In Salesforce, the more automation you build into your record creation process, the more consistent and reliable your data becomes. One such powerful automation strategy involves auto-filling key fields based on business logic—like setting the Rating field based on the selected Industry.
In this blog, we cover a simple yet impactful use case: when a new Account is created and its Industry is set to “Media,” the Rating is automatically updated to “Hot.” This is achieved using a clean and lightweight before-insert Apex trigger, ensuring every qualifying record is tagged appropriately—without relying on users to remember to do it manually.
This pattern not only improves efficiency but also ensures that your data remains aligned with how your business segments, scores, and prioritizes its customers.
🧠 Why Auto-Assigning Rating Matters
The Rating field in Salesforce is often used by sales and marketing teams to identify which accounts are more likely to convert or require immediate attention. But relying on users to manually select the right rating introduces inconsistency. Some may forget, some may guess, and others may choose the wrong value based on misunderstanding the business rules.
By enforcing this logic with a trigger, you:
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Ensure consistent data quality
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Automatically prioritize key accounts (like those in the Media industry)
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Enable accurate filtering in reports, dashboards, and list views
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Support downstream workflows, alerts, or approvals based on the Rating value
This small automation helps teams immediately recognize accounts that meet critical business criteria—improving speed, accuracy, and decision-making across the board.
🔍 What This Blog Covers
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How to implement a before insert Apex trigger on the Account object
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How to automatically update the Rating field based on Industry
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Why it’s important to separate logic into a trigger handler class
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How this automation improves segmentation, targeting, and reporting
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When to use Apex over formula fields or flows for auto-population logic
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Best practices for scalable and readable Apex code
This trigger is a great starting point for organizations looking to enforce classification rules during data entry, especially during mass uploads, integrations, or API-based record creation.
🎯 Use Cases for This Pattern
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Media and advertising agencies that want to flag accounts with special attention
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Sales teams who use the Rating field to organize daily outreach
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Marketing operations teams building campaigns around industry segments
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Data management teams trying to reduce human error during record creation
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Organizations that use dynamic list views or dashboards based on Rating
This same logic can be extended to any number of industries and ratings. For example, you could automatically tag “Healthcare” accounts as “Warm” or set “Finance” accounts to “Cold” based on predefined segmentation strategies.
👨💻 Admin & Developer Tips
Instead of hardcoding values like "Media" or "Hot", consider storing them in Custom Metadata Types to make your business logic dynamic and easier to update. This way, your trigger logic stays clean, and business users can make changes without needing deployments.
You can also build logic into the same handler to account for updates, record types, or additional conditions like location, employee count, or revenue bands.
For orgs working with integrations, this trigger adds a layer of automation assurance, ensuring that even third-party-created records follow your internal segmentation model.
🎥 Visual Walkthrough Available – YouTube Playlist
To help you see this in action, we’ve included a YouTube playlist that walks through:
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Writing the trigger and handler class
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Testing the logic in your developer sandbox
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Exploring related enhancements and variations
With the Salesforce Makes Sense style, these tutorials make concepts digestible, even for those new to Apex triggers or automation.
Solution:
trigger AccountTrigger on Account (before insert) {
if(Trigger.isInsert){ if(Trigger.isBefore){
AccountTriggerHandler.updateRating(Trigger.New);
}
}
}
public class AccountTriggerHandler {
public static void updateRating(List<Account> accList){ for(Account acc:accList){
if(acc.Industry!=null && acc.Industry==’Media’){ acc.Rating=’Hot’;
}
}
}
}