Enhance the Salesforce ‘Active Icon’​

The Problem:

As we all know, Salesforce currently offers an ‘Active Icon’ with only two values “Active” and “In-Active” in the user view, as you see here in the example:

There are two reasons, why I recommend enhancing the Salesforce ‘Active Icon’:

1. On a long list of usernames, it’s maybe harder to mark if a user is active. With colored icons it will be much easier to indicate the status of a user.
2. As you might know or realized by yourself, that all email addresses from active users will be modified with a “.invalid” prefix, when you create, refresh, or clone a sandbox, to avoid any E-mails by accident. (see further details on Salesforce Knowledge Article 000333417). Therefor it would be helpful to also indicate invalid email addresses, with this icon, even if the user is presumptive active, but a reset of a password would not work, because of the invalid E-mail address.

So my custom formula field would indicate the following 3 status values of an user:

since I can’t embed the icons + a text here, I will show you this as an image

Which would look like this, build into a Salesforce Org:

Does this not look much better?

The Solution

If you would also like to enhance your Salesforce ‘Active Icon’, just follow this:

Step 1 — the Custom Formula Field

Create a new custom field, with the following details:

Data Type: Formula

Field Label: Active Icon — name it whatever you like, except “Active” since this would cause confusion with the existing standard field.

Formula Return Type: Text

Formula (Text) — please copy and paste it into your custom field:

IF(NOT(IsActive),

IMAGE("/img/func_icons/remove12_on.gif", "red",16,16),

IF(CONTAINS(Email, "invalid"),

IMAGE("/img/func_icons/util/alert16.gif", "warning",16,16),

IMAGE("/img/func_icons/util/checkmark16.gif", "green",16,16)))

Which would like this in Salesforce:

Just assign the read-permissions to the System Administrator to this custom field, since this will only be visible in the Setup, no other Profile would need access.

In the last step of creating the custom field, remove all page layouts, since we do not need the new field on any page layouts, just on the user list views.

Click save on the last step, to complete the setup of the new custom Salesforce ‘Active Icon’ Field.

Step 2 — adjusting the List View

To use the new ‘Active Icon’ Field in the user view, enter “Users” in the Setup Quick Find box, then select “Users”.

Select the view you would like to add your new icon and click on “Edit” for existing views, or “Create New View”

Search for the new field depending on your Naming (or Label) and click “Add” to move it to the Selected Fields and click up or down, to place it to your preferred position.

Click save to close the screen and enjoy your enhanced ‘Active Icon’

Please feel free to modify the formula with your preferred Salesforce standard icons*, some alternatives are listed here:

*Of course you can place any web image, just be aware to use the absolute web URL to the image, I just prefer the sweetness of the small formula by using the Salesforce standard icons.

/img/samples/flag_green.gif
/img/msg_icons/confirm16.png
/img/func_icons/util/checkmark16.gif
/img/permissions_confirm16.gif

/img/samples/flag_red.gif
/img/msg_icons/error16.png
/img/func_icons/remove12_on.gif
/img/permissions_deny16.gif

/img/msg_icons/warning16.png
/img/func_icons/util/alert16.gif
/img/icon/unresolved16.png

A full list of all standard Salesforce icons, can be found here: https://www.vermanshul.com/2017/10/quick-tips-salesforce-default-images.html

Please commend your thought to the boring Salesforce Active Icon. — Or do you already have a better alternative?

PS: As I had a nice chat with Johann Furmann about small gadgets, which help Salesforce Admins and Users, I told him about my ‘Active Icon’. He then had the idea to “pimp” it with the activity status, depending on the last login date. That would have been groovy, but since this is not possible, I kindly ask you to upvote this 13-year-old Salesforce Idea — Allow formula field to use User Last Login Date