[SalesForce] How to change the default value for the ‘assigned to’ field in tasks

People need to create tasks for other people in all kinds of spaces in the organisation. Often they click through the task creation activity on their related object they want to add a task to without noticing that they are assigning the task to themselves, as your own user is the default value in that field.

In the object settings for Tasks i can't set a default value. I would like to have the field blank so everybody creating a task will have to stop and think for a minute who to assign it to as it would still be required but empty by default.

Is there any solution to this?

Best Answer

Currently its not possible to set default value to blank for AssignedTo field. Please vote below idea https://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000aBPxAAM

Work arounds

Build Custom Visualforce Page to override New Task Button OR
Validation rule for users (profiles/roles) who creates tasks for other people.

Example:

AND(
    NOT(ISBLANK(OwnerId)),
    OR(
       $UserRole.Id = 'IdOfSupportRole',
       $User.ProfileId = 'IdOfSupportProfile'
    )
)

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] UPDATE …. Default Value in a lookup field

You need to assign the ID (not the Name field) of the ‘Sales Revenue’ Account__c to the productsale.Account__c.

The error that you are getting is because your query queries the Product_Sale__c object but attempts to assign to the Account__c. The object that you query must be assigned to that type of object.

Your query should change to the following:

Account__c defaultSaleAcc = [
    Select Id
    From Account__c
    Where Name = ‘Sales Revenue’
];

Your loop body should change to assign the ID

productsale.Sale_Account__c = defaultSaleAcc.Id;

Lookup fields store the ID of the related record, not the name.

Like @JimRae commented, the trigger fires after the user hits the Save button. If you want the Lookup field pre-populated before the user hits the Save button the only option is a custom Visualforce page or implementing the LKID url hack.

Alternatively, you could check to see if the value has been not been set (i.e., == null) in the trigger and then set it to the default if it hasn't been set. Depending on your business rules you may only want to do that on the initial insert and you could add some help text about the defaulting behavior. Note that this alternative approach doesn't display any value until after the Save.

[SalesForce] Enabling Editing/Deleting others’ Tasks without “Modify All”

There's no general "configuration-only" solution to this problem. You'll need a way to bypass sharing to allow deletion. Here's some choices (some of which are already noted in the comments):

Custom REST/Web Service

Write a "webservice" method, or a @RestResource method. Use "without sharing" to bypass sharing on the tasks.

Visualforce

Write up a page that allows deletion of a specified task. Works the same as above, but uses Visualforce instead of JavaScript.

Trigger

You can actually delete a record in a trigger using "after update". Just make a custom checkbox and have the trigger delete the record when checked. Users will only be able to delete tasks they can edit using this method.