You may find yourself with the requirement to create a record from a related list and populate a number of fields. By default, Salesforce will populate the field on the related record that links the two objects, but no other fields. For example, if you create a record for a custom object related to an opportunity, the custom record will have the opportunity populated as it relates the two records, but it is not possible to pass the opportunity account to the custom object.

There are two ways around this, the first way is to use code and the second is to construct a URL ‘hack’. A URL ‘hack’ is taking the standard URL that Salesforce constructs when it creates a new record and enhance it with additional parameters to populate the required fields. Here are the steps to construct a URL hack and use it by overriding a new button to create a new record and populate a number of fields.
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