Setting up data validation in Sales Navigator ensures your data stays clean, accurate, and consistent. Validating data helps prevent errors and inconsistencies that could impact your sales reports and analytics. Here are the key steps to set up basic data validation rules in Sales Navigator.
Why Validate Data in Sales Navigator?
There are a few key reasons you’ll want to set up data validation in Sales Navigator:
- Prevent bad or inconsistent data from entering Sales Navigator – Data validation acts as a safeguard against incorrect or invalid entries. This helps keep your CRM data clean.
- Improve data accuracy – With validation rules in place, you can catch and correct mistakes as data is entered to ensure details like names, addresses, and monetary values are captured accurately.
- Standardize data formats – Setting rules for how certain fields like phone numbers, dates, and monetary values should be entered makes your data more uniform and consistent.
- Improve reporting – Clean, valid data leads to more accurate sales reports and analytics. Invalid records can skew metrics and lead to unreliable insights.
- Reduce manual data cleansing – Data validation reduces the need for ongoing and reactive data cleansing to fix issues after the fact.
Overall, proper data validation improves data integrity and quality to help users get the most value from Sales Navigator.
Options for Data Validation in Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator provides a few options for setting up data validation:
Field-Level Validation Rules
You can define field-level validation criteria based on data types, value ranges, formatting, and relationships to other fields. Examples include:
- Requiring a numeric value for a monetary amount
- Setting a date field to be before or after another date field
- Allowing values only from a predefined picklist
- Enforcing specific data formats like phone numbers or email addresses
Field validations apply whenever a record is added or edited in Sales Navigator.
Record Validation Rules
Record rules validate data across multiple fields on a single record. This allows you to set more complex criteria such as:
- If the Country field equals USA, State must be a valid US state code
- If Stage equals Closed Won, Close Date must be populated
Record rules help enforce relationships and dependencies between fields.
Page Layout Validation
Page layout rules validate data entered on a specific page layout. This allows setting specialized rules tailored to a particular page or user profile. For example:
- Requiring certain key fields on an Opportunity page layout
- Making fields mandatory for sales reps but optional for marketing users
Page layout validation provides targeted data validation for different Sales Navigator uses.
How to Set Up Field Validation
Follow these steps to set up field-level data validation in Sales Navigator:
- Navigate to Setup > Object Manager > [Object Name] > Fields & Relationships > [Field Name]
- Scroll down to Field Validation Rules and click New
- Give the rule a name and description
- Select the Rule Type:
- Require a value – Makes the field mandatory
- Ensure unique value – Field must have a unique value
- Compare against another field – Validates against value in another field
- Compare against a value – Validates against a set value you specify
- Validate against a formula – Uses a custom formula to validate
- Validate with a regex pattern – Checks against a provided regular expression
- Complete the additional fields that appear based on the rule type selected
- Click Save
This will enable the field validation rule.
Setting Up Record Validation
To establish record-level data validation in Sales Navigator:
- Go to Setup > Object Manager > [Object Name] > Record Validation Rules and click New
- Give the rule a name and description
- Build the rule criteria by selecting fields to validate against each other
- Select a filter condition (equals, less than, contains, etc.) for the comparison
- Enter any needed values for the rule evaluation
- Choose whether to display the error on save or prevent save until fixed
- Click Save to activate the record rule
Repeat these steps to create additional record validation rules if needed.
Configuring Page Layout Validation
Here is how to set up page layout-specific validation in Sales Navigator:
- Navigate to Setup > Object Manager > [Object Name] > Page Layouts > [Layout Name]
- Open the Field Layout Properties for a field
- Check Required to make the field mandatory on that page layout
- Select any additional validation rules to apply to the field
- Click Save
- Repeat for other fields on the page layout as desired
This will activate field requirements and validations for that particular page layout.
Tips for Effective Data Validation
Some tips to ensure your data validation achieves the intended results:
- Strike a balance – Too many rules make data entry tedious, while too few leave your data vulnerable
- Align with business needs – Base rules on the specific data quality issues you aim to prevent
- Test thoroughly – Validate how the rules work from end user and admin perspectives
- Document rules – Note which validations apply to which fields and objects
- Refine over time – Review data errors and modify rules to continuously improve
- Communicate with users – Explain why rules exist to gain user buy-in
- Leverage automation – Use workflow, triggers, and APIs to augment validation
Taking a thoughtful approach to setting up and managing validation rules will ensure you improve data quality without overburdening users.
Troubleshooting Data Validation Issues
Here are some common challenges that may arise with data validation and how to address them:
Errors Saving Records
If users get errors trying to save records, make sure validation rules aren’t overly restrictive. Widen field criteria and relax rules where possible.
Duplicates Records
Duplicate records being created could indicate rules requiring unique values aren’t set up correctly. Tweak criteria and match fields.
Missing Required Fields
Gaps in required fields on records may mean required rules aren’t propagating properly. Double check page layouts and validation rule criteria.
Slow Performance
Too many complex rules can slow down performance. Try simplifying rules and limiting those that require heavy computation.
Bad Data Visibility
If bad data is still visible in reports, validation may not be retroactively correcting existing records. Do targeted clean-up to fix.
Debugging data validation requires reviewing rules, understanding errors, checking rule coverage, and adjusting criteria until data quality goals are met.
Conclusion
By following the steps outlined here, you can set up robust data validation in Sales Navigator to meet your business needs. Field, record, and page layout rules allow tailored validation to prevent bad data entry and improve data integrity.
Set up rules thoughtfully, test rigorously, and refine continuously to ensure optimal data quality without over-burdening users. Effective validation provides the foundation for clean, accurate data to enable insightful reporting and analytics.