Radnip forgot to mention that performing an update using an external id is only available as an "Upsert" operation.
Upserts are a godsend for dataloading. For instance, if you have a relationship based on an external id you can insert relationships on records without knowing their particular Salesforce ids.
You can make a field on the object you want to update an external ID. So if you have an external system that you want to update information in Salesforce you ca use that external systems ID to update the record rather than the Salesforce Id. Or you could create an external Id based on the data you have in your org. EG you could create an contact field which is an external Id based on the users firstname, lastname and phone number. EG: francispindar5557163512 BUT you need to make sure its unique as you don't want to update different records.
Radnip forgot to mention that performing an update using an external id is only available as an "Upsert" operation.
Upserts are a godsend for dataloading. For instance, if you have a relationship based on an external id you can insert relationships on records without knowing their particular Salesforce ids.
If you don't have salesforce record Id and if you have some other unique field values then by using that you can export record ID using Report or SOQL query Or you can use dataloader.io and there is a lookup option and by using that you can lookup your record id with other unique field value and update/upsert those records.
Upserts are a godsend for dataloading. For instance, if you have a relationship based on an external id you can insert relationships on records without knowing their particular Salesforce ids.
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Upserts are a godsend for dataloading. For instance, if you have a relationship based on an external id you can insert relationships on records without knowing their particular Salesforce ids.
value and update/upsert those records.