When a user ‘Saves’ a Contact (for example), whether it’s new or just updated, I need to:
Do an external callout using one of the Contact field values as a lookup
Display the results of the callout, so the user can make a selection
Update the Contact based on the user’s selection display the updated Contact
I have found two aproaches, but have reached a point in both that I need to resolve.
Trigger Based Method
In the ‘after’ trigger pass the lookup string to a callback.
Update the Contact with the selection
Issues
- How do you pass the lookup string or results to a visualforce page to display the lookup results?
- When the user makes the selection and the update has been done, how do I move back to the updated contact?
Override Base Method
I found a discussion here that seems to suggests using overriding & redirection to someone asking about ‘Edit’. I think this could also be done with the ‘Save’ button.
Issue
- This is meant to be a deployable sollution, so I think that the override has to be set in code (I’m using the IDE) and not via Setup (or am I wrong?). I can’t find out if this is possible or how to do it
Sorry for detailed question. Didn’t want to just ask the wrong question (i.e. assume I know the best approach).
Thanks…
For the trigger-based method, you cannot change the built-in Save functionality, but (per your second solution) you can override the Edit button and recreate the Edit page with Visualforce, which would give you full control over the Save button and how you handle the callout and redirecting.
The release notes for Spring ’10 indicate that standard-button overrides are now available for packaging, as they can be created through the Metadata API.