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How to Use State and Country Picklists: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1501012
With Salesforce's State & Country/Territory Picklists, you can make your PatronManager sites, like the Public Ticketing Site (PTS) and Donation Forms, easier for your patrons and donors around the world to use. By using State and Country picklists, your donors and ticket buyers can choose their country and then select a relevant state value from a list specific to that country.
As a bonus, these picklists will also help standardize all of the state and country values on your Contact and Account records and clean up your existing data.
In this article:
- We'll take you through setting up this feature
- Take the optional step to make the 2-letter State/Province code available on reports
- Finally, we have some FAQs
Getting State & Country/Territory Picklists set up should take 1-2 hours, depending on how much customization you'd like to do and how much data you have.
Enable State and Country Picklists
First, we'll define the state and country values we wish to use, clean up our existing data, and then enable the feature.
Make sure that you qualify any unqualified Contact records before enabling State and Country picklists!
1.8. Check your Override Properties
If your Override Properties match these, then you're good to go!
- Salesforce Classic Override: No override (use default)
- Lightning Experience Override: Use the Salesforce Classic override
- Mobile Override: Use the Salesforce Classic override
If your Override Properties do not match, then follow the steps in How to Enable the "Display Custom Fields When Creating a New Contact" Feature, then return here.
In this step, we'll give PatronManager access to the picklists and ensure they're available on the Public Ticketing Site, Donation Forms, and Signup Forms once we activate them.
2.5. Scroll down to the "Standard Object Permissions" section and check the "Read" box for "Contacts"
2.15. Scroll down to the "Standard Object Permissions" section and make sure the "Read" box for "Contacts" is checked
3.3. Check that the default values match your preferred address format
In most cases the default values should be fine, but you may wish to double-check, particularly for your home country. For example, the default country name for the US is "United States" - if you prefer the Country value for address in the US to show the country as "USA", scroll down and click "Edit" next to "United States" and make that change.
If you choose to edit the Country value, make sure that the Country/Territory Name is the exact same as the Integration Value.
3.5. Save!
You have the option to hide or deactivate Countries/Territories in the list. Typically we recommend keeping them all active and visible--you never know where you might find patrons, especially if you offer Virtual Events!
If you prefer to hide options from the list, you can uncheck the "Visible" box, but leave them active.
4.4. Wait for the scan to complete
You don't have to wait on the page; as it says on the screen, you'll receive two emails when the scan finishes. Depending on how much data you have in your PatronManager account, this might take a while.
Refreshing or returning to this page later will show you the current scan progress, and when it's finished you'll see the last scan date:
5.1. Open the "Address Data Scan" email and click the link it contains
We're not going to do anything with the "Address Customization Scan - Success" email at this time, but there's an FAQ about it at the end of this article. You can ignore it for now!
5.2. Select the Country/Territory Values that you'd like to change and what to change them to, then click "Save to Changelist"
This tells Salesforce to change the selected Country/Territory Values to the new, standardized Country value that you selected.
So, for example, here we selected "UNITED STATES," "US," and "USA" to map these values to "United States."
Then, we would select the next set of country options to map. Continue country by country until you've cleared out all of your existing country values in the top section.
Be careful while creating your Country mappings! If you map any values incorrectly, this can lead to bad data in your system that may be difficult to fix later.
After clicking "Save to Changelist," the values you selected will appear in the Changelist section.
5.4. Select the State Values you'd like to change and what you'd like to change them to, then click "Save to Changelist"
This time, this step tells Salesforce to change the selected State Values to the new, standardized State value from the picklist.
So, for example, here we selected "NEW YORK," NY," "NY," and "NY" to map these values to "New York."
Then, we would select the next set of state options to map, like "CA" and "CALIFORNIA" to "California." Continue state by state until you've cleared out all of your existing state values in the top section.
Be careful while creating your State mappings! If you map any values incorrectly, this can lead to bad data in your system that may be difficult to fix later.
After clicking "Save to Changelist," the values you selected will appear in the Changelist section.
5.6. Review your changes, then select one of the options
Triple-check your mappings! Incorrect mappings can corrupt your existing address data.
- If you find that you need to change some of the mappings you created in the Changelists, click "Previous" to go back and adjust them
- If you're done with this step, but not ready to turn this on, click "Finish"
- If you're done and ready to enable State and Country/Territory Picklists, click "Finish and Enable Picklists"
Have you qualified all of your unqualified Contacts? If you're not sure or if you got some new ones since the last time you checked, go qualify those first!
6.1. If you previously clicked "Finish," then you'll need to click "Enable Picklists for Address Fields"
If you clicked "Finish and Enable Picklists" then you can skip this step.
6.2. Wait for deployment to complete
Depending on how much data you have in your PatronManager account, this might take a while.
