the characters are recognised and retained in the renamed filename.

For more information, see:

How do I import attachments using my Data Export files?

Renaming exported Attachments/Documents files in a data export

CHCP

Bad value for restricted picklist field

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:51:39 GMT

Or why your import is failing...

So you're trying to import some data and it bombs out with the error 'bad value for restricted picklist field:...'.
The value in your csv matches the value in Salesforce exactly, because you copied and pasted it.
What's the problem?
Make sure that the picklist values are enabled for each Record Type. This is an easy step to miss if you have set up a Global Value Set and assigned it to a field as a Global Picklist.

Mail Merge Field Names

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 14:30:39 GMT

Here's a handy tip for when you're creating a Word Mail Merge template

Getting the field names right when creating a Word Mail Merge template to use with Salesforce Extended Mail Merge can be frustrating and time consuming.

However, if you navigate to a record in Salesforce, e.g. a Lead, the url will be something like

https://cs99.salesforce.com/00Q99000002Kwwp

Now, if you paste 'servlet/servlet.SForceMailMerge?id=' after the 'com/' so that it looks like

https://cs99.salesforce.com/servlet/servlet.SForceMailMerge?id=00Q99000002Kwwp

You get a (not very pretty but very useful) list of the Mail Merge fields that you can copy and paste into your Word doc.

Thanks dacology.

What's New in Winter '17?

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Sat, 22 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Lightning strikes again

Winter '17 is here and as usual it's packed with new features - 466 pages of release notes worth in this case! Most of the development has gone into improving the Lightning experience.

I find train journeys are the perfect time to peruse the release notes. Here are the things that I spotted during my travels that I think will be the most useful to customers using mainly out of the box sales cloud functionality:

New Navigation in Lightning
Gone are the icons down the left, replaced with a tab style navigation bar along the top. Each tab has a drop down where you can access recent records. I really like it as you have actual words rather than icons, which is particularly helpful when you have a number of custom objects, you can get to records directly from the tab and it will ease the transition to Lightning for existing Classic users who will be more familiar with the style of the new Lightning interface than the previous one.

Field Level Help
Help popups that Classic users are used to when you hover over the '?' next to a field now appear in Lightning Experience.

Create Multiple Records More Quickly in Lightning
Lightning users now get a 'Save & New' button whenever they create, edit or clone a record.

Record Details Remembers if a Section is Collapsed in Lightning
If you expand or collapse a section in Lightning on the record details, it will stay that way even after navigating to other objects.

Account Hierarchy
Still no Account Hierarchy in Lightning but there is a free AppExchange package for it.

Duplicate Leads
Potential duplicates are identified when viewing a Lead in Lightning so that the sales person can be made aware of this and merge the duplicates.

Quotes comes to Lightning
At last! Now we can add Quotes and Quote Line Items and saves Quotes as PDFs in Lightning.

Lightning Voice
Make calls from within Salesforce - but only to the US and Canada for now.

Inline Editing in Lightning List Views
Now you can edit inline in list views in Lightning, just as in Classic. Only one reord can be edited but the change can be applied to multiple records (beta in this release).
You can’t edit inline in a Lightning list view if:
• The list view contains more than one record type (same as in Classic).
• The list view uses filter logic that contains OR clauses.
• The list view contains lookup or dependent picklist fields.

Kanban View
This card style view that makes managing Opportunities so much easier is now available for Leads, Contracts and Campaigns. Also, you can edit and delete records directly from the Kanban view.

Security Updates
Remember that Salesforce is disabling TLS 1.0 encryption protocol by March 2017. What this means is that if your users use Salesforce for Outlook, they must be on version 3.0 or later and if they use Data Loader they must be on version xxx by that time.

New Changeset Component
Global Value Set - Now you can deploy a global picklist value set, which is the set of shared values that custom picklist fields can use, as a Changeset component.

As mentioned at the start, most of the development is on Lightning features. If you've not tried Lightning yet, give it a go, you might find that it now does enough of the things that you're used to and the modern, new interface boosts users interest and you see an improvement in adoption!

