We’re going to talk about global configuration attributes In Salesforce CPQ. Even saying that out loud is a little bit of a mouthful, and it can be kind of tricky, but I’m going to navigate you through some of the more common obstacles that you may encounter when trying to configure this. I’m going to show you what they look like, and I’m also going to add some of these to additional products.
So, let’s jump in. Right now, we have our Canvas Backpack Bundle, and under our Canvas Backpack Bundle, we have a feature for minor potions that allows us to choose no more than three of the following potions. As a Salesforce Revenue Cloud Consultant you will need to select the correct attributes for the clients configuration requests. Right now, our miner’s shield potion and our miner health potion both have a global configuration attribute so that we can choose what the class of this potion should be..
That way, we know if this potion is being sent to a druid or a mage or a scout. Let’s say this potion is going to a scout and this potion over here is, let’s say, also going to a scout. We can add that detail in here as well as the size. Let’s say the scout is really tiny. So we’re going to do an extra small backpack.
For a scout with these two potions. This potion does not have a global attribute, configuration attribute yet. So we’ll have to see, let’s see what happens when we save this. Now our extra small configuration attribute at the backpack level has been set up so that it should populate for all of the options available.
We’ve also enabled item drawers, as you can see here behind these tiny triangles. If I click this one at the top, it’s going to expand all of the items. So here we can see that for the two potions where we selected Scout, we have that available, that information here. We can also see that everything says extra small, because the backpack has been set to extra small, and that configuration attribute is applied to all product options.
So let’s go ahead and see how we can add this class global configuration attribute to the additional potions that are available down here. First, we’re going to go to our canvas backpack, and from our backpack, let’s go to related. We’re going to find our options, so we have our shield potion, our health potion.
For our movement potion, we’re going to click into that. Now we’re going to navigate to the related, and we can choose to add product attribute sets. It’s important to note that product attribute sets are part of the rainbow of global configuration attributes in Revenue Cloud. So as just a refresher, we have our backpack, which is our parent product.
We have our potion, which is our child product, a. k. a. our option. Now we have our product attribute set. So we’re at tier yellow of global configuration attributes. Let’s go ahead and say new. Now here, I’m going to go and select the green level of this configuration, rainbow. So we’re going to be choosing our attribute set, which is our class attribute set.
And we’ll give this a sequence of one. So, actually I’ll say ten because I like to do everything by tens. So we’re going to save this, and now we have our attribute set that’s been assigned to our product option. Let’s take a look at what is inside of this product attribute set. So here we have the product attribute set, which is in yellow.
It’s associated with an attribute set, which is in green. So if we click into our attribute set over here and we go to related again, we can see that under related, we’re going to have Attribute items, which are in blue, and those attribute items are configured with configuration attributes in dark blue.
So, it’s important to keep in mind the whole hierarchy here, because as you go up and down, there are callbacks to other items. So, for example, from this configuration attribute on this attribute item, That is part of this attribute set. We can see several of the configuration rainbow in one screen, so we can also see what product attribute sets, which is in yellow are associated with this particular attribute set.
And when we click on our configuration attribute for class. That’s where we’re going to have all of the important details like our target field, for example. So, when we get to our configuration attribute, keep in mind it has to be a global attribute. The record type over here must be global. Otherwise, it will not be allowed to be added to the attribute item or the attribute set.
We also need to make sure that there is no product associated. If there is a product associated, you will not be able to proceed. That was probably the most challenging part for me when I was setting this up and I’ll explain why. We also must have a target field and there’s a checkbox for global. Just ignore that.
If you feel like maybe you can’t proceed because the checkbox isn’t checked, don’t worry about that checkbox. Just keep in mind, you have to have your product be empty. So, that’s a little bit about all of the tiers of getting your global configuration attributes set up. I’m going to walk through a little bit of troubleshooting that will come in handy if you have this issue when you do Salesforce Revenue Cloud Consulting.
So, from the product record, originally I started at the Canvas Backpack. Once you have your global attributes configured, as a system administrator, since you have access to that record tag, You’re going to see that prompt when you navigate through the system. So, if in my related list for my bundle, I go down to configuration attributes and I click on new, I’m going to be prompted with configuration attribute or a global attribute.
