Comments on: Are you really going to make we write this?

By: Jame

Jame — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 23:02:04 +0000

I am so in agreement here. Heaven forbid you update the picklist. You just created 4 years worth of work!

By: werewolf

werewolf — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:34:40 +0000

Have you ever considered doing this in an Apex trigger instead? At least in Apex you can just access the value directly.

By: Tanner

Tanner — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:57:48 +0000

I agree with this fully. It disgusts me to have to replicate picklist values word for word in another location to perform this function. This is simply a maintenance nightmare. People never remember to update the formula and there are always inconsistencies. TEXT() needs to work for more than just validation rules and workflows.

By: gokubi.com » Blog Archive » Kudos where kudos are due

gokubi.com » Blog Archive » Kudos where kudos are due — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:46:30 +0000

[...] gokubi.com « Are you really going to make we write this? [...]

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:06:34 +0000

Yes, thoroughly rhetorical! Mostly I was just in a bad mood…

I know it’s coming, since we saw it on validation rules. Thanks for continuing to work on it–the validation rule implementation is awesome.

The use case is interesting. The client wants to parse addresses for use in door-to-door activities. Do create effective walk-lists, the street number, name, and direction all need to be parsed out. So I’m giving them some parsed address fields that I’m then combining back into the OtherAddress fields.

By: Mary Scotton

Mary Scotton — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:01:14 +0000

Hi Steve, I am guessing that this is a rhetorical question, but if you are interested in the backstory here, Eric B does a good job explaining it his 05-30-2008 comment in the Idea post. Your use case is pretty interesting – selecting addresses from picklists is not something I’ve seen other customers do. Is the goal speed of data entry or is it data quality? If it is data quality, this might be a good use of VLOOKUP() in a validation rule to validation the parts of the address, rather than deconstructing and reconstructing the standard address fields.

As to Michael’s point about the Idea not being classified as “Ideas Under Consideration”, that is just an oversight on my part, since we have already delivered one aspect of that Idea (picklists in validation rules), and hence it is definitely under consideration. I just updated it. My team is actively working on adding better picklist support in Formula Fields, which is the pain point that is highlighted here (and that I myself have felt). I am looking forward to the day I can mark that Idea as “delivered”.

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:13:57 +0000

I fully agree. This has annoyed me for a long time. I voted on the idea referenced by Peter Martin a while ago. With 7500+ votes, you’d think that this would be on SFC’s “Ideas Under Consideration” list.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:32:40 +0000

Amen Steve. This has pi$$ed me off to no end over the last year. It’s funny how once you run into this use case (concatenating picklist values in a formula for example) it seems to come up over and over again. I can’t believe they have not solved this yet.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:54:39 +0000

The client wants to do data entry via a picklist and then concatenate the picklists into a full mailing address. I use workflow to put this concatenated address into the standard Address fields on Contact.

I could use VF, but then would have to override the Edit screen and that is not worth it maintenance-wise.

By: Bcolmer

Bcolmer — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:53:48 +0000

I could not agree more emphatically.

By: Peter Martin

Peter Martin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:53:55 +0000

This is an excellent idea – i voted on this on the idea exchange – maybe other can vote on it as well to get it released as soon as possible

http://ideas.salesforce.com/article/show/43022/The_ability_to_use_a_picklist_value_in_a_formula_field_without_ISPICKVAL

By: Ehren Foss

Ehren Foss — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:36:23 +0000

I’m curious what client feature forced you to do this – I’ve had to do similarly bad things with code in SalesForce; but in this case they might have intentionally tried to force you to use the value, not the label in your code as it is less likely to change. In VisualForce you could use outputField to show the label instead of the Value, but I’m sure for some reason you had to access the label in Apex itself (which is weird!).