The full release notes can be accessed here:
https://resources.docs.salesforce.com/204/latest/en-us/sfdc/pdf/salesforce_winter17_release_notes.pd...

Understand Code Coverage before Deploying Apex

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 12:36:45 GMT

How is code coverage calculated and what are the requirements?

I've been having some 'challenges' in deploying Apex. These articles helped with understanding the criteria and how coverage is calculated and stored:

When you get to the step to run 'SELECT Id FROM ApexCodeCoverageAggregate' in Query Editor of Dev Console, ensure that 'Use Tooling API' next to the 'Execute' button is checked.

When deleting the rows returned by that query, select the first row, shift select the last row and click the 'Delete Row' button.

Migrate Process Builder with Ant Migration Tool

Mon, 22 Aug 2016 16:03:17 GMT

What to put in package.xml

Update: As of API Version 44.0, the dash and version number is no longer needed. Details are here, near the bottom of the page, in the section 'Upgrade Flow Files to API Version 44.0 or Later':

https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_meta.meta/api_meta/meta_visual_workflow.htm# !

=======================================================================================================================

As part of an org merge, a number of Process Builder processes need to be copied from one org to another and I wasn't about to re-create them all manually.

It took a bit of digging around but I figured out what content you need in your package.xml file to retrieve and deploy Process Builder.

If you look at Metadata Types in Workbench, you will see that there are two types - Flow and Flow Definition. Which one to use?

What you need in your package.xml is Flow in your <name> tag and you must append a dash and the version number that you want to the API name of your Process Builder:

With that, you get a definition that can then be deployed. The definition file starts like this:

Once you have deployed your Process Builder you will need to Activate it manually.

Out of curiosity I wanted to find out what FlowDefinition gives you. It is the ' parent of a set of flow versions '. If you retrieve a FlowDefinition and do not provide a version number of the Process Builder:

You get the active version, but no definition content:

So, to take a Process Builder from one org to another, use 'Flow' in the <name> tag, append a dash and the version number to your API name in the <members> tag and activate the Process Builder once deployed.

Wildcarding works as well, i.e. <members>*</members> with <name>Flow</name>

Importing leads or cases against external id on owner field

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 11:36:15 GMT

Why isn't the external id field on User available for 'Owner' when importing Leads or Cases?

I have been exporting records from one org and importing to another. For all objects, I created a custom text field set as an external id, called 'Other_Org_Id' and import the Salesforce record id from the source org into that field in the target org. When I then import say, Opportunities, I can map the Opp AccountId field to the 'Other_Org_Id' Account external Id field and I don't need to use Excel to get the new Account Ids in the target org.

There's more info on using external Ids when importing related records here .

This works great for most relationships, including the 'Owner' field. I created an 'Other_Org_Id' external Id field on User object, imported the User records from the source org and I can use the User 'Other_Org_Id' to map the 'Owner' field when importing Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities and so on.

When I came to import Leads though, 'Owner' wasn't in the list of fields that could be mapped to external Ids. The same thing happens if you try to import Cases. After some head scratching and trying other things, I figured it out.

It's because Leads and Cases can be owned by Queues as well as Users, and there is currently no way to add a custom external Id field to Queues, so an external Id field is not offered against Owner when importing Leads and Cases.

So it's back to vlookup in Excel to get the new User Ids for Leads and Cases.

Copy query results from Salesforce Developer Console and paste to Excel

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 13:40:50 GMT

Developer Console is a quick way to fire off a Salesforce SOQL query but there's no standard way to be able to copy the results and paste them into Excel. Using Workbench instead is one option but if you happen to be working in Dev Console there is a way to do it -

In your browser, Firefox in my case, right click on the Query Results and click 'Inspect Element'
In the inspector, find the div that starts '<div id="gridview...'
Untick 'moz-user-select' in the '.x-unselectable' section to the right
Now you can select and copy from the Query Results and paste into Excel

Thanks to Sergey Utko's reply on StackExchange - http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/15328/export-results-from-developer-console-query-edit...

