What is Junction Object In Salesforce?

Salesforce, by default, only permits one-to-many and many-to-one relationships by employing a variety of triggers. But what if an organization tries to access information from both the sales and service teams?

They will be able to accomplish this if granted access to the databases of the sales and support teams through many-to-many relationships or master-detail relationships in Salesforce. This can be done using Salesforce's Junction Object. This blog explores in-depth about what is a Junction object in Salesforce with examples.

Junction Object In Salesforce - Table of Contents

• Introduction to Salesforce
• Relationship Types in Salesforce
• What is Junction Object in Salesforce?
• Examples
• Best Practices
• Points
• How To Create a Junction Object in Salesforce?
• How To Query Junction Object in Salesforce?

Introduction to Salesforce

When it comes to successfully managing resources based on customer behavior, Salesforce is a master at keeping an organization's data linked to its marketing and sales campaigns. Understanding how the Salesforce Data Model operates internally requires knowledge of the Salesforce Junction Objects.

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Relationship Types in Salesforce

Relationships in Salesforce indicate the connections between two or more objects. We utilize relationships to establish a connection between two objects in Salesforce if we need to relate them such that their functioning depends on one another. The following object relationships are made possible via the Salesforce Platform:

1. Look-Up Relationship

A one-to-many relationship is a look-up relationship. Because the objects in a look-up relationship are only loosely related, the deletion of one object has no bearing on the continued existence of the other.

2. Master-Detail Relationship

One object serves as the Master object in this kind of relationship, and the other one serves as the Detail object. In other words, this relationship is comparable to that of a parent and child. When a Master Data Object's record is erased, the record linked to the Detailed object is also deleted. The Parent record can manage attributes like the visibility of the Child thanks to the Master-Detail Relationship.

3. Self Relationship

Self Relationship is the simple term for an object forming a bond with itself. A smaller campaign being a part of a larger campaign, for instance, illustrates the self-relationship.

4. Many-to-Many Relationship

Records of certain items may be related to numerous instances of other things in a many-to-many relationship, and vice versa. Since Salesforce by default does not support many-to-many relationships, two Master-Detail Relationships tied to a single object can be used to create a many-to-many relationship. Junction Object is a frequent name for this shared item that joins the two relationships.

5. External Relationship

With Salesforce Connect, a new field type was introduced. Utilize the external relationship field to connect one external item to another. It supports all Look-Up Relationships that use the 18-character Salesforce id for the association.

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What is Junction Object in Salesforce?

You can build Many-to-Many relationships using Junction Objects on the Salesforce platform. The Junction Object is a custom object that enables you to link a custom object with a large number of child records and link each child record to a large number of parent objects. The junction object keeps track of how the two things are connected.

You can take a subset of data from a Junction Object and add data to a Junction Object. However, data upserts are not supported by the Junction Object.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Examples of Junction Object 

Consider a hiring procedure when a position is open and a candidate objects. A typical parent-child relationship will not function because it is necessary for applicants to submit applications for many job openings. To enable several people to apply to several open positions, You require a junction object with a name like "Application."

Additionally, one of the typical Salesforce objects provides an example using Opportunity Products. Use the Opportunity Line Items object, which is a junction object, if you want to link Products to a specific Salesforce Opportunity. You could only ever link one product to one opportunity without the Junction Object, thus it's essential.

 

Best Practices For The Creation of Junction Object in Salesforce

• Primary master refers to the junction object’s first master-detail.
• Secondary master refers to the junction object’s second master-detail.
• Anyone who owns the primary master will also be the owner of the associated child records.
• If anyone deletes the master records, associated child records will also be deleted. 

Points to Remember While Creating a Junction Object in Salesforce

1. First, you need to customize an object to use it as a junction object. The process involved in object customization differs from edition to edition.
2. Also, check whether the related objects exist already.
3. Check for the lists in the master object’s page layouts.
4. The key objective is to improve the performance of the relationships.
5. The process of creating many-to-many relationships is supported only in the following editions: Salesforce Lightning Experience, Salesforce Classic, Contact Manager, Group, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Developed, Performance, and Database.com.

How To Create a Junction Object in Salesforce?

It's easy to design a junction item, and once you've done it once, the idea will come naturally. To simplify matters, I'll use the recruitment procedure mentioned above as an example:

Step #1. First, check to see if the two items you want to join with a junction object are readily available. Job Position and Candidate will be my first two bespoke objects. You can see that these are now disconnected from Salesforce Schema Builder. We require our junction object to guarantee that several candidates can apply for numerous positions.

Step #2. As our junction object, a new custom object must be created as the next stage. We can connect the Job Position objects and Candidate. Thanks to a special object I made called "Job Application."

Step #3. A candidate object and a job position must now be configured as two master-detail relationships in the Job Application object. Create a field on your Job Application object first (as per usual) and then select the proper objects and master-detail relationship field type to achieve this. Returning to the Schema Builder will allow us to verify that our many-to-many junction object is finished.

Step #4. We are now able to allocate many candidates to many employment opportunities thanks to the structure mentioned above. Let's have a look at how Salesforce displays this.

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How To Query Junction Object in Salesforce?

SOQL (Salesforce Object Query Language) query can access the data from the junction object. The following steps show how to do it:

• First, create a new relationship on Document Package.
• Next, change the ‘Type’ to ‘SOQL’.
• Give the relationship an alias. Make sure it is unique and does not fit the naming convention of any already-existing fields or objects in your Salesforce Org.
• Now, paste the query in the ‘SOQL’ box.
• Make sure to append __r at the end for dot-notated fields like the one below in custom objects.

SELECT lookup_(Object in Junction)api_name__r.field FROM
junction_object_api_name WHERE main_object_api_name__r.id = '<<main_object_record_id_tag>>'

Conclusion

The blog described the features and steps for building a Junction Object in Salesforce. If you are a beginner, understanding concepts like these may seem difficult.  So, Sign up now for MindMajix’s Salesforce Certification Training to get more insights into the essential Salesforce topics.

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