Record Criteria

Overview

Record Criteria are used to determine which records to use from the selected object of the Data Set. Because the Contact and Application are the most common objects to use, below is how to set the criteria in two Data Sets so that each Community user sees their own contact record and active application(s).

The Contact Data Set

Object: Contact (be sure to choose the “Active Application record” if the page also needs application information)

  • Criteria Field: Contact ID (id)
  • Operator: equals
  • Value Type: Global Variable
  • Value: CurrentContactID
    Note:
    CurrentContactID is a special value that is automatically set to the ID of the Contact record of the current user.

The Application Data Set

Object: Application

  • Criteria Field: Record ID (Id)
  • Operator: equals
  • Value Type: Data Set
  • Data Set: choose the Contact data set that you defined, above
  • Value: Active Application Record

Child Object Data Set

To create a Data Set that retrieves child records of the Application (e.g., Education History, Test Score, Recommendation, etc.), use as criteria the field that looks up to the Application. Choose the Value Type of Data Set and then the Data Set that has the Application information. The Value will be the ID of the Application, for example:

Object: Education History

  • Criteria Field: Application
  • Operator: Equals
  • Value Type: Data Set
  • Data Set: Choose the Application Data Set you defined, above in (2.)
  • Value: Record ID (the Salesforce unique ID of the Application)

Data Set Record Criteria for Sites

Because Sites are public pages, the user is anonymous and there is no CurrentContactID when the page is accessed. Sites pages must therefore include one or more parameters in their URLs to uniquely identify the record to be shown and updated by the site. When configuring a Site page, at least one Data Set must use a parameter. The Data Set that uses the parameter should be the one that needs to be uniquely identified for use in the Site. Other Data Sets can then be configured to reference this primary one. The following URL shows an example of parameters: http://formbuilder.force.com/FormBuilderSite?name=ERx&type=test

In this example, “name” and “type” are parameters. The value of “ERx” is passed to the “name” parameter, and the value of “test” is passed to the “type” parameter. Parameters always follow the question mark (?) in a URL. Parameters are separated by an ampersand (&).

To configure the parameter, edit the Data Set and scroll to Record Criteria(s) and use these values:

  • Criteria Field: Record ID, or other field that uniquely identifies the record
  • Operator: equals
  • Value Type: Param
  • Data Set: This remains blank
  • Value: This will be a text value that is the name of the parameter, as in “name” or “type” above. Since the value that will be passed to a parameter is often a record ID, it may help you to name your parameter with the name of the object it references, such as “recommendationID” or “workHistoryID”.