How To: Tasks: Set 'related to' (Whatid) to blank [Null]

Question

I am doing some work on our salesforce org so the sales team can add tasks/event/call logs to Leads and relate them to other objects.

However, in lightning I am running into an issue where the ‘Related to’ field is auto populating, so the users cannot save them.

I cannot seem to pre-define the field to be ‘NULL’ or Blank, and I cannot see where the auto-populate action is coming from to turn it off.

This issue is not happening when creating tasks on the Lead Record, however it is for any other object/record I try.

Also, this issue does not occur in Classic view, but being as a newer org, I do not appear to be able to give users access that view.

Can you provide me with an assistance of guide to have to fix this?

Answer 1

Salesforce automatically sets the Related To based on the record the user is viewing. For example, if they're on an Opportunity, it'll default Related To to the Opportunity record. Note also that you can't relate a Task to a Lead and any other Related To. Only Contacts support a Related To object. If you need to link a Task to a Related To object, you need to use Contacts.