Migrate startingNumber for AutoNumber field using ANT

Question

I am attempting to migrate a Custom Object using Salesforce, and all is well except the Starting Number for a formatted AutoNumber field is not pulled.

I have read through the MetaData Guide (below) and cannot find an example of how to implement this into my package.xml file.

https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_meta.meta/api_meta/customfield.htm

Regarding the note that startingNumber cannot be retrieved, I have tried to put this into the deploy package.xml file.

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

See this note:

• You can’t retrieve the starting number of an auto-number field through Metadata API. To specify a Starting Number while deploying, add a startingNumber tag for your field to your package.xml file. For example: 42
• If you deploy without specifying a Starting Number value in your package.xml file, the default starting number for standard fields is 0. The default starting number for custom fields is 1.

Here's a sample where I was able to set it by just manually injecting it into the retrieve metadata:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<CustomObject xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
....
<fields>
    <fullName>Starting_Number_test__c</fullName>
    <displayFormat>{0}</displayFormat>
    <externalId>false</externalId>
    <label>Starting Number test</label>
    <trackTrending>false</trackTrending>
    <startingNumber>999</startingNumber>
    <type>AutoNumber</type>
</fields>
....
</CustomObject>

You may need a post retrieval script to accomplish the same if you want to automate this.