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Getting error when trying to "group by" Formula (Text) SFDC Field

  • 18 March 2020
  • 9 replies
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A
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I am getting an error that I am not able to group by a Formula (text) field from SFDC. Is there any way around this? I need to be able to report on ARR by product line.

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Best answer by pele 1 April 2020, 01:58

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rakesh
Userlevel 6
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@a_heller,

This is because of a limitation from the salesforce side, which does not allow us to group by a formula field. There is an idea on the Salesforce side here.

 

pele
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Hi @a_heller, one workaround for this SoQL limitation is to create a TEXT field on the same object and populate via rules– or maybe even a Salesforce workflow. Not ideal because it’s another field that needs to be maintained, but it should get you the report you need.

A
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I am unable to create a new field as this is an object in SFDC and we are trying to clean up our instance and reduce the number of duplicative/unnecessary fields. I also wouldn’t be able to populate via rules as the object lies in SFDC. Still looking for a fix to this.

rakesh
Userlevel 6
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Hi  @a_heller 

Salesforce does not expose the formula field in group by. Hence we cannot enhance it on our side.

There are other workarounds Pele mentioned above. You can always use Data Designer or Rules to achieve it

andorfuhrer
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We have similar issues on our SFDC instance. What we have done as a work around is to create a transform function (either in data designer or in the rule) that takes that field and changes it to a string field, so you can do the grouping.  
 

AF
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@andorfuhrer are you creating a rule to transform this on an MDA object? My issue is that I cannot transform the field in SFDC and would like to avoid creating an entire MDA object solely to report on this field. 

andorfuhrer
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@a_heller - in our example, our case object has a few important fields that are formula fields.  We also utilize relationships, so most often times, we do have to create an MDA to merge the Case and GS Relationship objects, hence why creating the MDA is necessary and not a burden to create the transformation.  Since we had to do this, we decided to be more strategic and make these MDAs really sophisticated so they can solve for other reporting needs.

Ideally, the SFDC team can make this fix, but itll take resources on their end.  Our SFDC is very tight on resources so there was no way they would work on this fix, even though I was told wasn’t a major effort.  

AF
A
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@andorfuhrer thank you for the information. it sounds like creating the MDA object is the best workaround at this time, which is a ton of work for minimal output. we currently have the same situation with our SFDC team and they are unable to assist with this request. 

bradley
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Userlevel 7
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Hi  @a_heller 

Salesforce does not expose the formula field in group by. Hence we cannot enhance it on our side.

There are other workarounds Pele mentioned above. You can always use Data Designer or Rules to achieve it

@rakesh I’m curious if you could elaborate on what this means, and why it means Gainsight is not able to enhance it. It would be great to have fields you can’t aggregate or use *marked* in some way before you try and use them, as in GS the formula fields show up as text fields. 

 

Finding some way to resolve this would be really useful, and considering GS was built off of Salesforce to begin with and I imagine has a large customer base that still uses SFDC, a big win.

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