How to Create and Use Global Picklist in Salesforce?

Salesforce introduced Global Picklist in Summer’16. They cater to a need where multiple objects have similar picklist fields that have the same set of picklist values. Global Picklists can be defined once and reused multiple times.

In this article, we dive deep into how to create Global Picklists in Salesforce and the limitations that can be faced.

What are Global Picklists?

Global picklist fields are an easy way to avoid having multiple picklist fields on multiple objects with the same picklist values. If a new value needs to be added to this list, then an administrator has to go an add the new value for the same value set in multiple fields on multiple objects individually.

So Global Picklists using Global Value Sets provide a one stop shop to maintain and use a list of picklist values that need to be repeated.

How to Create and Use a Global Picklist?

Creating a Global Value Set for a Global Picklist is very simple. The main thing you need to do is to know what your values will be and then go ahead and follow the steps below to create your global value set.

For our steps below, we are using a list of Stationery Products that a company sells to it’s customers and this list needs to be used in multiple objects eg. Leads, Opportunities, Quotes etc and will need to be repeated. Hence, the use of Global Picklist is ideal.

Step 1: Search for ‘Picklist Value Set’ in Setup.

Step 2: Click on ‘New’ button

Step 3: Add the necessary details. Most importantly the list of your picklist values. Save.

Step 4: Go to Object Manager and choose the object you wish to use the Global Value Set in.

Step 5: Create a New Picklist field as you normally would and when adding the values simply choose the option to ‘Use global picklist value set’ and from the drop down choose the value set you just created. That’s it!

Limitations of Global Picklist

There are certain limitations that apply to a global picklist value set:

• A Global Picklist can have a maximum of 1000 values.
• A Salesforce Org can have 500 Global Picklist value sets.
• If you apply a global picklist value set to more than 13 different objects, you can deactivate values from the picklist value set, but you can’t replace any picklist values or delete values from the set.
• A global picklist is a restricted picklist.

Conclusion

Global picklist are a very useful feature and take away the need of maintaining multiple picklist with the same values. Since these values are restricted, only a Salesforce admin can add to or modify its values. Users can’t add unapproved values, even through the API.