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- Supports formula fields
- Supports default value field formulas (during initial record creation)
- All numeric, logical, string, and date/time operators and functions are supported
- Most summary and advanced functions are supported (some server-side-specific functions are not supported)
- Set pulsar.formula.enableSFDCFormulas Pulsar Setting to TRUE to enable this functionality in the Pulsar mobile app
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Notes and caveats
- If there is both a Salesforce formula and a Pulsar Settings Langugae (PSL) formula (see below) for the same field, the PSL formula takes precedence, and the Salesforce formula is ignored
- Salesforce formulas and PSL formulas across objects/fields should not interact (e.g., if FormulaFieldA__c is a Salesforce formula and FormulaFieldB__c is a PSL formula, the result is undefined if they reference each other).
- Formula fields are calculated When syncing records, Pulsar picks up formula field calculations from Salesforce servers, and persists them to the local database
- Formula fields are always recalculated on-the-fly every time you view a record detail page (but not when editing)Currently due to processing limitations, formula in Pulsar
- Formula fields are NOT dynamically calculated in list views. Stale values may be shown in list views unless steps are taken to persist calculations ; instead persisted data from the local database is shown
- For many organizations this default behavior is sufficient
- But some organizations may encounter stale data situations (see below)
Offline persistence of formula field calculations
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- When creating or editing records, formula fields for that record are calculated and persisted to the local database
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- For many organizations this default behavior is sufficient
- But some organizations may encounter stale data situations (see below)
Local persistence of formula fields and potential stale data
When Pulsar is online and syncs, formula field calculations are synced picked up from Salesforce servers and persisted locally. (NOTE that after the very first sync, there should be no stale data persisted to the local database when , since all records have just been created afresh directly from Salesforce).
When online during record creation and updates/edit, or when Pulsar next syncs offline created/updated records. When online or syncing there is always a readback that picks up server-side calculations.But for some organizations, when running offline in Pulsar, the lack of persistence of formula field calculations can present a problem. This usually happens in the following two scenarios: (1) formula fields present in list views, and (2) customizations that directly query formula fields from the database (e.g. Pulsar will sync the newly created/updated record and also perform a readback that will pick up canonical formula field calculations from Salesforce servers. Also when creating/editing a record offline, Pulsar itself persists formula fields calculations just for that record to the local database.
So whether Pulsar is online or offline, formula fields are recalculated for the created/updated record, and persisted to the local database just for that record. So where can the stale data creep in?
It turns out that some formula fields are more complex than others. Simple formulas (our terminology) are those that only touch data from the record in question. Cross-record formulas (our terminology) are those that touch data across various records.
- Objects that only have simple formula fields will always have coherent data stored in the local database
- Objects that have cross-record formula fields will accumulate stale data in those formula fields, because Pulsar does not recalculate for all records that might be affected when a particular other record is updated
- NOTE that stale data is not necessarily problematic for many organizations. The problems generally arise in the following scenarios:
- Showing cross-record formulas in list views
- Direct querying of cross-record formula fields in the database from custom code (e.g. SQL querying via PSL or via the Pulsar Javascript API).
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Forcing formula field recalculations
If you are encountering stale formula data problems, luckily there is a mechanism from PSL shown here (as well as the Javascript API) to calculate and persist formula fields to explicitly avoid stale data problems.
| Code Block |
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DEFAULT{
Action=CalculateSaveFormulas;
ObjectType=<ObjectAPIName>;
ObjectIds=<Optional comma-separated list of object Ids. If empty/unspecified, will operate on all records of ObjectType>;
WhereClause=<Optional WHERE clause to programmatically select specific Ids>;
FormulaFields=<Optional comma-separated list of fields. If empty/unspecified, will operate on all formula fields of the ObjectType>;
} |
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