US Patent No. 11010143 - Prepared by Attorney David Tran for Salesforce and filed by Dergosits & Noah LLP
Brief description: A formula language may include a set of functions such as, for example, date and time functions, logical functions and math functions. Following is a list of some example date and time functions available with Salesforce formula language: Date, Day, Hour, Year, Today, and Month. Following is a list of some example logical functions available with Salesforce formula language: And, If, Not, and Or. Following is a list of some example math functions available with Salesforce formula language: ABS, Min, Max, SQRT, and ROUND. The formula language may also include text functions and other functions. Using the operators, the functions and the operators, an administrator may generate formulas using the field names as operands. FIG. 3 shows an example diagram of a formula interface, in accordance with some embodiments. Formula interface 330 may include multiple display areas configured to display information concurrently such that the multiple display areas may be visible to a user (e.g., an administrator) at the same time. The formula interface 330 may be displayed in a browser associated with a computing system such as the computing system 291 shown in FIG. 2A. The formula interface 330 may be configured to define a new field that is associated with a formula or to modify an existing field that is associated with a formula. The formula interface 330 may also be configured to retrieve records from a database via an application programming interface (API). The records may include fields having data used in the formula. The retrieved record may include data that is in production; however, the formula interface 330 may enable the data to be edited without the edited data being actually committed to the database. The formula interface 330 may be configured to include object area 335 and record area 365. The object area 335 may be configured to display an object name 336 of a selected object (e.g., accounts, contacts). The record area 365 may be configured to display a record ID 366 of a selected record. For some embodiments, the record area 365 may include an option to enable displaying multiple records in an object for selection. For example, there may be a record scrolling option 367 to scroll up or down to view other records relative to a position of a currently selected record. For some embodiments, a search option 368 may be available to enable searching for a record using a particular keyword. For example, a contact name such as “Marc Benioff” may be used as a keyword to search for records having such contact.