Field & Object Mapping in Salesforce

Field Mapping: telling DayBack about your Salesforce objects

Configuring DayBack to work with your Salesforce objects is done almost entirely by filling out a form in DayBack's source settings screen. Each object you map to will be shown as a separate "source" in the calendar and you can elect for some or all of these sources to be showing at any given time. DayBack will have created a few standard objects for you when you first add DayBack to your org; it creates sources for Events, Tasks, Campaigns and Opportunities by default and you can see how these are mapped as examples for creating sources for your own objects.

The Field Mapping form will describe the fields available in DayBack and a couple of required fields you may need to add to any custom objects. Feel free to disable any fields you don't need or aren't sure about; if there is no "enabled" checkbox beside a field, then the field is required for the calendar to function.

If you're the admin of your org you're already an administrator in DayBack and clicking on "Settings" in the calendar's left-hand sidebar will reveal an "Administrator Settings" button that will let you configure sources.

Field mapping: getting started

Having first created your new source you'll continue editing the calendar settings by mapping the fields DayBack needs to know about in order to show your object on the calendar.

For each field, click "Details" to learn more about which Salesforce field DayBack expects. Most fields have a place for the field name in Salesforce and a place for the "Label" your users will see beside the field in DayBack. Looking at the first field, "Start"... notes).

Start - this is the name of the field in Salesforce that contains your object's start date or date/time. If you have only one date field, like a due date, this is where you map it. Start is a required field, unlike "End". In the case of Tasks this would be "ActivityDate" (without the quotes).
Label - use this for the field label you'd like to see when viewing or editing the item in DayBack. In the case of Tasks this might be "Due" (without the quotes). This doesn't need to correspond to any value in Salesforce and can be different than the field label you use there.

Continue mapping your fields, assigning a field name and a label to each field you need to show, or marking that field as disabled if it doesn't apply to your object. (If you don't see an option for "enabled" beside a field then that field is required.)

The Display field is the field that displays on the calendar before you've clicked on an event, and the Title field is the primary field at the top of the popover. Since the Display field itself is not editable, it can support multiple field values from the object, separated by commas, e.g. for the standard Event object: Subject, Who.Name, What.Name, ShowAs,Location. Note that related values can be accessed via the dot syntax. A custom object will have custom fields and relationships and could look something like this: Name, Opportunity__r.Name, Location__c.

When you get to Name (Who) this is where you specify which field holds the name of the person linked to your event. For native Salesforce Activity objects (Event and Task) this will almost always be "Who.Name" (without the quotes) and the WhoID will be "WhoId" (without the quotes). For the standard Activities, the Who represents either the Lead or the Contact, but this section can also support any Look-Up or Master-Detail relationship in Salesforce including with Custom Objects.

Related To (What) is similar but for parent objects like the Campaign to which a task belongs. Again, for native Salesforce Activity objects this will almost always be "What.Name" (without the quotes) and the WhatId will be "WhatId" (without the quotes), but this section can also support any Look-Up or Master-Detail relationship in Salesforce including those for Custom Objects.

Note that field names in Salesforce are case sensitive =)

Required fields

DayBack only requires a couple of fields in your object and these are likely only an issue for custom objects; even there you probably already have these fields in your object:

Start - the starting date or date/time of the object. If you only have one date field in your object, like a due date, use that field here.
Display - this is the field (or fields) that shows up when you see the event in the calendar: it's the name of your event, like "Meeting with Tim".
Title - this may be the same field as the first field you choose in Display, but this is the editable title that shows in the popover when you go to edit an item in the calendar.

The reason DayBack offers both Display and Title is that you may want to make a formula field for Display to display some concatenated information about the event on the calendar, leaving Title for a field you can actually edit.

Special field (status and resource)

The status and resource fields are a bit different in that the status field is used for color coding your item and the resource is used to assign it a column in the resource scheduling views.

Status

DayBack will color-code your events according to the value in this field. This is most often a temporal attribute of the event, like "has it been started" or "has the patient checked in yet." But it can also be what you use to tell one type of work from another: some users color code by department, or work type. For others, this is the payment status of a job: green for paid, orange for pending, grey for canceled.

To get started you can map Status to any field in your table, even a picklist, and then adjust the list of possible statuses in DayBack's filters tab to match the values you'd like to see for Status. More on this and on color-coding your items here: Events Colors & Status

Resource

Resource scheduling is one of the real strengths of DayBack and you'll eventually want to read up on the available resource scheduling views here: Resources Overview. But for now, you can map the resource to "Owner.Name" (without the quotes)--which is what DayBack does by default for your events and tasks. That's the owner of the item and will be assigned to the logged-in user if you leave the resource in DayBack blank. You can also map this to any text field or multi-value picklist. More on your options here: mapping the resource field.

Using custom fields

You can include custom fields in your calendar mapping. Just remember that Salesforce gives your custom field a suffix so if you have a custom field called "Sample", for example, the field's name in Salesforce is "Sample__c" (without the quotes).

Adding more fields to the calendar popover

You can go beyond the fields shown in DayBack's popover by adding additional fields; this great for including required fields you may need when creating new items.

These are fields DayBack didn't think to create a space for and they'll appear on a drawer beside your event popover. These fields are exposed to DayBack's text filter and can be a great way to refine your calendar views with text filters saved as bookmarks.

Learn more about custom fields here: additional fields.