Salesforce Admin’s Guide to Dynamic Related Lists

A new feature given to administrators in the Summer ‘22 release is Dynamic Related Lists. Becoming a part of the growing ‘dynamic’ trend of tools released by Salesforce in the past few years, Dynamic Related Lists (DRLs) display a filtered look of a list of records associated

with an object. This article looks at what DRLs are, how to use them, use cases, and some things to note before implementing them.

What are Dynamic Related Lists?

DRLs are a new functionality in Salesforce that allows you to filter related lists on a record page. By adding DRLs to lightning pages or upgrading your current Related List - Singles on a lightning page, administrators can add, remove, reorder, and sort columns. Additionally, the most powerful functionality of this new feature, is you are now able to filter these lists.

To implement this new feature in new and preexisting orgs, navigate to the Lightning App Builder in Setup and select the page you would like to add it to. Under the components column, find “Dynamic Related List - Single” and drag the component onto the desired area of the page. If you are looking to upgrade Related Lists, find said list on the page, and on the right-hand side, after selecting the list, select the “Upgrade Now” button in the “Upgrade to Dynamic Related Lists” info section. You can fine-tune the list from this menu to show just what end users need!

What goes into creating the perfect Dynamic Related List?

There are a lot of fields that need filling out when first upgrading or creating a new DRL, but here is a brief look at the new fields and their function:

1. Related List Fields - Choose and sort the fields you would like displayed for an end user here.

2. Sort Field - Define which field will be used to sort the related list. Similar to list views on objects and reports, you can organize related lists the same way.

3. Sort Order - Concerning the sort order, this field defines whether you want to sort ascending or descending.

4. Filters - Similar to reports, you can filter related lists with declarative language to sort through related records and only display those that are relevant. For example, sorting donations for a nonprofit organization by their giving this year.

5. Actions - Finally, actions are where you can customize what users can do from this related list. You can add actions besides creating new child records.

With these extra fields, DRLs provide a powerful list of capabilities that were not covered with Single Related Lists.

Use Cases

So what are a few capabilities that this new feature addresses? Let’s look at a few examples of how and when DRLs may come in handy for your client.

• A company only wants to view related contacts of an organization belonging to the sales team.

• A nonprofit organization wants to see how much giving from a donor was designated to a specific area this year.

• A property management company wants to see the number of work orders from a resident that involved replacing a part.

All good news aside, this feature has only been recently released, and a few components remain missing that would further develop its use case.

1. Filter Logic - One of the biggest limitations of this feature is that filter language can not be logic-based.

2. The related list cannot show more than 30 records.

3. This feature is not supported on mobile devices.

Overall, the introduction of Dynamic Related Lists in Salesforce will quickly become a top-used feature, in our opinion, but may take some time to address problems and needed features before its use becomes standard practice.