An Intuitive Tool for Beginners and Advanced Admins

The ability to create custom objects is one of the most crucial tools in a Salesforce Administrator’s arsenal. It’s very rare that a company’s needs will be entirely met by the “out-of-the-box” standard objects that Salesforce provides, so it usually falls to an Admin to create the custom objects to track what needs to be tracked. 

This may be a familiar task for most Admins, but it can be repetitive and time consuming even for the most experienced. To speed up the object creation process, Salesforce released an intuitive tool called the Lightning Object Creator (LOC).

Two Birds with One Tool

Released for general availability in late 2019, the LOC lets admins transform a spreadsheet with live data into an object in Salesforce. That means it not only takes care of creating the metadata (the object and fields) but also the data (the individual records)! In this way, the Object Creator kills two birds with one stone. This tool is amazingly useful if the goal is to transition a company’s existing workflows from spreadsheets to Salesforce.

Pop and LOC

To use the LOC, go to Setup in Lightning Experience. Navigate to the Object Manager and click the “Create” button on the top right. Click “Custom Object from Spreadsheet.” You may be asked to enter your login information again. You’ll then be given the option of uploading a spreadsheet directly or using a simple, easy-to-use integration with Google Sheet or Office 365. That’s right—no need to download your existing Google Sheets as CSVs!

Once you’ve selected your spreadsheet, you’ll be taken to a “Define object and fields” screen. 

Salesforce will automatically detect the field names from your spreadsheet and assign data types to them. Here, you can adjust labels and data types as needed, select whether or not to automatically add these fields to the default page layout, and decide whether or not to import the rows from your spreadsheet as new records.

Finally, simply enter the Object properties for your new custom object, such as Label, API Name, and Description. Then click “Finish,” sit back, and let the Lightning Object Creator quickly create the custom object, fields, and records so that you don’t have to! 

When it’s complete, you’ll be able to see your new custom object in the Object Manager, and the records you selected for import will already be in the system. Don’t forget to adjust page layouts and Lightning Record Pages afterwards to ensure a clean experience for your end users.

Don’t Object to Asking for Help

At Shift3 Technologies, we use a consultative approach to help you determine the best strategy to identify your challenges, implement appropriate solutions and enhance your systems. 

Looking for other tips and tricks while navigating Salesforce in your org? Check out our posts regarding Developing in VSCode or Overcoming the Challenges of Visualforce Pages. If you need help managing your Salesforce instance on an enterprise level, give us a call at 559 560 3300 or email us at [email protected] today. 

This post was written by Joseph Wheelock, a triple-certified Salesforce Admin, nature-lover, musician and cat dad.