Author: Dilsha Khan
Introducing State and Country/Territory Picklists:
State and country/territory picklists let users select states, countries, and territories from predefined, standardized lists, instead of entering state and country/territory data into text fields. State and country/territory picklists offer faster and easier data entry. They help to ensure cleaner data that can be harnessed for other uses—in reports and dashboards, for example. They protect data integrity by preventing typos, alternate spellings, and junk data—even in records updated through the API.
State and country/territory picklists are available in the shipping, billing, mailing, and “other” address fields in the account, campaign members, contact, contract, lead, order, person accounts, quotes, and service contracts standard objects. The picklists are also available for managing users and companies in Setup. To use the picklists, first, choose the country or territory, and then choose from the options that automatically populate the state or province picklist.
You can use the state and country/territory picklists in most places where state and country/territory fields are available in Salesforce, including:
State and country/territory picklists can also be searched and supported in Translation Workbench. The picklists are available in all editions except Database.com.
Steps to enable State and Country picklist:
- Click Setup –> Data –> State and Country Picklists, then select State and Country Picklists.
- Configure state and country/territory picklists: This step is strongly recommended because it gives you the opportunity to customize state and country values.
- Scan your organization: Scan your organization for state and country/territory data, as well as for references to state and country/territory fields in reports, list views, validation rules, and other customization.
- Convert your data: Map existing state and country/territory data in your records to standardized picklist values. You’ll map country/territory values first, and then state values. The conversion process lets you map the various values in your org to standard picklist values. For example, you might want to map U.S., USA, and United States to the US.
- Turn on state and country/territory picklists: Enable state and country/territory picklists for your organization when you finish converting your data. If you don’t have any data, enable the picklists now.
- Rescan and fix customizations: Scan your organization again to identify and fix customization that might have broken when you enabled state and country/territory picklists.
- To turn off state and country picklists, click Disable on the State and Country Picklists setup page.