Salesforce Cleanup: Manual-Entry Field Replacement

This task involved deprecating a manually entered Travel Time field on a custom object. Travel time was already being calculated via the Google Maps API and stored on the Account, but users were still retyping it on related records because the old field was deeply embedded in automation and reporting.

What I Did:

• Created a formula field on the custom object to reference Account.Travel_Time__c

• Identified downstream references using Salesforce’s “Where is this used?” button

• Updated references in Apex, flows, process builders, and reports

• Migrated legacy travel time values to older Account records created before the API was implemented

• Backed up all values from the manual field before deprecation

Reflections:

🌻 Formula fields don’t trigger automation—this only worked because nothing depended on the field update to fire.
🪻 Deployment was staged: formula first, then updated references, then field deprecation
🌿 I’ve since learned about text-based metadata search tools, and I’d use those next time to be extra thorough.