Why You Should Avoid Hard Coding and Three Alternative Solutions

As you build solutions, you often need to reference a component or text, whether it be a record type, permission set, queue, or user. What do you do? The quickest way is to reference the Salesforce ID. One and done. But is it the best way?

A best practice in technology is to not reference IDs or text directly, or “hard code” them. That same best practice applies to the declarative side as well. You should not hard code IDs or text in your formulas, validation rules, processes, flows, and so on.

What’s so bad about hard coding?

But why is it such a bad thing to do? It gets the job done. Here are three reasons why you shouldn’t hard code.

First, the component you need to reference does not exist in Production — you just created it for the solution you’re building. That component will have a new