Set up relation on two existing Salesforce objects

2
votes

I have a custom object in Salesforce which I need to setup a Master Detail relationship from Accounts. Accounts being the Master and CompHist being the Detail. The problem I am running into is that I need to set the relation to work off of custom fields within the objects. Example:

1.) Accounts has a custom field called CustomerId.

2.) CompHist also has custom field called CustomerId.

3.) I need to be able to have this linked together by CustomerId field for report generation.

About 2,000 records are inserted into CompHist around the 8th of each month. This is done from a .NET application that kicks off at the scheduled time, collects info from our databases and then uploads that data to salesforce via the SOAP API.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding how Salesforce relationships work as I am fairly new (couple months) to salesforce development.

Thanks, Randy

1
salesforcerelationship

1 Answers

3
votes

There is a way to get this to work without triggers that will link the records or pre-querying the SF to learn Account Ids in .NET before you'll push the CompHistories.

Setup

On Account: set the "External ID" checkbox on your CustomerId field. I'd recommend setting "Unique" too.

On CompHist: you'll need to make decision whether it's acceptable to move them around or when the relation to Account is set - it'll stay like that forever. When you've made that decision tick / untick the "reparentable master-detail" in the definition of your lookup / m-d to Account.

And if you have some Id on these details, something like "line item number" - consider making an Ext. Id. for them too. Might save your bacon some time in future when end user questions the report or you'll have to make some kind of "flush" and push all lines from .NET (will help you figure out what's to insert, what's to update).

At this point it's useful to think how are you going to fill the missing data (all the nulls in the Ext. Id) field.

Actual establishing of the relationship

If you have the external ids set it's pretty easy to tell salesforce to figure out the linking for you. The operation is called upsert (mix between update and insert) and can be used in 2 flavours.

"Basic" upsert is for create/update solving; means "dear Salesforce, please save this CompHist record with MyId=1234. I don't know what's the Id in your database and frankly I don't care, go figure this out will ya?"

  • If there was no such record - 1 will be created.
  • If there was exactly 1 match - it will be updated.
  • If there were more than 1 found - SF won't know which one to update and throw error back at you (that's why marking as "unique" is a good idea. There's a chance you'll spot errors sooner).

"Advanced" upsert is for maintaining foreign keys, establishing lookups. "Dear SF, please hook this CompHist up to Account which is marked as "ABZ123" in my DB. Did I mention I don't care about your Ids and I can't be bothered to query your database first prior to me uploading my stuff?"

  • Again - exact match - works as expected.
  • 0 or 2 Accounts with same ext. id value = error.

Code plz

I'd recommend you to play with Data Loader or similar tool first to get a grasp. of what exactly happens, how to map fields and how to not be confused (these 2 flavours of upsert can be used at same time). Once you'll manage to push the changes the way you want you can modify your integration a bit.

SOAP API upsert: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/Content/sforce_api_calls_upsert.htm (C# example at the bottom)

REST API: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api_rest/Content/dome_upsert.htm

If you'd prefer an Salesforce Apex example: Can I insert deserialized JSON SObjects from another Salesforce org into my org?