Salesforce: Upload Files to a Record

As shared in the Files sharing Query blog, a file can be shared with users, groups, records, and the content library. 

Let's see how the system works when uploading a file from a record related list.

By default, when a file is loaded from a record, the user who uploaded the file becomes the File Owner, and the record owner has extra permissions compared to other users; this applies when default file access is set to Set by Record, check this article.

File owner:

Record owner:

Users with edit access to the record <-- similar to the record owner

Users without edit access to the record:

Users with permission "Modify ALL records" or "Modify ALL data" <-- similar to file owner

Additionally, users with "Create Public Links" permission

The user will be able to share the file externally with an expiration date and a password:

Who Can Access?

Click the Share dropdown from the Files related list, and you can see "who can access"? Remember the  "Set by Record" mentioned earlier, and the ShareType in Query is "I", not "V".

Let's see it in a query:

SELECT Id, ShareType, ContentDocumentId, ContentDocument.Title, LinkedEntity.Name, LinkedEntity.Type FROM ContentDocumentLink WHERE ContentDocumentId = '069VZ000006928nYAA'

Share the file with another user as a Collaborator manually: 

Share the file with a Library

What happened when we shared the file with a library? 

Notice that the share type for the record and the user who shared earlier has changed to Viewer. When a file is added to a library, it means that access to the file follows access to the library; this setting can’t be changed. You can't manually re-share the file to the user as a Collaborator. You also can't remove the file from the Library. Vote for this idea. But, if you have a folder in a library, you can move the file within the library and the subfolder.

Reference:

• Set File Sharing to Inherit Record Settings
• Change File Access in Lightning Experience

CRM Analytics: Why I don't see Action

CRM Analytics offers users immediate action on a particular data in the dashboard. The "action" here refers to Salesforce action, where you can create and edit data directly from a CRM Analytics dashboard. 

You can configure this from the dataset level by editing the dataset and then clicking the Configure Actions button or from the dashboard/lens, then click Configure Actions from the drop-down menu. 

However, you may experience the action is not visible to you or your user; here 2 things that you can check:

1. CRM Analytics displays only the actions that are added to both the Quick Actions in the Salesforce Classic Publisher and the Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions sections of the layout. This applies to the page layout assignments as per the user profile, too.

2. The user doesn't have permission to perform the action on a specific object, such as not having Edit permission on the record or object to update the record action.  

 

Reference:

• Perform Actions on a Salesforce Record from CRM Analytics

CRM Analytics: Dynamic table with Input Widget

Use case: give users the ability to show top N open opportunities based on Amount in a dashboard.

Step:

1. Add a table widget with the columns, set a query limit (example 10), and add filters as needed; for my use case, the filter isClosed = false and sorted by Amount.
2. Add an input widget and set the parameters in Input Values and Input Style.
3. Add a text widget to show the top X rows for the column.

Here is the result:

What needs to be configured?

• There is no need to change the input widget except the parameters mentioned above. 
• For the table widget to show top X records, we need to change the limit from 10 (example) with binding [ "{{cell(input_1.selection, 0, \"input\").asObject()}}" ]; input_1 is the Query ID of the input widget.
• For the text widget, click the "Add Query Data" button and select the Dynamic Data Source, Dynamic Text Field, and Interaction Type as below; you can manually add "Top " text after configuring the query data.

Reference:

• Create an Input Widget

CRM Analytics: Duration between Date or Date/Time Fields

In the SAQL samples blog, we briefly share samples of formulas for calculating duration between 2 date or date/time fields using daysBetween(start date, end date) and date_diff(datepart, start date, end date).

Let's see more details in this blog here and use the sample data below with the user timezone as GMT.

SAQL to calculate days between date/time with date field:

• daysBetween(toDate(DateTime1__c_sec_epoch), toDate(Date1__c_sec_epoch))
• date_diff("day", toDate(DateTime1__c_sec_epoch), toDate(Date1__c_sec_epoch))

Notes: 

• If date1 is after date2, the number of days returned is a negative number.

Analysis:

• date_diff() will simply compare the date value only, ignoring the time value. If you see rows #9, 10, and 11, the time value is removed, so the duration would be 2 days. The same behavior applies to all other rows.
• daysbetween() is a bit complicated; the formula will consider the time value in the calculation, but the result is truncated without decimal points; for example, row #11 -- start date = 2025-02-27T11:00:00.000Z, end date = 2025-03-01 is treated as 2025-03-01T00:00:00.000Z; exact time difference = 1 day 13 hours, the result is truncated as 1. take another example from row #2, where start date = 2025-03-02T23:45:00.000Z, exact time difference =  -1 day, -23 hours, -45 minutes, the result is truncated as -1.

Now, let us change the user timezone to Singapore, which is GMT+8.

The result in CRM Analytics is the same as before changing the user timezone. The Date/Time field will be converted into GMT timezone (for Custom Time Zone Support is not enabled).

If you need to calculate the duration in hours or minutes, you can only use date_diff(). Let's see some samples below. This is similar to the "day" datepart, which ignores the whole time; if we use "hour," it ignores minutes onwards.

Analysis: Rows #10 and 11 have the same result because the minute in DateTime1 is ignored; the same is true for rows #1 and 2, even though they are just 15 minutes different in the exact time difference, but they will be shown as 1 hour.

Check out this blog to calculate case aging excluding weekends.

Reference:

• date_diff()
• daysBetween()

CRM Analytics: Long Text Area field only show 255 chars

The Long Text Area field or Rich Text Area field allows users to enter up to 131,072 characters on separate lines, which by default is 32,768 when creating the field. However, the table widget in CRM Analytics only shows 255 characters. What is the cause?

By default, Precision is blank in the sync setup; you can navigate from Data Manager >>  Connections >> SFDC_LOCAL, click the object name, click the pencil icon next to the field name, enter the length of the characters as you need in the Precision box.

Salesforce: Case fields that cannot be removed from page layout

Certain Salesforce Case standard fields cannot be removed from the case page layout, but you can set them as read-only and tell your users to ignore those fields, it would be a good idea to move them to the bottom of the page. 

These fields are marked with a blue dot when you open the case page layout:

 

• Contact Name
• Status
• Priority
• Case Origin
• Subject
• Description
• Web Email

dsds

If you upgrade the form to a dynamic layout, the restriction that the fields must always be shown is no longer applied.