Data Integrity with Formulas and Validations

Salesforce offers several features to ensure data integrity. Two of the most common features are formulas and validation rules. These tools help keep data trusted in two ways: formula fields eliminate the need for manual entry, and validation rules allow you to place rules around what data may be entered on a field or record.

In this chapter, we will cover the following data integrity features in detail:

• Overview of formulas
• Creating a formula field
• Understanding validation rules
• Creating a validation rule

With the help of these topics, you will be able to understand and create formulas and validation rules.

Technical requirements

For this chapter, make sure you log in to your development org and follow along as we walk through how to create formulas and validation rules.

Overview of formulas

Formulas are used to calculate custom fields and add logic to features such as validation rules and flows. Formulas calculate based on operators and functions.

The following operators and functions are available in Salesforce formulas. Using a combination of these results in a very powerful data integrity engine.

Below, we have provided screenshots of the different operators and functions categorized into different areas. First, we will see math, logic, and text operators; next, we will see date and time, logic, math, text, summary, and advanced functions. Have a brief look through the information below to get an idea of the tools you have available to you:

Note that you can view these operators and functions, and their relevant descriptions, at any time on Salesforce Help (see Further reading).

• Math operators:

Figure 19.1: List of math operators available in Salesforce formulas

• Logic operators:
...

Understanding validation rules

Validation rules are an essential part of ensuring data integrity in Salesforce. They do this by verifying that the data your users enter into a record meets specific standards before the user can save a record. A validation rule can contain a formula or expression that evaluates the data in one or more fields and returns a value of True or False.

Validation rules can be included on any object.

Business use case

As the Salesforce admin for XYZ Widgets, you have successfully created the Account Level formula field. Since this field depends on the Annual Revenue and Employees fields being populated, you want to make sure users enter data into these fields when creating an account. To do this you will need to create a validation rule on the Account object.

Let’s take a look at how we can create this validation rule.

Creating a validation rule

To create the validation rule to meet this requirement we will follow...

Summary

In this chapter, we learned how formulas and validation rules help drive data integrity. We looked at available functions and operators and built a formula field to demonstrate a business use case for data integrity on the Account object. We then discovered what validation rules are and how they contribute to records having complete data. Finally, we built a validation rule that included a formula and met the requirements of our business use case.

In the following chapter, we will cover user management and data security.

Questions

1. Where are three places where formulas can be used?
2. What are the three components used when building a formula?
3. What does a simple formula allow you to do?
4. When do you treat blanks as zeroes?
5. What results do validation rule formulas always return?
6. When do you show the error on the top of the page versus on the field?

Further reading

• Formula operators and functions by context: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.customize_functions.htm&type=5
• Use formula fields: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/point_click_business_logic/formula_fields
• Create validation rules: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/point_click_business_logic/validation_rules

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