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What is the use of External Id in Salesforce?
I have seen a Java Application which is making callouts to Salesforce. While making callouts it uses external Id field which gets populated as soon as record gets created in salesforce.
SalesforceConnector.patchPatientInSalesforce(“/services/data/v20.0/sobjects/Contact/SQL_External_Id__c/” + ws.getPatientId(),contactObject.toString());
where contactObject.toString() is the JSON format of the record.
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2 Replies
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Hi Manpreet,
When a field is marked as an External ID, its values can be used to match and associate related records to one another. External IDs are commonly used to store unique record identifiers from external systems and allow for routinely loading data into Salesforce without having to prepare your import file with existing or related Salesforce record IDs each time.
- External ID prevent duplicate records from being created as a result of the import operation.
- If we perform an upsert operation using the External ID filed it Insert for new records or perform an Update for existing records.
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When we update or upsert any record in salesforce we do it by using Record Id. But if we want to update or upsert the record from some External System, we won’t be having Record Id in the External system. So we choose one field as ‘External ID’ in the salesforce and based on that be do the updation from External System
We can only choose Auto Number, Email, Number and Text Field as external id in Salesforce.
And there is a limit to have max number of external id fields and it is 7. The unique field also counts in that limit. It means Unique Fileds + External Fields < = 7.
Thanks.
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