Creating a URL that allows for direct editing of a Salesforce record in Soapbox

If you wish to allow a visitor to edit a record in Salesforce, the standard process is to:

1. Create a Directories page to display the record(s) to the visitor
2. Create a menu item for the Directories page
3. Create a Forms page that will define the edit view of the record
4. Define both who has editing rights and which Forms page should be used within in the Directories page
5. The visitor navigates to the Directories page you created and clicks Edit on either the List Display or Record Display view, depending on which you have enabled the Edit button
6. The visitor is shown the Forms page with the current values of the Salesforce record
7. The visitor edits, as they wish, and clicks Save
8. The visitor is returned to the view you have defined in the Forms page

If, however, you wish to send the visitor immediately to an edit view so they do not need to navigate to the Directories page first, you can use a little elbow grease to create the following URL structure to skip Step 5 and go directly to Step 6.

http://www.someorg.org/index.php?option=com_jsfsubmit&form_ID=[Id of Forms page created in Step 3]&referer=[Menu ItemId of Directories page created in Step 2]&id=[SFDC record ID to be edited]

In addition, as with any other Forms page, you can pre-populate fields in the form by including values in the URL. This can be done in concert with the example above as follows:

http://www.someorg.org/index.php?option=com_jsfsubmit&form_ID=[Id of Forms page created in Step 3]&referer=[Menu ItemId of Directories page created in Step 2]&id=[SFDC record ID to be edited]&Contact_Title=Executive Director

 For more on passing values through a URL, see Pre-populating Form field values through a URL.

Enforcing editing access rights set in the Directories page

While the direct link to the edit view skips the Directories page where the access rights for editing a given record are defined, those rights are still enforced. As an example, if the Directories page restricts the editing of a record only to logged in users with a Contact Id matching a field on the Salesforce record, these conditions must still be true of the visitor or they will not be able to view or submit the edit form.

For more on editing rights, see Allowing editing of a record displayed in Directories.