Picklist value considerations

Adding New Picklist Values

Blue Canvas allows you to deploy new picklist values to a target Salesforce organization. This is useful for scenarios where new options need to be introduced in a picklist, such as expanding customer options or introducing additional statuses.

New picklist values in the source environment will be added to the target environment during deployment.

Activating or Deactivating Existing Picklist Values

You can also use Blue Canvas to activate or deactivate picklist values that already exist in the target environment. This feature is beneficial when you need to temporarily or permanently hide certain options from users.

Blue Canvas will match the activation status of picklist values in the source environment and apply this status to the target environment. If a picklist value is deactivated in the source, it will be deactivated in the target, and vice versa for activation.

Deactivating a picklist value does not remove it from historical data.

Deleting Picklist Values

In Blue Canvas, deleting a picklist value from the source environment will not fully remove it from the target environment. This is due to restrictions in the Salesforce API's. Instead, it will be deactivated in the target environment, effectively hiding it from active selection.

When you delete a picklist value in the source, it will be deactivated rather than fully deleted in the target environment.

This behavior is due to Salesforce limitations, which do not allow complete deletion of picklist values in a target org via metadata API. Any data referencing the deactivated value in the target environment will remain intact. Be aware of potential issues with legacy data and reporting if the deactivated value was heavily used. You may need to log into the target org to trigger a deletion in order to change the values of historic data.