Introduction
The &Open platform supports sending all key gifting activity back to Salesforce so that it can be easily found at a glance when browsing through Contacts in Salesforce.
These details will then start appearing automatically on the Contact screens in Salesforce, and will be updated in realtime when key events occur, such as when a recipient chooses their gift, or when it is delivered to them.
Here's an example of what it looks like in SFDC:
We always track the most recent gift sent to a recipient so you can quickly check if a recipient has ever received a gift from you and how recently that occurred.
These fields can also be included in Salesforce reports, allowing you to filter your data and incorporate it into reporting dashboards.
How to add custom fields to Salesforce
First we need to set up the custom fields in SFDC so that the &Open gifting platform has somewhere to store this information. Custom fields sit alongside the standard fields that all Contacts have, like name, email, company name etc. To add custom fields, you will need the “Customize Application” permission in Salesforce. You can implement this in either Salesforce Classic or the Salesforce Lightning Experience.
We're going to quickly set up 6 custom fields of various types — various timestamps for key events, the value of most recent gift and an annual total, and a link to the &Open recipient page that they will be selecting their gift from and checking on its progress.
Open any Contact in your Salesforce app, and access the gear icon in the top-right, and select “Edit Object”. This will bring you to the Setup app in SFDC. Look for the "Objects and Fields" section, and open "Object Manager".
From there open the "Contact" object:
Then go to “Fields and Relationships” in the sidebar, and choose the “New” button.
Each custom field will have a label, a name identifier and a type (for example, a Date/Time or an URL).
“Field Name” should match exactly what is specified in the table at the bottom of this document so that we know where to add your data. “Field Labels” can be modified to your liking, but we suggest you keep them as in this document to make it easier to keep this information all together.
Fill in the details for each field (see the table below):
When you add the name identifier in this form, don't include __c at the end, as this will be added in automatically (to denote "custom field" when you save it).
The following page will enable you to hide these new fields in certain views within your organisation. In most cases, you can just proceed to “Next” without changing anything here.
The final page lets you add this field to your layouts for Contacts. Again, usually you should just leave it enabled in all relevant layouts and click “Save”. You'll be able to move the field around the page by editing the layout.
Reference for all fields
The full list of fields to define are below, with their suggested labels, name identifiers and data type. Remember that __c will be appended automatically to your field names.
Label (suggested) | Custom field name | Data Type |
&Open most recent gift link |
| URL |
&Open most recent gift sent date |
| Date/ Time |
&Open most recent gift redeemed date |
| Date/ Time |
&Open most recent gift delivered date |
| Date/ Time |
&Open most recent gift value |
| Currency(5, 2) |
&Open lifetime cost |
| Currency(5, 2) |
⚠️ Please ensure that the service user you created for &Open has read and write access to Contact objects in Salesforce so that we can write to these custom fields.
Review
When you're finished, you should see your new fields in the list:
Once a gift is sent to one of your contacts, this information will appear on their profile as it becomes available.
