validation rules on task

Question

I have a custom activity picklist field Act_Type__c. One value of this field is Gift.

My requirement is to create a Task validation rule that will only allow Activity Type to be Gift if the left 3 characters of the WhatId are a12 (Related To must be a custom object record).

I'm new to Salesforce, could you please help with this request.

Answer 1

Try with this validtion formula on Task object:

AND(
 ISPICKVAL(Act_Type__c, 'Gift'), 
 NOT(BEGINS(WhatId , 'a12'))
)

This basically translates to: If Act_Type__c is set to Gift AND WhatId doesn't start with a12, throw a validation error.

You can find more information about the above functions by following this link.

Answer 2

you can use BEGINS function in validation Error Condition Formula.

Here is syntax for the BEGINS function:

BEGINS(text, compare_text)

Checks if text begins with specified characters and returns TRUE if it does. Otherwise returns FALSE