One of the services I provide is technical debt assessment. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been called in to help a client who is frustrated with their Salesforce implementation. I cannot tell you because the number is too damn high.
Let’s examine some common issues when creating custom fields.
Not using standard fields
Sometimes people decide to create a custom field when a standard field would do. It also appears they forget you can rename standard fields.
For example, I’ve seen fields called
- Opportunity.Comments__c (why wasn’t Description used?)
- Opportunity.Type__c (why wasn’t Type used?)
- Contact.Gender__c (why wasn’t GenderIdentity used?)
Field Label <> Field Name
Another issue is when the Field Label doesn’t match the Field Name. Yes, I know sometimes you want to rename a field and it’s challenging to update all the related apex and integrations. But this scenario happens far too often to blame those culprits.
Adding initials
For some reason, there sare implementation partners who like to add their initials to the Field Name. I’ve recently seen a picklist labelled “Interests” with the Field Name of IC_Interests__c.
What values does this bring? The Created By on the field definition already stores the name of the user that created the field. So why purposefully cause confusion?
The takeaway
Before creating a custom field, spend a few minutes to see if the field already exists. Consider renaming fields with similar purposes. And when you create a field, make sure the Field Name and Field Label match.