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Work with Records

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Describe a person and explain how one is modeled.
  • Create and customize a person account.

What’s a Person?

A person is someone with whom your company is doing business, also known as a client or a customer. An example of a person is Rachel Adams. She’s part of the sample data in the Financial Services Cloud trial org, and she has a person account that stores information about her.

As the diagram shows, Rachel Adams has opportunities, assets and liabilities, financial goals, and more.

Data model with a large box representing the person account. Lines emanate from the person account showing relationships such as, person account presents an opportunity; person account owns Assets and Liabilities; person account wants to achieve Financial Goals.

Salesforce supports two kinds of accounts: business and person.

  • A business account stores information in an account object and a contact object. The account object contains information about the business. The contact object contains information about the person you work with at that business.
  • A person account is useful when you’re doing business with a person (B2C). A person account combines account and contact information into one record.

Under the hood, a person account is both the contact and account objects. Person accounts bring together fields from account and contact in a single record to provide a completely streamlined, customizable, and simplified user experience in Financial Services Cloud. Usually you see Rachel as a single object, but sometimes she appears as both an account and a contact, such as in global search. Don’t worry—they’re always part of one person account and both parts appear when you click either one.

We’ll show you what we mean.

Create a Person

Now that you know what a person is, let’s create one: Vivian Torres.

  1. From the App Launcher (App Launcher icon), search for and select Wealth Management.
  2. On the navigation bar, click Accounts.
  3. Click New.
  4. In the New Account window, choose Person Account and click Next.
  5. Fill out the values for the new client. Account Name is Vivian Torres.
  6. Add more information about Vivian. Her Occupation is Bodyguard.
  7. Click Save.

Vivian’s new account shows up in Accounts view.

Customize a Person Account

Now you’re ready to customize your new person account by setting up a custom record type. A custom record type lets you control what data is displayed or how it’s displayed.

Matt the admin supports two kinds of users: wealth management advisors and insurance agents. He’d like to use the person account for both of them. But each type of user must see different contexts, fields, and displays.

So how can Matt set that up? By using record types. One set of users, the wealth management ones, can use the standard record type without any modifications. But Matt must create an additional record type for the insurance customers, because he wants them to see different information.

Let’s make that change.

First, create a person account record type that's customized to display insurance information.

  1. Click Setup | Click Setup | Click the Object Manager tab.
  2. Click Person Account and then Record Types.
  3. Click New.
  4. In the Existing Record Type picklist, choose Person Account.
  5. In Record Type Label, enter Insurance Customer.
  6. The Record Type Name is Insurance_Customer. If you'd like, add a brief description.
  7. Activate the record type by selecting Active.
  8. Enable this change for the System Administrator and Advisor Profiles.
  9. Click Next.
  10. Select Apply one layout to all profiles.
  11. Choose your page layout. For this example, choose Person Account Layout from the picklist.
  12. Click Save.

Now that you’ve created the record type for the person account, map it to behave like a Financial Services Cloud person.

  1. Click Setup and then select Setup.
  2. In the Quick Find box, enter meta, and then select Custom Metadata Types.
  3. Next to Individual Record Type Mapper, select Manage Records.
  4. Click New.
  5. Complete the following information for the record type mapper.
    1. Enter the label for your custom record type mapper: Insurance Customer.
    2. For Individual Record Type Mapper Name, enter Insurance_Customer.
    3. For Account Record Type, enter Insurance_Customer.
  1. Click Save.

When you create an account, this custom record type is now available.

Now you’re an expert on person accounts: you know what a person account is made up of, how one is modeled, how to create one, and how to customize it. Now let’s add a person to a household and explore those relationships.

Resources

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