Optional: Make the two-letter State/Province code available for reports
By default, when you enable State and Country/Territory Picklists, the Mailing State/Province field will be the full name of the state/province, rather than a shortened version.
If you'd like to be able to pull the two-letter codes into your reports to create mailing lists, we recommend building a simple formula field on your Accounts and Contacts and pulling the two-letter codes into this new field to add to your reports.
5. Name your field, then click "Next"
- Field Label: Mailing State/Province (2-letter)
- Field Name: This will auto-fill
- Auto add to custom report type: Checked
- Formula Return Type: Text
- Click "Next"
6. Create your field, then click "Next"
- Formula Editor:
TEXT(MailingStateCode)
- Description: 2-letter State/Province
- Help Text: A 2-character version of the State or Province.
- Blank Field Handling: Treat blank fields as blanks
- Click "Next"
8. Decide whether you'd like this field to appear on your Contact records
If you want to see this 2-letter code on your Contact pages, select all Page Layouts except for TBQ Contact, then click "Save."
If you don't want to see this 2-letter code on your Contact pages and only have it available for reports, deselect all Page Layouts, then click "Save."
13. Name your field, then click "Next"
-
Field Label: Billing State/Province (2-letter) or Shipping State/Province (2-letter)
- This will depend on whether you use the Billing Address or Shipping Address fields in your system. In this example, we'll use the Billing Address field.
- Field Name: Leave blank; this will auto-fill
- Auto add to custom report type: Checked
- Formula Return Type: Text
- Click "Next"
14. Create your field, then click "Next"
-
Formula Editor:
TEXT(BillingStateCode)
orTEXT(ShippingStateCode)
- This will depend on whether you chose to use the Billing Address or Shipping Address field in step 13. In this example, we're using the Billing Address field.
- Description: 2-letter State/Province
- Help Text: A 2-character version of the State or Province.
- Blank Field Handling: Treat blank fields as blanks
- Click "Next"
16. Decide whether you'd like this field to appear on your Account records
If you want to see this 2-letter code on your Account pages, select all Page Layouts except for TBQ Account, then click "Save."
If you don't want to see this 2-letter code on your Contact pages and only have it available for reports, deselect all Page Layouts, then click "Save."
Now, when you create a report for mailings from your Contacts or Accounts, you'll be able to add your new fields in!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
If your Donation Form or Signup Form doesn't have the Country field on it, the form will display the State picklist based on the Default Country/Territory that you define.
If you'd like donors or signups to be able to select their country, which we recommend, you will need to include the Country field on your forms.
If a User or patron selects a Country that doesn't have any states or provinces, like Andorra or Monaco, the State field will be grayed out and they will be able to continue without selecting a State.
If you don't have your new two-letter State/Province fields available to add to one of your reports, you'll need to modify the Report Type in Setup and add your new fields to the layout.
We have instructions on how to add custom fields to Report Types for you!
This is one of the emails you receive when you scan your existing data while enabling State and Country Picklists.
As part of creating these new State and Country picklist fields, Salesforce provides a scan that shows all the places your system currently references the original State and Country fields. These legacy text fields will update to match the values in your new picklist fields over time. That means it's fine to keep using these text fields in List Views, informational reports, and email lists.
If there are existing reports that you use to generate mailing lists, though, you should update those to use the new picklist fields, along with your custom State Code field. This Salesforce.com Address Customization Scan - Success email can help you find these reports!
Use the scan results to find those mailing list reports
When you click the link in the email, it will bring you to a Document record in your PatronManager account. If you then click "View File," the file itself will open in another tab.
Scroll down until you see the Report section, which shows you the reports using the legacy text fields:
Keep in mind that you won't need to update all the reports it shows - only the ones that you use to create mailing lists.
As a bonus, this document even has links to help you get to the reports that need updates faster!
There are other elements of PatronManager and Salesforce that reference these legacy fields, but don't worry, PatronManager also knows about the new picklist fields and will handle the new values accordingly.
You can update your settings after enabling State and Country/Territory picklists if you want to change the default country or rename, activate, or deactivate state values.
To avoid Confirmation Exceptions, if you change any Country/Territory Names, make sure to also update the Integration Value! The Country/Territory Name and Integration Value must match exactly.
If you do make any changes to your State and Country picklist settings, you'll also need to click the Refresh button to Refresh Cached Settings in your PatronTicket Settings tab.
If you receive Confirmation Exceptions after changing a Country name, you may see an error message like this:
If you see this error message, then it means that the Country/Territory Name and Integration Value do not match for one of your countries.
To fix this, you'll need to go to Setup and adjust the Integration Value for your countries to match the Country/Territory Name exactly by following steps 3.1 to 3.3 here.