Schema Management Best Practices for Life Sciences Cloud

Field Types

There are two types of fields on an object:

• Salesforce standard fields are delivered by Salesforce.com
• Customer custom fields are created for the customer implementation.

API Naming Convention

Always implement the API naming convention agreed upon at the start of the project. The convention depends on the strategy chosen by the system architect. Keep it universal by adding the organization’s prefix or suffix to differentiate between Salesforce custom fields and customer-built custom fields.

Examples:

• OneEducation_<client name>__c
• License_<client name>__c

In the description section, identify the:

• Group that requested the field
• ISO codes of the countries
• Business Units
• Integrations using the field

Organize Fields

Organize your fields by prefixing any unused custom field labels with “dep_[fieldname] (Dep for 'Deprecated')

Examples:

• dep_fax
• dep_website

Salesforce sorts the fields by label name. Prefixing them moves them to the bottom of the list and out of your way. This makes it easier for you to manage the environment.

Field Limitations

Understand the field limitations per object:

• The number of custom fields allowed per object varies according to your Salesforce edition. The Unlimited edition allows a maximum of 800 custom fields. To learn more, see Custom Fields Allowed Per Object.
• You can designate up to 25 External ID fields per object. To learn more, see Maximum number of External Ids per object or entity.
• 25 roll-up summary fields are allowed. To learn more, see Increase the maximum limit of a roll-up summary field.
• Two master-detail and 40 relationship fields (master-detail plus lookup) are allowed per object To learn more, see Increase the maximum relationships allowed per object.