A Simple Rule to Prevent ‘Dear John L.’ in Emails - #DataQuality, @Salesforce

I have a thing about naming conventions and consistent data.

I often see Lead and Contact records where the First Name is something like “John L.”, even though I have added a Middle Initial field.

I personally would prefer not including a middle name at all, but it is something that is widely accepted in our industry. So, I’m doing my best to keep my users happy.

Here’s the simple rule that should effectively nip this in the bud.

It works the same for Leads and Contacts.

Yay for data quality!

Update

You can also prevent users from entering “John T” (without a period) by changing the error condition formula to this:

OR(
   CONTAINS(FirstName, "."),
   CONTAINS(RIGHT(FirstName,2)," ")
)

This formula runs if either:

1. There’s a period in the First Name field, or
2. The second character from the end of the First Name field is a space.

Thanks @hak_a_tak for the suggestion!