Importing Products, Price Books & Opportunity Line Items with Data Loader

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMT

There are some important steps to be followed for a successful import

Importing Products, Price Books, Price Book Entries and Opportunity Line Items isn't as straightforward as when you're importing some Contacts and relating them to Accounts.

If you're confident with importing data you might dive straight in but then hit import errors. There are some steps that must be followed but aren't obvious and will be the most likely cause of your import error. These are:

All products must be imported into the Standard Price Book before you can import them into any custom Price Books, even if you don't want them to be available in the Standard Price Book.

When importing Products into the Standard Price Book
- 'IsActive' must be set set TRUE for all Products
- Do not map UseStandardPrice

Once you have successfully imported all Products into Standard Price Book, you can then import them into custom Price Books, setting IsActive and UseStandardPrice as you wish.

If you don't want the Products to be available in the Standard Price Book you can now set IsActive to FALSE for those Price Book Entry records.

This Salesforce document will walk you through the steps - follow it carefully!
https://help.salesforce.com/servlet/servlet.FileDownload?file=01530000001OdbFAAS

Another area that caused me some bother was that I had imported some Products and Price Books, the Product was Active and the Price Book Entry was active but when I went to add the Product to an Opportunity it was not available. The reason for this turned out to be that only Price Book Entries in the currency of the Opportunity are available. As my Opp had a currency of USD but I had only imported EUR Price Book Entries, there were no Products available to my Opp. As soon as I imported USD Price Book Entries, the Products became available to the Opp.

Control Access to a Custom Button

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Wed, 04 May 2016 11:34:38 GMT

How to use Custom Permissions to control access to a custom button

I recently installed ChimpSync , which, by the way, I am mightily impressed with. To use it, you add a custom button 'Synchronize with MailChimp' onto the Campaign Page Layout. However, I didn't want all users to have access to this. Controlling access to a button is not currently available as standard functionality but there is an idea here that you can vote on.

One solution would have been to create a new profile and map the Campaign Page Layout with button to the new profile and map the Campaign Page Layout without the button to other profiles. This introduces a maintenance overhead though as any subsequent changes to the Campaign Page Layout need to be made in two places and both profiles need to be maintained.

Instead, I used Custom Permissions, Generally Available (GA) in Winter '15 , to control which users could use the button and which received an error. With this solution, all users that see the Page Layout on which the button has been placed will see the button but only those with the Custom Permission can use it. Also, the 'button behaviour' needs to be 'Execute Javascript' to use this solution.

To set this up, first create a Custom Permission by typing 'custom p' in Setup Search and clicking on 'Custom Permissions'. Click 'New', give it a label, tab through the name field and give it a description. Did you get that last bit? Give it a description!

Now, in Setup, go to the object where the button will be added to the page layout, Campaign in this case. Click 'Buttons, Links and Actions' and click the 'New Button or Link' button. Give it a label, tab through the name field and give it a description. Did you get that last bit? Give it a description!

Where the button code goes, surround your code with

if ( {!$Permission.ChimpSync} ) {

<-- the code that authorised users get to execute -->

else {
alert ("You are a lowly and powerless being. You are not worthy of The Mighty Custom Permission. You have no place here. Be gone.");
}

where 'ChimpSync' is what appears in the 'Name' field of your Custom Permission. If you entered 'My Custom Permission' as the label and tabbed into Name, the Name will be My_Custom_Permission' and the line above would be

if ( {!$Permission.My_Custom_Permission} ) {

In my case, I viewed the Campaign custom button 'Synchronize with MailChimp' that is installed with the AppExchange package, copied the JavaScript and pasted it into my own custom button where I took the opportunity to correct the label spelling and called it 'Synchronise with MailChimp'. The 'if...' statement above goes before the very first line of the pasted code and the 'else...' goes after the very last '}'.

