Ninja Forms Salesforce Plugin

The Ninja Forms Salesforce plugin lets you add attachments automatically to Accounts and Contacts.  If, however, you have a custom object, it can’t automatically add it out of the box because I don’t know the name of your custom object that you want to use.  For that reason, I built in the ability for you to create your own link so that you can attach an uploaded file to your custom object.

How To Link an Attachment to a Custom Object

add_filter('nfsalesforcecrm_filter_child_object_array', 'lb3_attachment_to_custom_object');

function lb3_attachment_to_custom_object($default_child_object_array){

    $modified_array = $default_child_object_array;

        $modified_array[ 'my_custom_object_name']=array(
        'Attachment'=>'ParentId'
    );

    return $modified_array;
}

Note that in this example, you would replace my_custom_object_name with the name of your custom object as displayed in the Salesforce Object list in the Salesforce Settings of  your Ninja Forms Settings page.

Setting an Appropriate Object Order

Because we are taking the custom object we just created and putting its ID into the attachment object, we need to ensure that we create the custom object before trying to create the attachment.  This is accomplished by filtering the Salesforce Object Order to add our custom object in the appropriate order.  Attachments are created at sequence number ’50’ so a good order number for a custom object is ’15’.  See the snippet below.

 
add_filter('nfsalesforcecrm_filter_object_order', 'lb3_add_custom_object_order'); 
function lb3_add_custom_object_order($default_object_order){ 
    $modified_array = $default_object_order; 
    $modified_array[ 'my_custom_object_name']='15'; 
    return $modified_array; 
} 

How It Works

The objects in Salesforce are linked but adding the ID of the parent object as  a field in the child object.  For attachments, the field used is called ‘ParentId’.  The plugin has a configured array that contains an array of standard Salesforce objects, each of which has an array of child objects that holds the name of the field used for linking.  When one of the parent objects is created, the Ninja Forms Salesforce extension looks through this array and then adds the newly created ID into any available child objects using the specified field.

In our example, we add a new key called my_custom_object_name and specify that if an Attachment is also being created by the form submission, we want to to that the my_custom_object_name ID and add that as the ParentId field for the attachment, thus linking the two together.

 

As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

 

Stuart Sequeira

 

Ninja Forms‘ Salesforce extension has a setting called “Objects to Retrieve” that is designed to speed up your form building experience.  Here’s how it works and why.

A Little Background

During setup, the plugin sends a request to your Salesforce account to retrieve all the objects that you have available for sending data to, including not only standard objects, but also any custom ones that you have created.  Here’s a list of the available objects from a typical Salesforce account:

Each of these objects have fields in which the information is stored.  For example, the Lead object has fields like “First Name”, “Last Name”, etc.  Here’s a screen shot of the all the fields available in the Lead object, including a few custom fields I created:

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The Challenge

So now try to imagine how many total fields there are available in Salesforce.  Then picture yourself sorting through all these fields  to find the right ones you are using for your specific form.  This situation is what the ‘Objects To Retrieve’ setting is designed to address.

The Solution

In the Objects To Retrieve text box, type in only the objects you plan to create. This limits the list of field mapping options to only those that you will actually be using.

For example, if you built a form to capture Leads  associated Campaign, your Objects To Retrieve setting should look like this:

Voila! Your list of fields is reduced to a very manageable collection.

If you have any questions about this, or regarding integrating WordPress and Ninja Forms with your Salesforce account, just ask.