Requiring Fields at a Certain Opportunity Stage

Throughout the sales cycle, there may be certain fields that you would like to required by stage.  There are different ways to do this, for example changing record types by stage and having required fields or using validation rules to require fields if the stage is equal to a certain value.  Each way to do this has its own benefits and also its own negatives.  I had this need come up with a specific caveat, that it should be very easy for someone who is an admin be able to manage it with ease, as well as show users what fields would be required when the stage was selected.  My first thought was to use a Flow that would walk the users through the fields that would be required at that stage and at the end of the Flow, update the stage to the new value.  Although this sounded great, it would require someone to update a Flow to add new fields to the requirement.  Flows are great for requiring fields to be entered through required fields on a screen, but managing a change in a picklist value, with record types, as well as adding or removing required fields as the business dictates, makes a Flow a lot to manage.  Enter another level of Salesforce adminvelopment.  (Yes, I saw on the community someone posted, adminveloper, and adminvelopment is a byproduct of adminveloper.)
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Add a New Quote Button – Learning Flow 1.E

Creating Flows are great, but if your Users can’t get to them, they don’t help too much…  It’s time to create a button to allow your Users to launch the Flow!

Start by capturing the Flow details.  In the Learning Flow series, you should have created a Flow with a Unique Name of Quote_Entry and the URL should be /flow/Quote_Entry.  You can get to the Flow details by searching Flows in the Setup search bar and clicking on the Flow you are looking for the details about.

Quote Entry Flow Detail Page

Now, there are a few ways to be able to create a button.  One way, using the Flow URL, can be found in the post, Update a Record Through a Button and Salesforce Flow.  The other way is through a Visualforce page.  I know, you’re expecting to learn about Flows here.  There is a lot of power by being able to use a Visualforce page to start a Flow instead of using the URL.  You’ll start with a basic Visualforce page in this post and in future posts, you’ll learn how to enhance the page to continue to improve your business processes and customize it for your business.

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