Salesforce: Mass Upload Products

Almost two years ago, we wrote a blog related to Product in Salesforce, continue with another blog to assign Product to Price Book, and on adding Product to Opportunity.

In this blog, we will share about step by step to add Product to existing Price Book.

1. Add New Product 
From Lightning, select Products tab. If you do not see Product tab, use following URL and parameters: one/one.app?source=aloha#/sObject/Product2/list?filterName=Recent
Enter all information for product and make sure Active is ticked.

2. Add Product to Standard Price Book

• Open the product created. 
• Click Related tab.
• Looks for Price Book, then click "Add Standard Price" button. By default, Standard Price Book is selected. In many cases, we do not use Standard Price Book, so you may just select other price books at this window, but you will get error message No standard price defined for this product, this is because we need to have the standard price for the product, even we do not use it.
• Select Standard Price Book, if you have multi-currency enabled, make sure to select correct Currency, also make sure Active is ticked.
• Click Save button.

3. Add Product to real Price Book

• From the screenshot in step 2, once Standard Price Book is added, you will see 'Add to Price Book' button. 
• Select the Price Book and Currency.
• If you need to add into multiple currencies, you need to repeat step 2 above multiple times.
• Enter the List Price of the Product for that Price Book.
• Click Save button.

Mass Upload Products

If you need to load many products, manual steps as above are not efficient. The solution is the use Data Loader to mass load the products and assigned to the relevant price book. 

The step using Data Loader are similars with manual steps as above:

1. Load products to Product2 object.

2. Assign product to Standard Price Book, get Standard PriceBookId for PricebookEntry object.

3. Assign product to real Price Book, get the real PriceBookId for PricebookEntry object.

Reference:

• IdeaExchange: Make Products/Pricebooks Easier to Load!
• Insert and upload new Products, Price Books & Opportunity Line Item via Data Loader

Salesforce: Assigning Price Book

As in our previous blog Getting Started with Objects related to Salesforce Product, we mentioned that each Opportunity or Quote only link to one Price Book, but can we have configure that not all users able to use all active Price Book?

Yes, we can configure a Price Book to be available by Users, Groups, Roles, Roles and Subordinates, but we not by Profiles.

Here we go:
1. Configure Price Book sharing to "No Access"
Navigate to Setup | Security Controls | Sharing Settings, click Edit button, look for Price Book and change to No Access. By default, Price Book access is "Use".

2. Share the Price Book
Once Price Book sharing setting set to No Access, open the price book and you should see Sharing button in the Price Book page. Click Sharing button, it will show existing User and Group Sharing (if any). Click Add button  to share the price book, and make sure Price Book Access set to Use.

Reference:

• Can I set a default price book for a user / group of users?

Salesforce: Getting Started with Objects related to Salesforce Product

Product is not new features in Salesforce, it has been there for long time and widely used. I see many companies using Sales Cloud, but not use Product. In this blog, I would like to introduce how Product work in Salesforce, from the basic.

1. You can rename it
Some company do not like it called as Product, because not suit to the business terms for the company. As admin or consultant, you can rename it as Service, or Opportunity Line.

• Go to Setup - Customize - Tab Names and Labels - Rename Tabs and Labels
• Looks for Products and click Edit link prior to it.
• You need to enter Singular and Plural name, in this blog, I'll use Opportunity Line

• Click Save to finish, or Next if you would like to change field label related to Product, by default all "Product" field labels has been rename to "Opportunity Line" for Standard and Other field related to Product.

This will change all label in Salesforce user interface from Product to Opportunity Line, from: Related List name, Tab name, Report Type name, Field name in report, and etc, except the one related with API name and not visible by end user directly, such as: Workflow, Validation Rule, and so on.

Sample of the change happened in related list in Opportunity page layout.

Before:

After:

2. Product is a special object

• It is not the same with other standard object or custom object, Product is linked to Opportunity and Quote through Price Book.
• Each Product added into Opportunity in an object called Opportunity Product, so this object would be a junction object. For Product added into Quote called Quote Line Items.
• You can create roll-up summary field from Opportunity Product to Opportunity, and from Quote Line Items to Quote.

3. Product Object

• The API name is called as Product2, with object prefix 01t, 
• To directly access Products tab from Salesforce user interface, go to https://na3.salesforce.com/01t ; change na3 to your Salesforce instance. 

4. Price Book Object

• You can have multiple price books in Salesforce, each price book may contain different Product and can have different List Price.

Example: a product available in EMEA price book may not available in APAC price book, but available in AMER price book. However, the List Price for AMER price book can be different with EMEA price book.

• The API name is Pricebook2, with object prefix 01s
• User with read access to Product and Price Book, user can access Price Book from Price Books tab or directly go to https://na3.salesforce.com/01s ; change na3 to your Salesforce instance. 
• Each Opportunity or Quote only link to single Price Book. 
• If there is only a single price book is active, or the user only has Use permission to a one price book, then that price book is automatically selected when user adding products to Quote or Opportunity.
• If user has Use access to more than one active price book, user must manually select a Price Book prior to adding products to Opportunity or Quote.
• If user has Use access to more than one active price book, user able to change selected Price Book for the Opportunity or Quote, but all Products added will be removed.

Reference:

• Product2
• Pricebook2
• Product and Schedule Objects