Page and Search Layouts

The fact that I was able to write this post last night following what was one of the most exciting baseball games I have ever witnessed is a testament to my infatuation with developing, training, and Salesforce. San Francisco has been absolutely crazy during every game and it’s so much fun to be part. But work needs to be done, serious money needs to be made, and new skills need to be learned.

So let’s begin….after we have saved our validation rules we can begin creating Page and Search Layouts. To do so we need to return to the Scheduled Payment object definition; which is done by clicking the ‘Back to Scheduled Invoice’ link. Scroll down to the ‘Page Layouts’ section and click the ‘Edit’ link next to ‘Scheduled Invoice Layout’.

The great thing about the Page Layout editor is that it allows you to easily alter the object's presentation by dragging and dropping fields within sections. Developers can also customize the by adding and removing sections and fields to fit the needs of the client or business. For our Scheduled Payment object just go ahead and arrange the field layout to what fits your particular needs. Preview what the final screen will look like and then click ‘Save’ if everything is up to your criterion.

Directly below the Page Layout section you will find the Search Layout section. The standard function of this is to control how your invoices are listed in search results, and ultimately the Scheduled Invoice Tab. We are going to add the following fields to the ‘Selected Field’ list by clicking ‘Edit’ next to ‘Search Results’:

• Owner Alias
• Primary Customer Contact
• Status
• Amount Past Due
• Amount Pending

Save and add the same fields to the ‘Scheduled Invoices Tab’ search layout:

• Owner Alias
• Primary Customer Contact
• Status
• Amount Past Due
• Amount Pending

Congratulations! As it stands you have created a fully functional application that has a usable interface. Select ‘Scheduled Payment Manager’ from the application drop-down list and click the Scheduled Invoices tab. To create a new scheduled invoice, simply click ‘New’, input the required values, and hit ‘Save’.

Our new invoice is finally here! Unfortunately the scheduled payments need to be created. This used to be quite a mundane task since this had to be developed manually. But with Apex Triggers, which are written in Salesforce’s Java-like scripting language Apex Code, this procedure has become much simpler. We will jump into Apex Triggers in our next post.