The Pattern Anti-Pattern Master List

Super short email!

I stumbled across an excellent resource this week and wanted to get it on your radar.

Salesforce Architects Patterns & Anti-Pattern Explorer

Salesforce has created a list of recommended design patterns (things to do) and anti-patterns (things to avoid) while building on the platform.

If you've worked in the ecosystem a while, you likely have your own "rules of thumb" for approaching certain problems.

That list just got longer!

The Pattern Explorer above has 474 patterns and 448 anti-patterns for a total of 922 recommendations!

Now there's no need to memorize this whole list or anything like that.

Simple browsing through the list once and while to see how you can apply some of the recommendations is more than sufficient.

And I've already made some surprising finds.

For example, this resource explicity recommends against heavy use of profiles.

Instead it suggests using permission sets as the primary way to provide access to key business functionality, with profiles only providing a minor role.

There's a ton of other goodies in here for those curious enough to check it out.

• Screen flows consistently use fault connectors to show errors to users
•  A unique API only integration user is configured for every integration
• Code wraps all DML, SOQL, callouts, and other critical process steps in `try-catch` blocks
• Apps have fewer than 10 tabs in the admin-provided default configuration

I wouldn't go so far as to suggest reading the pattern / anti-pattern list is fun...

But it will definitely be worth your time the next time you want to make a strong case for building things in Salesforce "the right way" and are getting pushback from stakeholders.

At any rate, I hope it helps!

Best,

Nick