v1.4.0 - Adds support for multiple orderings for FIRST/LAST rollups

[jamessimone]

Summary

Bumping the minor version number, as this release introduces new CMDT for FIRST/LAST rollups and includes a (small) number of breaking changes

Bug Fixes

• Fixing issue raised by @solo-1234 where calc item replacer sometimes incorrectly queried for fields not on the parent object in question
• Fixing an issue reported by @kd280z where hierarchy/grandparent rollups didn't always play nice together in the event that the ultimate parent lookup field was included in the grandparent relationship
  field path

Updates

• Fixes Adding support for Description or other documentation to metadata #241 by adding Rollup__mdt.Description__c field to base Rollup metadata
• Breaking Change new CMDT, RollupOrderBy__mdt or Rollup Order By released
  • This officially deprecates Rollup__mdt.OrderByFirstLast__c - it will still exist on the backend, but ideally people using FIRST/LAST will migrate over to the use of the new Rollup Order By metadata
  • This new CMDT adds the following properties:
    • Field Name - the field name to order by (can be a parent-level field, just like in SOQL)
    • Ranking the ranking order for sorting. Can start with 0 or 1.
    • Sort Order (optional) - "Specifies whether the results are ordered in ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC) order. Default order is ascending."
    • Null Sort Order (optional) - "Orders null records at the beginning (NULLS FIRS) or end (NULLS LAST) of the results. By default, null values are sorted first."
    • Rollup - lookup to the Rollup CMDT record
  • FIRST ACTUAL BREAKING CHANGE - Apex Rollup was, previously, not obeying the default null sort order; nulls were always sorted last. If you want this behavior to continue, you should explicitly opt into sorting nulls last by setting Null Sort Order on each RollupOrderBy__mdt record accordingly
    • Flow Builders take note!! You must update your FIRST/LAST flows that are using the base rollup action (the one that isn't driven by Custom Metadata) so that the Order By First/Last field corresponds to the format in the next bullet point/screenshot:
      
    • The above screenshot doesn’t show this off, but the Order By First/Last field for the base Invocable action now supports a comma-separated list of values, which brings us to the next point 👇
  • Technically, you can continue to use Rollup__mdt.OrderByFirstLast__c; in order to continue to support Flow, this field will remain in use as a translation layer between Flow & Apex; you can use a comma-separated list of fields that roughly correspond to the equivalent RollupOrderBy__mdt record, like: Account.Name ascending nulls last, Amount descending where ascending or descending correspond to the RollupOrderBy__mdt.SortOrder__c picklist values, and something like nulls last corresponds to RollupOrderBy__mdt.NullSortOrder__c's picklist values. I would still highly recommend migrating your FIRST/LAST rollups over to using the Rollup Order By CMDT records.
  • SECOND BREAKING CHANGE - orgs that were calling any of the Rollup.firstFromApex or Rollup.lastFromApex methods looking to retain the old default behavior for sorting on nulls (reminder: in SOQL, nulls are sorted first unless NULLS LAST is used; Apex Rollup sorted nulls last by default previously) must update to the new firstFromApex/lastFromApex method signatures, which allow you to pass a List<RollupOrderBy__mdt>. You can create these in-memory for rollups that are not CMDT-configured, like the example below (which uses a Task -> Contact rollup):

    Rollup.firstFromApex(
      Task.Subject,
      Task.WhoId,
      Contact.Id,
      Contact.Description,
      Contact.SObjectType,
      null, // default recalc value
      new List<RollupOrderBy__mdt>{
        new RollupOrderBy__mdt(
          FieldName__c = 'ActivityDate',
          Ranking__c = 0
        )
      },
      RollupEvaluator.getWhereEval('Subject = \'Hello world!\'', Task.SObjectType) // this last arg can be null if don't need to use a Calc Item Where Clause

  • Screenshot of example Rollup Order By record:

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As much as possible, I try to limit making breaking changes in the Rollup API. This is only the third such breaking change since formalizing the release process here; in this case I feel good about the changes because I think there is a minimal amount of work necessary to support the upgrade to v1.4.0

As always, a big thanks to @jongpie for his help in reviewing this release, as well as in contributing to it (shout out to @nojanv for his help as well)!

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This discussion was created from the release v1.4.0 - Adds support for multiple orderings for FIRST/LAST rollups.

[jamessimone]

Updated to point out that the Order By First/Last optional field on the base Invocable action now supports a comma-separated list of values that roughly correspond to the info you’d be entering into the RollupOrderBy__mdt records; since people using the base Invocable action aren’t operating with CMDT, changing that field to be comma-separated allows for feature parity when it comes to FIRST/LAST ordering support.