More Complex Examples
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The following two examples make use of relationships between custom objects. See below for links to Test Drive and Explore these applications on the AppExchange Directory.
Example 1: Project Status Tracker & Issue Log
Found in the Top 10 AppExchange listings for over a year, this application uses 2 custom objects: Projects, and Issues ( which are related to the Projects object).
Background: Out of the box, there is no project tracking in salesforce.com. In some industries, implementation or setup projects all follow the same set of stages or steps. In addition, project managers are always having to track issues as they popup during the lifetime of the project.
Application Description: First the project object is created, with custom fields to track start and end dates, a calculated field to calculate duration, and a picklist or two to track the projects current stage/status, and some other fields to track data a salesforce admin thinks appropriate.
Then the Issues object is created. It has custom fields to track issue status, issue priority, issue owner, as well as a custom relationship field to the Project Object.
What's cool:What this relationship custom field does is make the Issues accessible as a related list on the Projects object. Effectively Issues is now a related peer (for Lookup relationship fields), or child (for Master-Detail fields), of the Projects object. We are talking parent-child relationships with no DBA skills required! No need to deal with primary keys and foriegn keys, etc. The system manages this for you. And if you take a look at what you can report on, you can now report on this data as separate objects, or combine data from both objects in one report.
Test Drive and explore it here on the AppExchange Directory.
Example 2: Tracking Opportunity Splits:
This feature uses just 1 custom object, but uses some Custom Link "magic" to prepopulate fields when creating the custom object.
Backgound: Out of the box, salesforce.com does not give credit for an opportunity to more than 1 person. Yes, there are sales teams in Enterprise Edition, but those don't affect pipeline reports, nor does it split the dollar amount among multiple users.
Feature Description: Using custom objects, and a few custom link, Opportunity Splits can be created to share portion of the Opportunity with multiple users.
Test Drive and explore it here on the AppExchange Directory.
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