If you add your new custom button to the Page Layout(s) now, all users, including system admins, will get the error message. You may wish to use a more sensitive tone than that adopted above.

To authorise users to run the code in the button, either add the Custom Permission to one or more Profiles, or add it to a Permission Set and assign the Permission Set to users. In my case I used the latter approach:

Now users with the Custom Permission can use the button.

The quickest way to manage field level security

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:05:17 GMT

Use schema builder to manage field permissions

If you need to manage field level security for a lot of fields, it can add up to a lot of clicks if you go via the field definitions or via the profiles.

It can be done quickly via schema builder - here's how:

In 'Setup Search' type 'Schema':

Wait - you don't know what schema builder is? It is truly wondrous. Go here to find out more about schema builder. Please.

Ok, where were we? Oh yes, click 'Clear All' then search for the object whose fields you want to manage:

Right click on the field whose permissions you want to alter, click 'Manage Field Permissions' and you can set the permission for each profile:

If you need to do this for a lot of custom fields, you don't need to remember which fields are custom and which are standard because if you right click on a standard field you don't get the option to set field permissions, so just blast through them all!

Salesforce for Outlook side panel has disappeared

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 17:06:56 GMT

Where did my side panel go?

I've seen this happen on a number of occasions. Users are happily syncing away using their Salesforce side panel in Outlook and then one day the side panel is not there.

Here's where to look:
(This is in Outlook 2010, other versions will have similar options)

In Outlook, go to Help, Options, Add ins
Look at disabled addins
If SF4O is there, click on 'Manage Add ins' at the bottom, choose 'disabled addins' from the dropdown and click 'enable'

Restart Outlook and hopefully your side panel is back.

Why does it go away? The 'disabled add ins' section suggests that the add in prevented Outlook from functioning correctly. So one day, something went wrong and Outlook helpfully disabled your side panel for you.

There are some more thoughts on this here:
http://blog.emailaddressmanager.com/outlook/outlook-missing-add-in-toolbar.html

December 2016 - Here's a troubleshooting guide from Salesforce:
https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewSolution?urlname=Salesforce-for-Outlook-Side-Panel-fails-to-L...

Thunderbird on Linux with Office365

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 16:08:00 GMT

Intermittent 'Unable to connect to smtp.office365.com'

I use Thunderbird on Linux Mint as my main email client and my email is through office365.com.

It had been working fine and then recently I kept getting 'unable to connect to smtp.office365.com' which would prevent me from sending emails, but only for short periods of time, no longer than 10 minutes or so and would then be ok again.

It became sufficiently frustrating to do something about it and I came across this thread which suggests that it's the ipv6 setting in Thunderbird. If your router isn't capable of handling ipv6 then this is a problem. This would tie in as I recently received a new router from my isp.

What you need to do is go into preferences - preferences - click 'congif editor' button - click 'I'll be careful, I promise' (make sure that you are!) - type 'ipv6' in the search box - double click the 'network.dns.disableIPv6' entry to toggle the value to 'true'

I've not had a problem since, hope it works for you too.

Salesforce Winter '16 Release Training Resources

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Salesforce certification maintenance exam training material

I don't recall receiving an email alert for the certification maintenance exams for Winter '16 on either Admin or Dev certs. Googling for the training resources only revealed that others had noted the same.

To save others the time of hunting for the training material, it's here:
Winter ‘16 Administrator Release Exam
Winter ‘16 Developer Release Exam

The modules are listed here:
Winter '16 Release Training for Certified Professionals

Relative Dates in Reports

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 10:26:39 GMT

Check that you're returning all the data that you think you are!

Did you know that if you filter a report by 'Date Field' equals 'last 3 months', you won't see data where 'Date Field' is this month?

I found this out when my report wasn't returning everything that I expected to see.

The range for the relative date filter 'LAST n MONTHS ' is ' Starts at 12:00:00 AM on the first day of the month that started n months before the current month and continues up to 11:59 PM on the last day of the month before the current month . ' (my italics).

