Just give me a KISS
Pucker up…
Totally kidding. I’m talking about Keep It Simple Stupid, and I have to say that this is one of the best bits of advice – not just for customizing Salesforce, but for life in general. While this isn’t the place to delve into all that, I think this is an extremely important lesson to remember when thinking about modifying your Salesforce org. And to prove it to you, I’ve got a little story to share…
Once upon a time, a beautiful but quirky Salesforce enchantress was tasked with forcing opportunity creation every time a lead got converted. She thought to herself, “Gee…this seems pretty simple,” and set off to investigate a solution. But what she thought would be a simple afternoon’s adventure soon turned into a very difficult journey. She tried every trick in her magical powers – workflow rules, validation rules, approval processes – but nothing seemed to work. She decided that much more powerful ‘automagic’ needed to be used, and began looking at triggers or some custom visualforce. Eventually, she decided that whatever the solution was, it was beyond her skill set & called in the help of a more powerful wizard. This more powerful wizard tried all the tricks in his book too – testing lots of different combinations of code. He even got very close to a solution. But very close wasn’t quite good enough for what the enchantress needed. One day, after trying another one of the powerful wizards methods out, the enchantress grew concerned and frustrated. She cried out, “Isn’t there any other way?!?” Just then, a knight but the name of Sir Nik was riding by & heard her plea. “Why yes dear, there is. Let’s me show you!” And with one simple validation rule (the syntax of which had just narrowly escaped our dear enchantress), Sir Nik had saved the day!
And the moral of the story? K.I.S.S. Sometimes the best solution is the most simple one of all, and just because the simple solution might be hard to find, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.