Salesforce: Shortcut create Task

Instead of starting with a blank task record when creating a task, we can prepopulate some fields when creating a specific task, and we can create multiple specific tasks.

As shown in the above screenshot, if clicking the New Task green icon opens a new form with blank fields, of course, if the button is in Account, the Related To will be auto-populated with the Account Name.

If we have a specific task where additional fields, such as Type, Subject, etc., should be the same, we can create a Custom Action for the Task. We can even hide the fields from the layout so that users cannot change the pre-populated fields manually when creating a task. The specific tasks will appear under the arrow next to the New Task button in a record page, such as Important-1 and Important-2 in the above screenshot.

Here are the steps to create the task and add it to page layout:

1. Create New Action under Global Actions

Open the action created to set predefined field values, and click Edit Layout to add/remove only relevant fields.

2. Add the action to the object page layout, such as for the Account Page layout

In this sample, I add both Important-1 and Important-2 to the Account Layout (under Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions), while only adding Important-2 to the Account (Sales) Layout. 

In other scenarios, if you need the action to be always visible in Salesforce, you can add it to Publisher Layout (under Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions), you can create multiple Publisher Layouts, and assign them by profile.

The same approach can be applied to the New Event as well.