Bad data is harmful for business. When the data is inconsistent or inaccurate it can cause considerable impact on organization’s efficiency. Salesforce provides many features to validate and standardize data entered by users.
State and Country Picklists in Salesforce is one such helpful feature. It lets users select states and countries from predefined, standardized lists, instead of entering them manually into text fields. These picklists are based on ISO-3166 standard values, which makes them compatible with other online applications.
Once enabled, they offer quicker and simpler data entry. They help to ensure cleaner data in the system. This data can be harnessed in reports and dashboards, list views, etc. for better analysis. They help you protect data integrity by preventing typos, alternate spellings, variations, and junk data. This is applicable even to the records updated through the API.
State and country picklists can be searched, and they’re supported in Translation Workbench. They let you control which states and countries you want to be available (visible) to users in address fields in your Salesforce org.
State and Country Picklists in Salesforce Availability and Usage
The picklists are available in the shipping, billing, mailing, and “other” address fields in the following objects
- Account
- Campaign Members
- Contact
- Contract
- Lead
- Order
- Person Accounts
- Quotes and
- Service Contracts
You can use these picklists in several places that state and country fields are available in Salesforce, including:
- Record edit and detail pages
- List views, reports, and dashboards
- Filters, functions, rules, and assignments
If this appeals to you and wish to get started in your org, then follow along this step-by-step guide to learn how to configure State and Country Picklists in Salesforce. This guide covers how to:
- Configure State & Country Picklists
- Scan the Salesforce Org
- Convert the Data
- Enable State and Country Picklists
- Rescan & Fix Customizations
- Verify State and Country Picklists
NOTE: Certain sections of the guide will appear as locked in the free preview. You can download the unlocked version of the guide in PDF format by subscribing to our “All Access” Pass through the link below.
IMPORTANT:
As much as I am tempted to recommend enabling state and country picklists in every Salesforce Org, it is important to highlight here that this may not be as easy as it sounds.
The effort required and the complexity of enabling this in your org will depend on the number of records across the various objects (having standard address fields), quality of data in these records, validation, automation rules and custom code that touches these fields.
So, my best advice to you will be to test this out in a full copy sandbox and see if this will be worth the time and effort for your organization.
References & Useful URLs
- Let Users Select State and Country from Picklists – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_state_country_picklists_overview.htm&type=5
- Configure State and Country Picklists – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_state_country_picklists_configure.htm&type=5
- Edit State and Country Details – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_state_country_picklists_edit_details.htm&type=5
- Prepare to Scan State and Country Data and Customizations – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_state_country_picklists_scan_overview.htm&type=5
- Scan State and Country Data and Customizations – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_state_country_picklist_scan_metadata.htm&type=5
- Prepare to Convert State and Country Data – Help Article (10 mins) –https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_state_country_picklists_convert_overview.htm&type=5
- Convert State and Country Data – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_state_country_picklists_convert_data.htm&type=5
- Enable and Disable State and Country Picklists – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_state_country_picklist_enable.htm&type=5
- Workflow Considerations – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=workflow_rules_considerations.htm&type=5
- When Do Processes Evaluate Record Changes? – Help Article (5 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=process_considerations_works.htm&type=5
- Impact on Apex code if State and Country Picklists feature is enabled – Knowledge article (5 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=000329128&type=1&mode=1
Slide’s Steps are really amazing. Thanks Ashish A
You’re welcome Keshav. 🙂
As always your blogs are always so helpful, thanks Ashish