Making a Field Required in Salesforce: Complete Guide

Making a Field Required in Salesforce: Complete Guide

In Salesforce, ensuring data integrity is crucial. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by making certain fields required, so that users must provide a value before saving a record. Salesforce provides multiple mechanisms to enforce field requirement, ranging from declarative options (point-and-click) to programmatic approaches (Apex and validation rules).

This guide explores all the ways you can make a field required, including their use cases, advantages, and limitations.

        1. Mark Field as Required at the Field Level

The simplest way to make a field required is by configuring it at the field definition.

Steps:

1. Go to Setup → Object Manager → [Object] → Fields & Relationships.
2. Click on the field you want to make required.
3. Check the box “Required”.
4. Save the changes.

✅ Advantages:

• Easy and declarative.
• Works across all record creation interfaces (standard page layout, API inserts).

⚠ Limitations:

• Cannot make a field conditionally required (e.g., only required if another field has a certain value).
• Overrides layout-level requirement checks.
  2. Mark Field as Required on Page Layout

You can make a field required only on a specific page layout.

Steps:

1. Go to Setup → Object Manager → [Object] → Page Layouts.
2. Select a page layout to edit.
3. Click on the field, select Properties, and check “Required”.
4. Save the layout.

✅ Advantages:

• Flexible: different layouts can have different required fields.
• Useful when you want to make a field required only for certain user profiles or processes.

⚠ Limitations:

• Works only in UI (Lightning or Classic). API or Apex inserts can bypass this.
• Conditional requirements need additional validation rules.
  3. Use Validation Rules

Validation rules allow you to enforce complex conditions for required fields.

Example:

Suppose you want the Secondary_Email__c field to be required only if Has_Secondary_Email__c is checked:

 

AND( Has_Secondary_Email__c = TRUE, ISBLANK(Secondary_Email__c) )

• If the formula evaluates to TRUE, Salesforce prevents the record from saving and displays an error message.

✅ Advantages:

• Conditional requirement enforcement.
• Works both in UI and API.
• Provides custom error messages to guide users.

⚠ Limitations:

• Formula must be carefully written to avoid false positives.
• Cannot pre-populate default values automatically (you can combine with flows or triggers for that).
  4. Use Apex Triggers

Apex triggers give you full control over when and how a field should be required.

Example Trigger:

trigger ContactTrigger on Contact (before insert, before update) {
for (Contact c : Trigger.new) {
if (c.Has_Secondary_Email__c && String.isBlank(c.Secondary_Email__c)) {
c.addError(‘Secondary Email is required if Has Secondary Email is checked.’);
}
}
}

✅ Advantages:

• Can enforce requirement on any complex business logic, including cross-object conditions.
• Works for bulk operations.

⚠ Limitations:

• Requires Apex coding skills.
• Maintenance can be harder than declarative solutions.
• Overuse can impact performance if not bulkified.
  5. Use Flow or Process Builder

Salesforce Flows (Screen Flows and Record-Triggered Flows) allow you to enforce requirements dynamically.

Steps:

1. Go to Setup → Flows.
2. Create a Screen Flow or Record-Triggered Flow.
3. Add a Decision element to check if the field is blank.
4. If blank, either:
   • Display an error message on the screen, or
   • Prevent record creation/update (Record-Triggered Flow with Fault path).

✅ Advantages:

• Declarative solution with conditional logic.
• Can handle both UI and automation scenarios.

⚠ Limitations:

• Requires users to interact with flow screens for UI enforcement.
• API updates may bypass unless record-triggered flows are used.
  6. Required Fields in Managed Packages or Managed Fields

If using managed packages, some fields might already be required by the package.

• You cannot uncheck “Required” for managed package fields.
• This ensures that business logic in the package is not broken.
  7. Combination Approaches

In real-world Salesforce orgs, it’s common to combine multiple approaches:

• Field-level required for fields that are always mandatory.
• Page layout required for UI-specific mandatory fields.
• Validation rules or flows for conditional requirements.
• Triggers for complex multi-object validation or integration scenarios.

Best Practices

1. Prefer declarative options first (field-level or page layout required).
2. Use validation rules for conditional requirements — they are easy to maintain and user-friendly.
3. Use Apex triggers only when declarative options are insufficient.
4. Document all required fields to avoid confusion for admins and developers.
5. Always test both UI and API to ensure required logic is enforced consistently.

Summary Table

Method	Declarative	Conditional	API-safe	Pros	Cons
Field-level Required	✅	❌	✅	Simple, global	Cannot be conditional
Page Layout Required	✅	❌	❌	Flexible per layout	Bypassed by API
Validation Rule	✅	✅	✅	Custom conditions	Needs formula knowledge
Apex Trigger	❌	✅	✅	Full control	Requires coding, maintainability
Flow / Process Builder	✅	✅	✅ (if record-triggered)	Declarative, conditional	Complexity can increase

Conclusion

Making a field required is a fundamental way to ensure data quality in Salesforce. The choice of method depends on:

• Whether the requirement is always mandatory or conditional
• Whether the enforcement should happen in UI, API, or automation
• Complexity of business logic and maintainability