Lab 1.4 - Build a custom field in your Salesforce org¶

Level: 1 Contributor basics

Time: ~15 min

You will: build US-014 the way an admin builds anything, by clicking in Salesforce Setup, and check it against real records.

The situation¶

You have a branch and an org. Now do the actual work. Nothing in this lab is specific to CI/CD: this is ordinary Salesforce configuration. The only rule is where you do it: in helios-dev, your own org, never in the shared one.

Before you start¶

• Lab 1.3 finished: you are on features/US-014-panels-required
• The Status section of the sfdx-hardis panel shows helios-dev as the current org

Steps¶

1. Open your org¶

In Orgs Manager, find the row whose ALIAS column says helios-dev. Read the alias, not the address: none of the addresses says what the org is for. The Developer Edition org has an orgfarm- string Salesforce invented, and the scratch orgs have two random words and a number, so your four orgs look alike everywhere except in that column.

At the end of that row, click the chevron. It opens everything you can do to that org, and the first entry is Open (1).

Your browser opens the org, already logged in. No password, no login page: the extension used the credential it stored when you connected the org in Lab 1.2.

Opening the org from this panel rather than from a bookmark is a habit worth forming. It is the difference between "the org I meant" and "the org that happened to be open in that tab".

2. Create the field¶

In Salesforce: Setup > Object Manager > Installation, then Fields & Relationships (1) in the left column, then New (2).

The list you see is the object before your change. Panels Required is what you are about to add to it.

On the field-level security screen, leave every profile unticked and click Next. You are going to grant this through a permission set, not a profile, and Lab 2.6 is about why that distinction matters more than it looks.

On the page layout screen, tick Installation Layout so the field appears on the record.

Click Save.

3. Grant it to the crew, and to the planners¶

The acceptance criteria say the crew must see it, and planners must fill it in. Nobody has it yet, not even you: you granted nothing, and a field that no permission grants is invisible to everybody, the administrator who created it included.

Setup > Permission Sets > Helios Delivery Crew, then Object Settings (1) and Installations, then Edit.

Field Permissions is the table that matters, one row per field, and Read Access (2) is the column you are here for. This picture was taken before the field existed, so Panels Required is not in it yet: after your change it appears in that list, in alphabetical order.

Find Panels Required and tick Read Access. Leave Edit Access unticked: a crew member reads how many panels to load, they do not decide the number.

Save.

Then the same screens on Helios Delivery Manager, the planners' permission set. It is also the one Set up my training environment gave you, which is how you see the Helios app at all. Tick both Read Access and Edit Access on Panels Required: planners are the people who decide the number. Save.

Skip this and step 4 shows you nothing: you would be looking for a field your own permission set does not grant.

4. Put it where people will look¶

The field is on the layout, which is what old-style Salesforce pages use. The Installation record page is a Lightning record page, and it shows the layout inside its Details tab, so you are already done.

Open any installation (App Launcher > Helios Delivery > Installations, pick INST-00001) and check the Details tab. Panels Required is there, empty.

5. Test it against real data¶

Empty fields prove nothing. Put a number in.

The Installations tab (1) is how you get back to this list from anywhere in the app. On the right of the record sits the Panel delivery timeline (2), which lists the pallets booked for this installation with their quantities. The picture was taken before this story existed, on an installation with no pallet booked, so there is no Panels Required in its Details either. Most installations have two or three pallets.

1. On INST-00001, click Edit, set Panels Required to the number the timeline adds up to, and Save
2. Look at the two numbers side by side. On a real story you would ask the planner whether this field should be typed in or worked out from the pallets. Here, typed in is the story, and that question is exactly the one a good contributor asks before building anything

Do the same on two more installations, so you have something to look at after the deployment.

What you should see¶

On three installations: a Panels Required value, visible in the Details tab, saved without error.

And in VS Code, nothing at all. The repository does not know about any of this yet. Your changes live in one org and nowhere else, which is exactly the state Lab 1.5 exists to end.

Check your work¶

Welcome page > Training: Level 1 > Check my work, then pick Lab 1.4.

Nothing of your work has left the org yet, so the check reads the org itself: it asks helios-dev whether Panels_Required__c exists on Installation and whether Helios_Delivery_Crew can read it. The repository learns about the field in the next lab.

Go deeper¶

• Work in your org
• Configuration guidelines

Next: Lab 1.5 - Retrieve, commit and publish your Salesforce changes

Questions and comments