Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
I’ve been adding more validation rules lately to keep our data clean, but I’ve also started getting feedback… and not all of it’s friendly.
Turns out, even a good rule can feel bad if it’s confusing or overly strict. So I’ve been tweaking my approach:
Write clear error messages that tell the user what to fix
Avoid blocking users unless it’s absolutely necessary
Use ISCHANGED() to stop users from accidentally triggering the rule when they didn’t even touch that field
One small change I made was updating a rule from:
AND(
ISBLANK(Phone),
ISPICKVAL(Status, "Contacted")
)
To:
AND(
ISCHANGED(Status),
ISPICKVAL(Status, "Contacted"),
ISBLANK(Phone)
)
Now it only fires if they change the status to "Contacted" and forget the phone. Cleaner, smarter, and fewer angry messages in Slack.
