Salesforce Object Relationships

An object relationship in Salesforce is a two-way association between two objects. Relationships are created by creating custom relationship fields on an object. This is done so that when users view records, they can also see and access related data.

An example of a relationship between standard objects in Salesforce is the relationship between Account and Contacts. In most Salesforce instances this is a one-to-many lookup relationship where Account ID is a field on a Contact, representing the relationship between the Contact and its associated Account. An Account usually has many associated Contacts.

There are several different types of relationships in Salesforce. Commonly used ones include:

• Master-detail
• Lookup
• Hierarchical

View a detailed explanation of the different types of relationships in Salesforce here (opens new window).

Related objects field

In order to quickly access related objects' fields in Salesforce objects with lookup relationships, all Salesforce triggers and SOQL search actions (opens new window) on Workato contain the 'Related objects' field and 'Fields' field. If you cannot locate these fields, it can be found in the 'Remove optional fields' dropdown below the required fields.

Note that for bulk operations, the relationships field are needed to specify polymorphic relationships. More details on polymorphic fields can be found here (opens new window).

'Related Objects' and 'Fields' on triggers and actions

Accessing fields in Parent Objects

Here's an example of using this field in a New/Updated Record trigger. In this example:

1. The recipe will trigger when a New or Updated Opportunity is detected
2. Information in the Account Parent Object such as Shipping Address and Phone is required so it can be entered in an Order fulfillment app (eg. Netsuite)

Once the Salesforce trigger New/Updated Record is selected, the Opportunity object is selected in the Object dropdown. This fulfills part 1 of the requirements.

Then, select the 'Related Objects' field dropdown to pull up a list of Parent Objects. Note that only Parent Objects will be listed here. Select Account here.

Parent objects are displayed in the dropdown

Next, move on to the next field, 'Fields' to select the fields in Account required in this recipe. Since Salesforce objects usually contain many fields, using the search function in this dropdown will speed up this process. If you do not select specified fields here, all fields will be returned.

In this dropdown, fields belonging to the Opportunity, eg. Main competitors, Primary contact and Secondary contact belong to the Opportunity. Fields belonging to the selected Parent will have a dot notation separating the Parent and field name. The example below shows Account.Account ID and Account.Deleted.

Fields dropdown

To fulfill part 2 of the requirements, select the Mailing Address and Business Phone fields. These fields will now be available in the data tree on the right for use in subsequent recipe steps.

Grandparent relationships

This is an advanced feature that requires users to know the relationship names between their Salesforce objects

Relationship hierarchy

The image above shows a typical Grandparent - Parent - Child lookup object relationship. Contacts or Accounts usually have multiple Opportunities: A simple example would be multiple sales offers (Opportunities) made to the same company or person within a company (Accounts/Contacts). Accounts and Contacts belong to Users in Salesforce. This User could be an account executive within your sales organization.

To access fields in a Grandparent Object, in this case, toggle the related objects list to accept text input. This will allow you to enter multiple object relationships. Enter the following comma-separated list of relationships:

Primary_Contact__r,Primary_Contact__r.User__r

Note that each object has the suffix __r, which denotes a relationship. If using custom objects, which have the suffix __c, the __c suffix is replaced with __r. For example, if the custom object 'Invoice__c' has a parent relationship to Opportunity, the field input will be:

Invoice__r

Also note that relationship names are case sensitive. Typing in Primary_contact__r instead of Primary_Contact__r will not yield any results in the 'Fields' field. Please ensure that object names and relationships are verified before using this field.

Now, select the required fields in the 'Fields' field, as below: Fields from parent and grandparent object selected