Best Practices Creating Interactions Manually
- Overview of Custom Actions
- Lead Interaction Action
- Contact Interaction Action
- Opportunity Interaction Action
- Campaign Interaction Action
- Global Interaction Action
- Customizing Action Layouts
A new Interaction can be quickly created for an existing Lead, Contact, or Opportunity using a custom Interaction creation Action on the Lead, Contact, or Opportunity, respectively. Additionally, a custom Interaction creation Action is included in the package for the Campaign object and as a Global Action.
The Interaction Package includes five Actions:
- Lead Interaction Action
- Contact Interaction Action
- Opportunity Interaction Action
- Campaign Interaction Action
- Global Interaction Action
The object-specific actions are extremely useful when the end user (e.g. a recruiter) is speaking with a prospective student and has already found the individual in the system and needs to update their data. In that moment, the recruiter does not need to worry about determining which Opportunity to update or whether there are duplicate Leads or Contact records in the system.
When the Interaction is created, the full process will run and any duplicate records found will be converted or merged automatically and any Opportunity, Affiliation, or Campaign Members will be updated or created.
Each action has a different layout with fields tailored to the use case of the object it lives on, as well as defaulted values for verifying or updating. Other values can be defaulted without including them on the layout. All of these custom action layouts can be customized to better match your business processes.
There are several benefits to using actions and incorporating them into your business processes:
- Displaying only fields that should be edited simplifies the record creation process for the user
- Fields that can be prefilled and should not be edited can be defaulted and hidden from the layout to further streamline the experience
- Displayed fields can also be prefilled, resulting in less clicks and giving users the opportunity to leave the defaulted values or update them as applicable
- You can require fields that should be filled out for that action’s use case that are not necessarily required every time an Interaction is created
Best Practice Nugget: To take full advantage of actions, remove the New button from the Interaction related lists on Lead, Contact, and Opportunity. This will prevent users from creating Interactions from records unless they use one of the actions. They would still be able to create an Interaction from the Interactions Tab.
The Lead action defaults fields from the Lead that have values, except for picklist fields, which are not supported. The Lead action can be launched from the Lead using the “New Interaction” button in the top right of the record. See the Update Lead Layouts section if you do not see this button.
The Lead fields defaulted and displayed in the action for the out-of-the-box package are shown in this example:
Note that picklist fields cannot be predefined based on the existing record’s value, as that is not currently supported in Salesforce. Unless “Insert Null” is selected on the corresponding Interaction Mapping record, leaving these fields blank (--None--) will not push in blank values to the target fields if they are already populated.
Picklist fields can only be defaulted to a specific value. Be sure to take care when predefining picklist fields.
Vote on this Idea to expand the predefined field functionality in custom actions to include picklists!
The Contact action defaults fields from the Contact that have values, except for picklist fields, which are not supported.
The Contact action can be launched from the Contact using the New Interaction button on the top right of the record. See Update Contact Layouts if you do not see this button.
The Contact fields defaulted and displayed in the action for the initial package are the same as the Lead fields (seen on the previous page) with the addition of two fields: “Additional Campaign” and “Additional Campaign Member Status.”
Best Practice Mega-Nugget: Note that, out-of-the-box, the Contact and Lead action layouts house quite a few fields that collect very different information, including bio/demo data, educational interest information and fields for creating an Affiliation and Campaign Members.
This is because end users may use Interactions from the Lead or Contact with the minimum data needed (e.g. Name and email) or they may need to fill out multiple points of data and create related records (e.g. an Opportunity via the educational interest information).
On the other hand, the Opportunity custom action (which you will see in the next section) includes only the fields which are most important for updating or creating new Opportunity, Affiliation, and Campaign Members quickly.
The Campaign custom action includes the minimum bio/demo fields needed to create a Campaign Member as well as the fields needed for updating or creating a new Opportunity or Affiliation.
The Global custom action includes the same fields as the Lead and Contact custom action layouts.
The Opportunity action defaults fields from the Opportunity and associated Contact that have values, except for picklist fields, which are not supported. Many of the Contact fields are defaulted and not displayed to provide a more streamlined experience, as mentioned in the Best Practice Mega-Nugget above. If users need to verify or update Contact fields, the Contact-specific action should be used instead.
The Opportunity action can be launched from the Opportunity using the New Interaction button on the top right of the record. See the Update Object Page Layouts section if you are using an Opportunity page layout that was not included in the package and do not see the button.
The Opportunity fields defaulted and displayed in the action for the initial package are shown in this example:
The Campaign action can be launched from the Campaign using the New Interaction button on the top right of the record. See the Update Campaign Layouts section if you do not see this button.
The Campaign action only defaults the Campaign from which the button was clicked from and is shown in this example:
The Global Interaction Action can be used to create an Interaction from any screen. This is helpful when logging an Interaction for a new individual.
Users should complete the following steps to use this action:
- Search for an existing Contact using the global search bar
- If no existing Contact can be found, click the Global Action menu and select New Interaction. See Navigating the Interactions App if you do not see this button.
The action will appear in the bottom right corner of the user’s screen where they can fill it out or view it as a pop-up, like the pop-ups on Lead, Contact, Opportunity and Campaign that you have seen on previous pages:
You can add or remove fields from the layout and update default values on actions to better meet your business processes.
These are the steps you would follow to customize the Contact Interaction Action’s layout and predefined field options:
- Go to Setup > Object Manager > Contact > Buttons, Links, and Actions
- Find the New Interaction action and click on the linked name to open it
- To add a default value for a field, click New in the Predefined Field Values section, or edit an existing field’s predefined settings by clicking the Edit link next to the field you want to update
- Picklist fields can only be defaulted to a specific value from that picklist. Actions do not currently support using a formula to set the value
Note: Vote on this Idea to expand the predefined functionality in custom actions to include picklists!
- Text fields can be defaulted using a formula, such as the one below where Interaction Birthdate is defaulted to whatever value is in the Birthdate field on the Contact
- Update the custom action’s layout using the Edit Layout button on the main action page
- Drag fields from the palette to the desired position, remove fields by dragging them back to the palette
- Additionally, mark fields as “Read-Only” or “Required” by hovering over the field and clicking the wrench icon to select these options
- Remember to always Save your changes!
Note: Use these same steps to edit the other object-specific actions by going to Setup > Object Manager > [Object] > Buttons, Links, and Actions, then editing the “New Interaction” action.
Use these same steps to edit the Global action by going to Setup > User Interface > Global Actions > Global Actions, then editing the “New Interaction” action.