This helpful description down here that says configuration attribute associated to a product, Keep in mind, this is the only option you want to select from a product because you’re using a related list. The product is going to automatically be pulled in. What I did by mistake was click on global attribute over here because that’s what I in fact wanted to do.
And when I hit next, I did not have this product listed on my screen. So this global attribute was stuck being configured with a product and everything stopped working for me. So if you’re running into that error where it’s telling you this must be a global attribute, Even though your record type is global attribute, make sure that your product is completely blank.
The best way to do that is to follow the instructions. There are instructions over here, and sometimes I like to skip reading the instructions, and then I run into these kinds of problems. Hopefully, you’re nothing like me, and you would never do that. But just in case, when you are reading step number two for create the global attributes, It does tell you from the configuration attributes page, click new, not the related list of the product, which was my mistake. In Salesforce CPQ sometimes you can find things in multiple places, but for things like this only one is the correct way to get the desired results.
So what you can do if you go to the app launcher and you type in configuration attributes, you can go over here and then you can choose to make a new configuration attribute. And in this case, you can choose a global attribute. When you hit next, you’ll have to give this a name. I’m going to call it test.
In our case, we already have one for size, so let’s say we want to make one for class. I’ll just call this class. In here, I just put this as a note for myself. Must be blank, just because I wanted to make sure to talk about it in this video. We’re going to hit save. And that’s it. It’s just the two fields.
It’s just the two fields. I was very confused by this at first because I thought there’s only two fields. What good is this going to do? There’s, I need, I need more information here. What’s going on? So from that configuration attribute, you’re going to be able to add it to an attribute item. So let’s make a new attribute item in Revenue Cloud.
All right, back to our rainbow. We started at the bottom of the rainbow. Configuration attribute, now we’re making an attribute item. So in here, we’re going to associate this attribute item with an attribute set. We already have an attribute set for class. And the reason that it’s a set is because you can have multiple configuration items associated with that set.
For the sequence, let’s call this 20, because we have already specified one as 10. So I’ll save that. And now we have an attribute item over here that’s associated with our class set. At this point, we could rename it, and we could call this something like class and size. And I’ll save that so that it’s more intuitive.
And then we can take a look at what is currently using this class and size. We have these different product attribute sets back here in yellow product attribute sets that are using this attribute set. So for our miner shield potion, we should have both class and size associated with it. Let’s take a look and see what happens.
I’m going to delete this bundle and we’ll go ahead and refresh the page just to make sure that we shake out all of the loose ends there, any cobwebs. I’ll delete this previous bundle and choose add products. We’ll click on our canvas backpack and select that. Choose our dropdown. Now we have class and we have size that are both available.
So we can choose our options here in Salesforce CPQ, and we can go ahead and check the box, and we can specify them for our other potions as well. If these are all going to be the same, you should use a configuration attribute at the top level, and then have all of that information just hold down to the product options.
But if you do need these to be all different, Then you might want to have them be at the option level and it’s up to you to pick and choose what’s the best process for you. If we go ahead and hit save and we drop down all of these items, you can see that these were selected for size. Size is not writing back right now.
So we need to make sure that the size pick list has a, it has a field at the quote level as well. But we also have size coming from the backpack level. So when you’re making configuration attributes, be sure that your configuration attributes aren’t stepping on one another, because this configuration attribute being blank is going to overwrite the configuration attributes at the line level.
So let’s change this configuration attribute for size at the parent level. Now it says medium and medium is showing up for everything. So it’s really important to make sure that your global configuration attributes and your other configuration attributes Are operating in the right sequence as we saw here when we tried to put size in at the line level or at the option level, it didn’t take because we already had a configuration attribute at the backpack level that is sending that information down to product options.
I hope this video has been helpful in describing global configuration attributes. If you’ve enjoyed this tutorial, please like and subscribe and if you’d like to learn more about this or any other Salesforce CPQ, Revenue Cloud, or Salesforce Revenue Cloud Consulting items – you can work with us. Thank you so much!
Note: The information in this blog post is still applicable to Salesforce CPQ; however, as of Q1 2025, Salesforce CPQ has been officially deemed End of Sale and Salesforce’s new lifecycle management product has been rebranded to Revenue Cloud (previously named RLM). To view the timeline of CPQ and Revenue Cloud history, click here.
If you’d like to know more regarding the differences between Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce’s new offering, Revenue Cloud (RLM), please click here.
