Comments on: Using Hierarchy Custom Settings in Salesforce.com

By: boB

boB — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:41:31 +0000

It’s really frustrating that you can’t use LIST in a validation or formula. We have a custom setting where we store some key ID’s (key users, profiles, record types, etc) that we access all the time for compares, but can’t use them in validations or formulas because it needs to be Hierarchy. And I can’t think of a simple way to implement the Hierarchy for MULTIPLE IDs without creating fields for each ID desired.

By: Sid M

Sid M — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:17:02 +0000

I don’t believe you can actually. If you try and perform any DML operations on Custom Setting sObjects you get the following exception:

System.LimitException: DML currently not allowed

By: Jeff Douglas

Jeff Douglas — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:44:30 +0000

It’s essentially a custom object so you can use the same DML constructs.

By: Philbo

Philbo — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:54:31 +0000

Well and good for ACCESSING custom settings via Apex. How about UPDATING custom settings via Apex (equiv. to DML)? Too much to ask?

By: Tom F

Tom F — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:17:52 +0000

I’m having real trouble with Hierarchical custom settings. I’m using one in custom formula fields. When viewed by and admin or someone with “view all data” ticked they work fine. For the standard users they just get #Error!. It’s definitely the custom setting bit that fails, as replacing it with a string means the formula field works fine. Anyone have any ideas how to debug or fix this?

By: Rich Unger

Rich Unger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:38:33 +0000

Yeah, that limitation is due to the way we do caching. The ability to give you ListCS.getInstance(name) without charging your governor limits for a query comes at the cost of the name fitting into a cache key.

By: Jeff Douglas

Jeff Douglas — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:53:24 +0000

Thanks for the great comment Jason!!

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:35:30 +0000

Nice article. One thing that threw me for a loop with Custom Settings is that the Name for a custom setting can only be 38 characters.

Even if you have no settings with a name greater than 38 but try to dynamicaly access a setting with a name that is greater than 38 (URL encoded) you will get a nasty error.

Just a little tip to get in mind, http://community.salesforce.com/sforce/board/message?board.id=apex&message.id=25521&query.id=448039#M25521.

By: Wes

Wes — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:54:15 +0000

Nice work Mr. D. When I first heard about custom settings I jumped around jollily for hours on end.. then when I tried to implement them I found the help scarce and confusing. Ctrl+D for this one.