Can I edit or remove universally require standard fields in Salesforce?

Question

The Orders object in Salesforce has a status field that is a picklist. I tried to edit the field by adding more options, but the editing I can do is very limited and for some reason I can not add more options. I thought maybe making a custom field would be a better approach, but then realized that the status field in the Orders object is universally required and can not be taken off the page layout. How would I edit the standard field for what I need? Or is there a way to create a custom field and remove the standard field?

I have read the documentation and realize that you can not remove universally require fields, but I was looking for workaround if one exists. Thank you for any help in advance.

Answer 1

We just implemented something like this for Opportunities - we didn't have a need for setting close date.

A URL Hack is what you are looking for. This allows you to prepopulate the required fields, so users are not burdened with doing so themselves.

This will require:

• A custom button
• The URL Parameters for the fields you want to set.

To identify the URL Parameters:

To get the ID of the field we wish to populate go to the relevant object in setup and click on the field we wish to populate. If you check out the URL when you’re on this page, you can see the unique ID given to this field.

You can take this ID and add it in your custom button:

Now, to turn this into something that actually works! Lets go to our custom button editing page and enter a “?” after our little URL. This acts as a separator and will allow us to enter the next part. The next part will just require you to enter the ID of the field you grabbed earlier with “=” and then the merge field value.

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Workflows and triggers won't work because it's required through the interface.

Another work around, but more work; would be to customize the page itself and exclude those fields from the UI. Upon save of the page, you would need to populate the value though.

All said and done, no, you cannot universally eliminate the standard required fields.