How to view standard objects in salesforce online?

Question

there are many standard objects e.g. AccountcontactRole, LetterHead, Approval etc. which can be retrieved using Salesforce APIs. What is the way to see these objects in Salesforce environment in browser?

Answer 1

Very roughly speaking - easiest cheat is to simply put the Id in the URL. So if your Salesforce instance is https://na1.salesforce.com then adding /001.... (any valid Account Id) will take you to this account. Similarly /016... will take you to "this" Letterhead record.

Some data is easily accessible to users - for example AccountContactRole should be available as related list under Account. If it isn't - probably the administrator removed it from page layout because the company decided to use only the straightforward Account - Contact relationship.

Some data like Letterheads, EmailTemplates, Approval processes is visible in the setup area (not all users have the "View Setup and Configuration" permission in their Profiles!)

*Share records (like AccountShare) would be visible after you click the Sharing button on the page layout (if it's not visible - again, check with Admin).

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If you're using API to fetch the data, you probably can also use "describe" calls to fetch info which objects are available, what fields are present in the tables... Sometimes the "Frontdoor URLs" property is set (although I confess I'm not sure how to get it, http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_Schema_DescribeSObjectResult_instance_methods.htm doesn't mention it).

Also - if you haven't noticed yet - all Accounts start with "001". Try to guess where "/001" and "/001/o" links would lead.