Cloning field merges causes wrong API names for the duplicate

Sebastiaan Van Dingenen-iODigital

Sometimes users copy field merges and then change the name/field linking to something else. When the user does this the API name of the new field merge is already generated during the clone and the copy will have an API name which is excatly the same as the previous one with a number in the end that gets incremented.

Example:

• Field merge: First Name, API name: first_name

I clone this field (right click copy)

• Field merge: First name copy, API name: first_name1

I change the copied field merge and change the mapping/name to last name:

• Field merge: Last name

Now I have 2 field merges that work fine:

• First Name, API name: first_name
• Last Name, API name: first_name1

This can get highly confusing as users see the API name when they drop a field into their code.

Please change (or remove) the cloning functionality of Field Merges to prevent these bad API names when people make copies. It is not the first time I find a user who copied a filed 15x and changed it to all kinds of different fields and then didn't look at the API name. You can't easily fix it without deleting all references + the field merge and then recreating it and re-adding it to all assets.