Why

[JodieM]

Why Indicators?

I look at many orgs doing health checks or taking on new clients. The first thing I need to know is "what is this record here for". So many Nonprofits just hoard data for no reason, and have thousands of contacts with no email, no phone, no donation history, not on any email lists. I want them to see that at a glance as soon as they look at the record. Another Nonprofit client has the opposite where people didn't know who was talking to who as they have so many disparate departments, so I created department indicators so they can see which department "owns" this record. For another client I have it on their Contracts as they have so many Contracts and variables that make up a Contract, so I have 3 sets of indicators that tell them at a glance about the type, status, and optional extras in this Contract.

• I want to have any way that a user can see at a glance the complexities of the record in a simple and clear way.
• I want users to be able to see on a list view or a report, indicators that compare one record against another easily (a good example is progress bar formula fields)
• I want the indicators to be consistent with Salesforce colours and not scream and shout at you - you can use Toasts and Alerts to do that instead (and users STILL don't read them)
• I want the indicators to be easy to set up and reusable
• I don't want to have to go outside of the org get the data to show (eg Da Button Factory or Shields or Google Charts APIs are great options but they may be slow and prone to break since they go outside the org to build the images).