Streamline Adding Contacts to Programs

Speed Up Program Engagement Creation

The first task for your users when they begin working with any client or program participant is to create a program engagement record.

The program engagement record connects a contact record (or whatever object records you are using to track the people, places, animals, or things you serve) with a program record. This connection is required before you start creating service delivery records for a client or program participant.

There are a few ways to customize what information your users can—or must—collect when they create a program engagement, plus ways to create program engagements in bulk more efficiently.

In this step we walk you through a few examples. Follow along in your Trailhead Playground to verify your work at the end of this step.

Customize Add Contact to Program

To create a single program engagement for a single client, your users will probably go to that client’s contact record and click the Add Contact to Program quick action.

By default, the quick action layout includes a few basic fields: Program, Stage, Role, Program Cohort, and Start Date. But imagine you also wanted to provide a notes field for program staff to record details about the engagement.

Let’s first create a new field on the Program Engagement object.

1. Go to Setup by clicking Setup () and then Setup.
2. Click the Object Manager tab.
3. Find and select Program Engagement.
4. Click Fields & Relationships.
5. Click New.
6. Select Text Area (Long) and click Next.
7. Enter Enrollment Notes in the Field Label field, make sure the Field Name field is Enrollment_Notes and click Next.
8. The next page selects which profiles will be able to access the field. Program Management Standard User is selected by default, so click Next.
9. Click Save.

With the new field created, let’s add it to the quick action layout.

1. In Setup, click the Object Manager tab.
2. Find and select Contact from the list.
3. Click Buttons, Links, and Actions.
4. Click Add Contact to Program.
5. Click Edit Layout.
6. Drag and drop Enrollment Notes from the palette at the top of the page to the layout canvas. Place the new field just below Start Date.
   
   
   
7. Click Save.

While we’re on the Contact object in the Object Manager, let’s make sure the Program Management page layout is assigned to your profile. Page layouts determine what fields and sections you’ll have access to on a record, and in what order they appear. Layouts can be customized and assigned to different user profiles. 

Let’s check that your profile, System Administrator, has the Program Management page layout assigned.

1. Click Page Layouts.
2. Click Page Layout Assignment.
3. Notice that the System Administrator and Program Management Standard User are both assigned the Program Management Page Layout.

You’re all set with the new field, the customized quick action layout, and we know that the correct page layout is assigned. Let’s try the new quick action layout!

1. Find and select Program Management from the App Launcher ().
2. In Global Search, find and select Zoe Blum’s contact record.
3. Click Add Contact to Program.
4. In the quick action layout, you’ll see our Enrollment Notes field. Enter these details to create a new program engagement record.
   
   
   • Program: Job Readiness Program
   • Role: Client
   • Stage: Enrolled
   • Start Date: Today
   • Enrollment Note: Zoe would like to learn more about job interview skills.
5. Click Save.

You can click through to the new program engagement record to see the data in the fields now. Your Enrollment Notes field should appear at the bottom of the Information section. 

Enable Mass Creation of Program Engagements

What if you want to create program engagements for many contacts at once? For example, imagine you have a group of people who register for a class and the details will be mostly the same. 

Fortunately, you can add a quick action to create multiple program engagements from the Contacts list view.

Let’s add the quick action button first.

1. Go to Setup by clicking Setup () and then Setup.
2. Click the Object Manager tab.
3. Find and select Contact from the list.
4. Click List View Button Layout.
5. In the List View layout row, click Show More (), then select Edit.
6. In the Available Quick Actions list in the List View Actions in Lightning Experience section, select Add Contact to Program, then click Add () to move it to Selected Quick Actions.
   
   
   
7. Click Save.

Now let’s see the new quick action in, well, action.

1. Find and select Program Management from the App Launcher ( ).
2. Click the Contacts tab.
3. Click List View.
4. Click Recently Viewed and select the All Contacts list view.
5. Click the Name column header to sort alphabetically so that the names beginning with A are first.
6. Using the checkboxes in the list view, select Aldegund Sokolov, Aldous Wong, and Alexandra Ventresca.
7. Click Add Contact to Program in the list view quick actions. If you can’t find it right away, it may be under Show more actions ().
8. In the Add Contact to Program menu, enter these details:
   • Program: Job Readiness Program
   • Role: Client
   • Stage: Applied
   • Program Cohort: If your organization uses cohorts, it’s best to assign engagements to a cohort at this step. We’ll leave this blank, though, to show you another feature in the next section.
9. Click Save.
10. Click OK on the confirmation message.
    
    
    

Just like that, you’ve created three new program engagement records. You can check them out by searching on the contacts’ names in Global Search.

This quick action is especially handy when paired with custom list views. Set up a list view for your users on some shared criteria—maybe clients’ ages, where they live, or their grade level—and users can add many similar contacts to a program quickly using the button. (Check out the Lightning Experience Customization badge in Resources for more on custom list views.)

Enable Mass Program Cohort Updates

Program cohort records are useful if you need to group similar program engagements. For example, a program cohort may include engagements that receive services at the same location, start a program at the same time, or are in the same grade level.

Your users might associate a program engagement to a program cohort when they create the engagement, but you can also help them add many existing program engagements to a cohort at once.

You can do this two ways: Place the Add to Program Cohort button on the program engagement list view, or enable inline editing on list views. We’ll cover adding the button here, and you can check out the instructions for inline editing in the Enable Mass Program Cohort Updates link in Resources.

Let’s get started.

1. Go to Setup by clicking Setup () and then Setup.
2. Click the Object Manager tab.
3. Find and select Program Engagement from the list.
4. Click List View Button Layout.
5. In the List View row, click Show More (), then select Edit.
6. In the Available Quick Actions list in the List View Actions in Lightning Experience section, select Add to Program Cohort, then click Add () to move it to Selected Quick Actions. (If it’s already there, you don’t have to change anything!)
   
   
   
7. Click Save.

Now that we set up the button, let’s try it out.

1. Find and select Program Management from the App Launcher ().
2. Click the Program Engagements tab.
3. Click Recently Viewed and select the All list view.
4. Click the List View Controls menu () then Select Fields to Display.
5. Select Program Cohort then click the arrow () to add it to the list view.
   
   
   
6. Click Save.
7. Back on the list view, use the checkboxes to select the Job Readiness program engagements we created for Aldegund Sokolov, Aldous Wong, and Alexandra Ventresca. Remember, you could have added them to a cohort when you created the engagements, but we left that field blank to demonstrate this feature.
8. Click Add to Program Cohort in the list view quick actions. If you don’t see it, it may be under Show more actions().
9. In the Add to Program Cohort menu, select find and select Eastgate in the Program Cohort field.
10. Click Save.
11. Click OK on the confirmation message.

In this step you helped your users more efficiently create program engagements and add them to program cohorts. In the next step, we cover ways to better track service deliveries.

First, be sure to check your work by clicking Verify below.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Customize Fields on the Add Contact to Program Action
• Salesforce Help: Enable Mass Program Engagement Creation
• Salesforce Help: Configure Cohort Mass Update
• Trailhead: Lightning Experience Customization