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Ellenatapl Cross Object Workflow Rule With Field Updates Formula
We are a nonprofit organization looking to collect demographic information from our clients once, but we need to be able to report on the demographics of all our classes in an anonymous fashion. We do need to be able to link this information to a contact. Each clients is identified by a unique ID called the Participant ID located in the Contact Details of the Contact Object.
We created a custom object with fields to collect demographic information on the Contacts Object.
We are using the Conference Management from the Appexchange to track our classes. This includes an Attendees object on the Contact object, which is linked to the Sessions via (I am fairly sure the correct term is...) a look up relationship. With help from support, we were able to get the Participant ID from the contact page to automatically be entered when the contact becomes an attendee.
We have created a Demographic Object with all the fields.We do have clicktools and have been able to successfully map the demographics survey to the fields in the Demographics Object. With the assistance of Clicktools, we can see this information after we created a tab called "demographics tracking". This is a paper survey that is entered by volunteers. The only link we have to the contact is the Participant ID.90% of our participants do not have computers or email addresses. So we can not link them via an email.
We are hoping to have the demographics in the Demographics Tracking to automatically be linked to the Contacts. Then from the contacts, the demographic information can be tracked to the sessions via the Attendees.
I was told by support that we need cross object workflow rule with field updates. I really need some help with this. Would someone be kind enough to provide some guidance?
Ever Hopeful,
Ellen
I just replied to a post, but not certain if everyone receives that reply. I just got off the phone with support as I am just learning the work flow rules and field updates. When I explained to them the end goal, I was told that it would not be possible to follow your suggestion because of the related lists.
I did get assistance in wording what we needed:
Ok, I just finished speaking with salesforce support. A gentleman kindly assisted me in articulating what we need to achieve our goal.
Contact information has a field called Participant ID. Under the contacts we have two related lists. One for attendees (this one have a look up field already) and one for demographic tracking (it has the Participant ID field, but no look ups at this time). The Participant ID is the look up field.
Under attendees, we have already created a cross object formula field to link the Participant ID field from contacts to Attendees. We are trying to look for a way to link the related list of Demographics Tracking under the Contact with the Demograohics Tracking under the Attendees.
The support also suggested taking screen shots and emailing it to any interested parties, as this may be helpful. I have these ready to go....
Ever Hopeful,
Ellen
You can put your screenshots in a Document in Salesforce.com and check on "Externally Available." Then right click the image on the ensuing page and copy its URL, and you can put the image directly onto this board.
Normally, though, you cannot do what you're looking to do with just formulas and workflow. You have two objects that are related to Contact but not related to each other, and for formulas and workflow, they have to be related to each other.
Precisely what data are you trying to propagate?
We are hoping to elimanate overwhelming our participants with surveys each time they attend a class. So, we were hoping to collect their demographic information once, with the hopes of setting salesforce up in a way that the demographics of each class can be reported on. For instance, if we have a full house the first time we deliver services to an agency with a male/female populations of 50% to 50%. But the next class, more girls come in and less boys show up. What would the demographics be of the class? Or we may be requested to do a report on the attendance of foster youth females. There are several variations of potential demographic reports, most based on attendance.
Having the ability to do this with entering the information once would definately streamline the administration.....
Would we be able to get this information through a report the way we have it set up? Or do we need to do something different? Any suggestions?
That is how we originally went to set it up... but the surveys are anonymous with the Participant ID the only link to the contact. We are working on creating surveys in Clicktools and mapping them to the contacts. This is when we discovered that you cannot map to a contact without a last name, as it is a required field. Apparently the edition we have, we cannot change this. This is why we can up with the idea of creating the seperate object, but linking the contact and attendee to the demographic information....
You just made me smile.... this may work. Soooo.... to make this work... I would need to recreate the demographic tracking fields(sigh, I just deleted them from contacts yesterday. I will just redo them. The school of life.) in contacts. Use the Participant ID as a last name. (I will create an object called Participant Last Name in contacts for verification)
Then... I can map the surveys to the contacts with the demographic information on the contacts page. Can I then... I can then do what to allow me to create the tracking via the attendees?
Ok, I am going to have faith and set it up as you recommended. I am slowly learning more about salesforce- I have not started to learn about the formulas and I am excel challenged.
Ok (apparently my word for the day). This has me potentially rethinking how we have set up our other surveys. Each attendee completes a knowledge assessment (what did they know prior to attending class) and what did they learn from the class (same exact questions) allowing us to see if we increased knowledge; and they complete a quality control survey for each class (forum content, what they gained, presenter evaluation, and requests for assistance). I created objects for these different surveys with the hopes of being able to link them to the contacts. Should these, would these be better placed somewhere else? Can you overload the contact page with too many fields? It would be a lot as we have 27 different classes....
You probably don't want to do that.
Demographics are information that is inherent to the contact and will not change, like birth date, gender, etc. Well, I guess gender can change, but it's a one-shot deal if it does.
People can take many classes, though, and write a survey about each class they take, so that's well suited to a related list.
I guess the key is:
If it's information that's inherent to a person and is (mostly) unchanging, put it on the contact.
If it's information that you'll want to store multiply, or is related to both a contact _and_ something else (like a class), then put it in a related list.
We are working on switching the fields back over to the contacts. We will then have to re enter the information as we can only map 1 time into salesforce from clicktools. Ohhh, wait a minute. Can we download this information into excel, then upoad it into salesforce using the data management to custom objects? That would save a lot of time.
Once we have this information entered into salesforce, would you be willing to assist with the required formulas for the reporting? I have not successfully created any formulas yet. I look forward to learning it, but I am not there yet.
We appreciate all the assistance and guidance very much.
Thank you!