Let's define what a view and a reference are, per the release notes. Records are considered:
Viewed - "when the user sees the details associated with it, but not when the user sees it in a list with other records."
Referenced = "when a related record is viewed."Here's a sample scenario to help understand these fields and how the clauses can be used.
User A creates a "Kirk Steffke" Contact record that is related to a CRM Science Account. Upon creation, the LastViewedDate and LastReferencedDate for both will the same as the CreatedDate.
Contact: Kirk Steffke |
Account: CRM Science |
Since these two fields are user dependent, let's see how the data differs for another user that has never accessed either record.
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Contact: Kirk Steffke as viewed by User B |
The LastViewedDate has an impact certain areas of the user interface such as the Recent Items list in the toolbar or the items that quickly appear when using the search feature. Below is a side by side comparison for the two different users. The new Contact and Account records do not display in the quick search pop-down or in the Recent Items.
As seen here, just like the other sytem date/time fields, they aren't directly updatable.
However, the new SOQL clauses will do just that:
Don't expect to see an updated value when you run the above query; the query will update the LastReferencedDate for any rows returned as they are returned. When you use the FOR REFERENCE or FOR VIEW clauses, the values returned will never be the actual values, they'll be the last values. To see the actual values without updating them, use the original query where the clauses are omitted.