Be sure to read the range definitions carefully to ensure that your reports return everything that you expect.

You can find all the relative date filters defined here .

In order to show records where 'Date Field' is from the first of the month up to and including this month, I changed my filter to ' Last Modified Date equals LAST 3 MONTHS,THIS MONTH ', i.e. the last 3 months or this month.

Maximum length of a formula field

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 10:59:57 GMT

How many characters can I have in a formula field?

Previously, Salesforce help told us that a formula field could be up to 3,900 characters, or 5,000 characters when referenced formulae were included.

The help has recently been updated, Winter '16 perhaps though I don't see anything in the release notes.

It is now 3,900 characters, or 5,000 bytes when compiled. Unfortunately there is no way to predict the compiled size.

Have a look at the official help on Formula Field Limits and Restrictions . Salesforce also provides a Tips for Reducing Formula Size .

Enhanced Enhanced Lookups in Salesforce

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 15:34:25 GMT

Here's a little trick to make Enhanced Lookups even more user friendly

This applies to both Salesforce Classic and Lightning...

I had developed some new functionality for a customer and we were reviewing how it worked. One of the fields to be completed was a lookup field on a custom object. As this was new functionality, users wouldn't know what values are available in the lookup, and hence what to search for, and they asked if it could be a picklist so that they could see the possible values. As a picklist wasn't suitable in this case, I decided to look into it in more depth.

Firstly, I dug into the differences between Standard Lookups and Enhanced Lookups - you can see that here .

Finding out which fields are searchable proved tricky in itself but I eventually managed to find out which fields on a custom object are searchable here .

There is plenty of documentation on how to edit search layouts , but remember, that only affects the display, not the fields that are searched. Turns out that there is very little control over which fields are actually searchable as the above link shows.

The feature that I took advantage of to make my enhanced lookup more 'picklist' like was the fact that when 'Enhanced Lookups' are enabled for the custom object, custom text fields are searched if the user clicks the 'All Fields' radio button on the Lookup Search dialogue.

To enable Enhanced Lookups, type 'Search Settings' in the Quick Find box in Setup and click on 'Search Settings'. There you will find settings for each object.

I added a custom field to the custom object which is the subject of the lookup search and called it 'Search Me'. It is visible to all profiles but not displayed on any page layouts. I gave it a default value of 'All'.

To update all existing records I went to an 'All' list view for the custom object, included the field 'Search Me' as a column, ticked the checkbox at the top of the column on the left to select all records, double-clicked 'Search Me', chose 'update all selected' and set the value to 'All'. To do this you need to bring the 'Search Me' field on to a page layout temporarily so that it is inline editable. If the field is not on a page layout you can't edit it inline in a list view. If you have a large number of existing records you may prefer to use a data manipulation tool such as Data Loader or dataloader.io to update them all.

Now, when a user gets to the lookup search and they don't know what to search for, the pop up help text on the field tells them to enter 'All' in the search box, click 'All Fields' and click 'Go'. When they do this, hey presto, all records are returned. The number of records on each result page can be set in the 'Search Settings' mentioned above.

With Lightning, you just enter 'All' in the search box, click to search and you get an infinitely scrolling list of results.

Hopefully this makes it a little bit easier to use and hence more likely to be used.

Extend Your Analytics Brilliance With The Power of One

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Here's a neat analytics trick

Ok, I freely admit that many of the articles that I post are selfishly for myself, so that in 6 months time when I have a 'now I did that 6 months ago, how did I do it' moment, I can refer back here. This is one of those.

If you need averages based on sub-grouping record counts in your reports then you need to know about The Power of One .

Many thanks to Brent Downey at adminhero.com.

Data Loader Time Zone

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 16:01:06 GMT

When dates don't display what you entered or imported

Had a strange one today - I used Data Loader to import some Contract records, including Start Date and End Date.

With my 1 row test import the dates showed in Salesforce as 1 day earlier than the date in the csv file. I had a look at csv date formats but that didn't fix it.

