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Hal Is there any way around the "CreatedDate" read only issue.
Hi folks,
I am very new to this (and in a hurry of course), so please forgive my newbie questions. My company is converting to SalesForce.com and I am uploading the data, namely leads. I started with the wizard (found it lacking) and then moved over to the API. I have pretty much resolved all my issues, except for and issue around the inability to specify the "CreatedDate" value. Many of the lead reports are driven off of the "CreatedDate". I would like to specify the original "CreatedDate", except it will always be updated to the actual upload date.
The API documentation clearly states "The sforce Web service populates certain fields automatically, such as CreatedDate, CreatedById, LastModifiedDate, LastModifiedById, and SystemModstamp. You cannot explicitly specify these values." So, it sounds like I am up a creek. However, I thought I would ask the users of this forum before giving up. So, is there a way to upload data and specify the CreatedDate?
Yes, I know I can create a custom field and upload the historical create data to that field. However, this creates many issues going forward that I would rather avoid. So, can I specify the CreatedDate somehow, or is it completely hopeless?
Best Regards - Hal
Thanks!
Thanks for the quick reply. Though it will probably not help me, it is nice to know that this feature is being considered for the future. This leads me to the following questions:
1. Is the sforce roadmap published? Where can I see it?
2. How do you enter in feature requests for sforce? Do I create a case for this in my regular company "business" account or is there a special place for sforce?
Best Regards
- Hal
Feature requests are done by logging a case in your regular company business account. It's good to post here as well, but that's the official way we track feature requests.
Hal,
I had the same exact problem. Here's how I got around it:
I created 2 custom fields on my Lead, Account, Contact, and (I think - it's 1 AM right now) Opportunity objects. It's Created On and Created By.
I use the API to populate those fields based either on the existance of a 'legacy' date field (hidden from all but admin) or if null, the system standard created fields. There's a few downsides tho, and the latter Benji will probibly see as a support case / feature request in a day or so. (I'm trying to do them in batches to be nice to them
1. All the standard reports that run against the system created date will still run against it -- and will be as of your import date.
2. Users making reports will see both fields as choices -- you cannot hide the system created date field from them.
3. If a user creates and converts a lead too rapidly before you populated your fields, you're SOF'NL. (You can't update a converted lead to add that data in.)
Unforunately for us we had no choice but to do it this way -- too much data gets lost by not being able to set a created date in some fashion.
Good luck -- and don't forget to log that feature request w/ support!
Thanks. I have decided last night that I am going to have to do something similar. But, wow, what a pain. They system would work beautiful if it just allow me to import the created on and by history. Now, I am going to have to go back, update all my web-to-lead pages to include these new fields (where most of our leads come from), make the fields required for the instances when users directly enter them into SalesForce, and then update all the reports to not use the standard fields. Oh well, I guess it is just work. Thankfully, I don't have any major problems.
Regards, - Hal