Maintain One Version of the Truth
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Schedule regular tech debt activities.
- Eliminate duplicate fields for consistent data capture.
- Standardize the case layout view.
Set a Frequency of Tech Debt Management
In this badge, you clean up a limited amount of tech debt for AW Computing. But what if you’re an admin for an org that’s been around for many years? What if changes have been implemented by different admins and power users to support multiple organizations? Even though you can break down the issues, you may find that the list is massive. While it’s easy to feel discouraged, take heart.
It’s important to understand that it’s acceptable to have a small amount of tech debt. 0% is good in theory, but keep in mind that businesses grow, teams shift, and priorities change. That means projects might start, but get abandoned. Other work might take higher priority. Technology evolves.
When managing tech debt in the real world, it becomes a matter of tradeoffs. So, return to the question: “What can remain, and what will break the org or the business?” Your list might be massive. But you can confidently work on it by setting up a cadence. Make it a monthly or quarterly task based on the issues at hand.
For AW Computing, you had a series of conversations with the services and M&A team to help you investigate the issues. For situations where that may not be the case or where you want to get proactive with tech debt management, you can use Org Check, a free tool from Salesforce Labs available on the AppExchange.
Investigate Data Issues
Based on your conversation with the service team stakeholders, the data confusion at AW Computing stems from a range of duplicate fields on the Case object that capture status and priority information. The data from all these fields throws off both the service process and reporting. Here’s how you evaluate the Case object.
- From Setup, select Object Manager, and then Case.
- Select Fields & Relationships, and take a close look at the fields.
You discover a series of fields that capture this information, both standard and custom—duplication. You don’t mean to introduce a little scope creep to this task, but a few other fields catch your attention prefixed by terms like fix, test, and others for which there’s no context. You ask the team about them.
It seems that somewhere along the line, the team needed some kind of fix, which inadvertently resulted in duplicate status and other fields. The team introduced other strange custom fields centered around the service leader. Finally, it seems the team conducted a test that should have happened in a sandbox org, not production.
You host another session with the service team to sort out which fields you need to keep and which you can remove. You also investigate what steps to take to get the data in your org aligned with the new standards.
Implement Better Data Standards
You’d like to remove duplicate fields, update fields with the right data, and ensure everyone is seeing a single source of truth. But how you go about that can depend on the amount of records in your system, how important it is for historical record keeping, and how much time you have. Refer to your original question again, “Will this be annoying, or will it break the org or our business?”
In the interest of getting AW Computing’s M&A activities back on track as quickly as possible, you and the service team agree that if closed cases don’t have priority and SLA data because they used the duplicate fields, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But it’s important to ensure that all open and future cases follow the new standard–there is no room for data issues moving forward.
You put updating historical case records toward the bottom of your tech debt list, to be addressed later this year. The higher priority is cleaning up existing cases.
Export the Current State of Cases
It’s important to export your data whenever you make significant changes to the data model, such as deleting existing fields. You do this in Setup.
- From Setup, search for and select Data Export.
- Select Export Now.
- Check the box next to Case.
- Then, select Start Export. You receive an email when the export is ready.
In a real scenario, after data export, you transform the data in the spreadsheet to update your org as needed. Data transformation isn't in the scope of this badge. You can learn more about it in the Data Management badge.
Delete Duplicate Fields
You’ve transformed the data–updating all the open case records with the right fields. It’s now time to delete offenders without risk of losing any important data.
- Head back to Setup.
- Select Object Manager.
- Find and select Case.
- Select Fields & Relationships.
- Select the dropdown next to the field you intend to delete and select Delete. A popup shows important information about exporting your data and how long fields will be available for restore.
- To confirm, click Delete.
If there are any automations that depend on a field, you’ll be unable to delete it until it’s decoupled from the workflow. Sometimes you catch this in your investigation; sometimes you miss the dependency and come across an error when trying to delete the field.
You discover an old automation that uses a couple of fields. You’ll get to these soon. But for now, there’s one more thing you have to do to ensure there’s no more confusion: remove the lite view.
Update Page Layout for Standard Users
The lite view was set up for the leadership team back when they were more involved with each case. As the company grew, the team implemented a different process to request executive review only when needed. The lite view, like the duplicate fields, has no purpose anymore. You discover one more thing—team members with the Standard User profile have the lite view as well! Let’s fix all of that.
- Navigate to Setup if you’re not there already.
- Select Object Manager.
- Find and select Case.
- Click Case Page Layouts.
- Then, select Page Layout Assignments.
- Click Edit Assignments.
- Click on the profile and page layout row you want to change.
- Select Case Layout.
- Then, click Save.
Delete the Offending Layout
Now that no profile is using the confusing case layout, you can safely delete it.
- If you’re not there yet, navigate to Setup.
- Select Object Manager.
- Find and select Case.
- Select Case Page Layouts.
- In the dropdown next to the layout you want to delete, select Delete.
- Select Delete again to confirm.
The services team now has a single source of truth for cases. Good job! Last task on your tech debt list—legacy automation.