The Start Date and End Date fields are 'Date' type and not 'Date/Time' so that wasn't it either.

In the interests of just getting the job done I added a day to the date in the import test file and, after loading, the dates in Salesforce were as intended.

I applied this to the full import file and loaded the data. The result was that in Salesforce, some of the dates were as intended and some were a day later than intended! I deleted the imported records.

After more poking around I came to Data Loader Time Zone in the Settings menu. Mine was set to 'Europe/London'. I changed it to 'GMT' and reran the test import file using the original date in the file. Success!

Loaded the original full import file with the dates that were intended and all loaded correctly.

Can't explain that one, British Summer Time possibly a factor, but if you're having strange things happening with dates in Data Loader, have a look at the Time Zone setting.

The New Salesforce - Struck by Lightning

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Salesforce to get a major makeover

Just finished watching the launch of the New Salesforce.

A new Lightning based interface will be available with the Winter '16 release.

It has the look and feel of the Salesforce1 UI as it is built around Lightning components.

A lot of thought and development effort has gone into improving productivity and making the user experience smoother.

Navigation across objects changes from tabs to a SF1 style sidebar and there are more customisation options for the home page.

Opportunities focus on sales stages and activities. A timeline shows the activities that have taken place on an opportunity whilst the Opportunity Workspace displays opportunities as cards arranged in columns based on stage so you can view all opportunities by stage and drag the cards between columns to change stage.

Reports and dashboards have also had a major overhaul. Dashboards can now contain more than 3 columns and rows don't all have to contain the same number of columns. The look of the components has been brought up to date and also includes animations.

You can choose whether to enable it or not and roll it out to users based on profile or permission set. Salesforce will continue to support the Classic, i.e. current, interface.

The beauty of the Salesforce platform is that customisations to existing systems will carry through to the new interface. There was however a comment that all Visualforce pages should be tested in the new interface to confirm that they work as intended.

Trailhead has a new Lightning module to help prepare for this, have a look at trailhead.salesforce.com.

Can't wait to get my hands on this. Previews are available in sandbox and the new interface will be available in production with the Winter'16 release. Check out the release schedule for your instance at trust.salesforce.com.

Passing the Certified Developer Exam

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMT

How I (successfully) prepared for the Certified Developer Exam

I'm delighted to have earned the right to call myself a 'Certified Force.com Developer' today so I thought I would share what I consider to be some of the key aspects of preparing for the exam.

A lot of the core content is similar to the Certified Administrator, particularly around security and 'who sees what' - profiles, permission sets, org wide defaults, roles, sharing rules and so on. The 'Development' aspects are mainly concerned with the declarative capabilities of the platform, i.e. what can be configured with clicks. That focusses on Workflow, Validation Rules and Approval Processes. You don't need to be a programmer to pass this exam - knowledge of Apex and Visualforce only extends to 'Use Cases', there is no requirement to be able to write Apex or Visualforce code.

The full Study Guide is available here .

As for preparation, Trailhead and the Force.com Workbook got me through. ' Developer Trail - Beginner ' covers a lot of the material in the Study Guide. Work through the exercises in each whilst remaining cogniscent of the subjects in the Study Guide.

Working through those resources gave me a lot of new and useful knowledge, some of it in areas not required for the exam but useful nonetheless, such as configuring the Salesforce1 mobile interface and also Visual Workflow. The ' Cloud Flow Workbook ' is next on my hitlist.

If you already have the Admin Certification, Developer shouldn't be a stretch. Experience is key - get your own (free) Developer Environment , complete the challenges in Trailhead, visit the pages described in the text, press buttons and do stuff!

Prepare - Play - Pass - Go do it!

Trailhead

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 00:00:00 GMT

The best way to learn Salesforce

According to Wikipedia, "a trailhead is the point at which a trail begins, where the trail is often intended for hiking, biking, horseback riding, or off-road vehicles". Or learning Salesforce skills. In a structured way. For free. Yippee - how cool is that!

