Define Required, Updatable, and Hidden Properties for Fields

Use Application Composer to define a field as Required, Updatable, or Hidden at the layout level. Setting these user interface (UI) field properties helps reduce the number of layouts.

You can also use expressions (rules) to mark a field conditionally required, conditionally updatable, or conditionally hidden. Fields without conditional hide and show capabilities may result in a large number of layouts. You can change the field properties for individual layouts or perform a mass update of the field properties across multiple layouts.

The advanced UI property changes that you make to the fields are only applicable at the layout level and not at the model level. Also, if there are already field-level security settings in place, then you won't be able to change those settings using the advanced UI properties.

Note: You can't define or edit the advanced UI properties of action links, aggregate fields, and grouping fields. For formula fields and join fields, you can only set the hidden property. For check boxes, you can only set the updatable and hidden properties.

The following scenarios explain the different UI properties you can define for a field:

• Required: For example, when a contact is created for a field sales representative, a phone number or an email is required. However, if the contact is created by a web service or imported from an external system, such enforcement may or may not be in place. You can't make the Email field a required field at the model layer, but you can choose to enforce it in the layout by setting the Required property.

  See "Set the Required Field Property" for an example on how to define the Required property.

• Updatable: For example, you can make certain fields read-only for partner users by having separate layouts for partner and internal users, with the Updatable property defined differently for each layout.

  Note: If a field already has an EL expression defined for it, then the Updatable property is disabled at the layout level and you can't change it. For example, due to data security constraints, all fields on the Edit Account > Profile subtab and Edit Contact > Summary subtab already have EL expressions defined. This means that you can't set the Updatable property for any standard or custom field on those subtabs.Also, a field can't have an expression at the layout level in the following cases:

  See "Set the Updatable Field Property" for an example on how to define the Updatable property.

• Hidden: For example, consider a field named Shipping Method with values: Air, Land, and Sea. When the Shipping Method field is set to Land, a Land Transportation field appears with values: Train or Truck. The Land Transportation field doesn't appear if the Shipping Method field isn't set to Land. You can add the fields to all layouts and make the Land Transportation field conditionally hidden or shown using the Hidden property. This way you can avoid creating multiple layouts.

  See "Set the Hidden Field Property" for an example on how to define the Hidden property.