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How to deploy Search Layouts

A step-by-step guide to retrieving and deploying Search Layouts using Gearset's "Compare and deploy"

Mateusz Kochanowicz avatar
Written by Mateusz Kochanowicz
Updated this week

Administrators and developers often need to customize the Search Layout for both standard and custom objects within their Salesforce orgs.Β 

Customizing a Search Layout allows users to select the standard and custom fields that are displayed when records from that object appear in various places around Salesforce. Such as when returned in a search, displayed in a lookup dialog or on the recently viewed records list displayed on the tab home page.

What metadata type to select in the filter?

Search Layout is a part of Custom object metadata type.

So custom object must be added to your filter and retrieved in order to deploy changes to Search Layouts.

Where to find Search Layout in a Salesforce org?

To customize a Search Layout, locate the object in the Setup menu within Salesforce and select the Search Layouts item on that object (menu on the left hand side).


This is an example of a Search Layout on the Account object:

Following this example, we've made a customization on the Search Layout for Standard User, and now the Search Layout includes: Account Name, Account Site, Phone, Account Owner Alias and Billing Street fields.

How do Search Layouts look in the comparison results?

Now, when the org (in which the change was made) is compared either to another org or to a Git branch (source control), Gearset will highlight that the Account object has changed.

Deploying the Account object will deploy the Search Layout changes.

Why do I see the same object twice in my comparison results?

It's an expected behaviour to find the Custom object being present twice in the comparison results when looking at the All items tab.

  • One instance of the object (e.g., Account) will be listed as Different. This entry highlights the specific changes you've made, such as modifications to Search Layouts.

  • The second instance of the same object will be listed as No difference. This represents the baseline object definition, indicating that other aspects of the object haven't changed between the source and target environments.

In essence, Gearset separates the specific change from the overall object metadata, presenting both in the comparison results.
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Is the Search Layout supported in precision deployments?

Currently, our precision deployments feature doesn't support incremental deployments of the Custom object metadata type - that is if you wanted to only deploy the changes made to your Search Layout on a specific custom/standard object, rather than having to include the entire Custom object to the deployment package.

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