I recently had a scenario where we needed to simplify the way that we achieved a business process in Salesforce in order to improve user adoption. The way I had in mind would require custom screen layouts. Having written BASIC code (go look it up!) as a teenager and COBOL in my first job (a long time ago!) I thought I would dust off the coding corner in my brain and learn Visualforce, Salesforce's programming language for creating custom pages.

I had heard of Salesforce's Trailhead online learning resources so went to check out it out. Turns out there's a whole host of training material available there, for free, covering everything from the basics to advanced topics.

There's 'Reports and Dashboards', 'Chatter Basics', how to customise pages using clicks not code, 'Data Security' and a whole lot more. If you want to know how to write Apex Triggers or Visualforce, that's there too. As well as technical topics, there are business topics like 'Application Lifecycle Management' and 'Change Management'.

If you're just starting out, don't be put off by the fact that it's in the developer's area - head over to developer.salesforce.com/trailhead and start learning. I would recommend signing up for a free Developer Edition org (find out what this is and sign up for one here ) and then you can complete the exercises on Trailhead in your own org and collect points and badges for completing challenges.

Happy Learning!

(Update - Setptember 2015 - There are now 65 modules to work through, including how to do Dreamforce.)

Should I Go For Salesforce Certification?

mike@mikearthur.net (Mike Arthur) — Sat, 09 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT

What are the benefits of achieving Salesforce certification?

Having been a Salesforce Administrator for over 6 years in the same company I hadn't really considered this until I decided to go it alone. I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about most areas of Salesforce having used most of the items under the 'Setup' menu. Having applied for a few roles unsuccessfully I then began to think about Certification from the perspective of a credential which would improve my chances of securing a role.

'Certified Administrator' is the first level of qualification and the topics covered in the exam can change with each release of Salesforce (there are three each year - Spring, Summer and Winter followed by the year, e.g. Spring '15). The topics covered by the current exam can be found on the Certification page here .

At the time of writing, the exam costs $200 USD to sit and consists of 60 multiple choice questions to be answered in 90 mins. The passmark is 65%. The exam can be taken at a testing centre or at your desk, in which case you need a webcam and will be monitored during the exam. No books or online help is allowed.

Though the questions are multiple choice, the possible answers are cleverly constructed so you really do have to know your stuff to ensure that you get it right. Answers can be 'marked' for review so that you can revisit them at the end before submitting your answers. When you submit your answers you get an immediate pass/fail notification with no indication of your actual score.

In all honesty it was harder than I expected it to be and I realised that I didn't know as much beforehand as I thought I did. Experience with the subject areas is the key to passing this exam. The areas that I found hardest were ones where I didn't have real experience, such as console functionality. Though it is possble to pass by sitting down and reading the help documents cover to cover, if I were to go for one of the Service Cloud Certifications, I would spend time in my free developer org, playing with the areas that I am less familiar with in order to develop a real understanding, rather than simply learning a bunch of facts.

Once you have passed the exam, you then need to pass 'maintenance' exams for each of the releases mentioned above throughout the year in order to keep the certification. There is no additional cost for taking these and they are open book, i.e. you take them at your desk, unsupervised and can use whatever resources you need. So far I haven't found them to be particularly onerous. Though the 'Release Notes' pdf for a release may be several hundred pages long, the exam notes point you to 2-3 hours of videos that cover the subjects to be tested and the exam only takes 30 minutes.

So are there real benefits to putting yourself through all this? Absolutely yes. I learnt a lot in doing the initial Certified Administrator exam and the 'maintenance' exams ensure that I am up to speed with new features included in the latest release. I wish I had gone for Certification sooner as I'm sure I would have been able to bring more improvements to the system that I looked after in my first Salesforce role. If I was going to hire someone to look after my Salesforce system I would want them to be Certified as this proves that they have a good understanding of the fundamentals and are up to date with the latest functionality.

I was hired for the first role that I applied for after becoming Certified by the way!