Where is this field used?
The everyday admin question that means clicking through Setup one field at a time - or asking an AI agent once and getting every Flow, Apex class, layout, report, and validation rule that touches it, grounded in your real metadata.
Last updated 2026-07-29
Short answer: Ask sf-intelligence "where is Account.Industry__c used?" and it returns every component that references the field - Flows, Apex, layouts, validation rules, reports - from a dependency graph plus a source grep of your retrieved metadata, each reference labelled with its confidence. One question replaces a field-by-field crawl through Setup.
trace a field across a real org in 2 minutes - no org, no auth
claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope user sf-intelligence-demo -- npx -y sf-intelligence demoThen ask "where is Invoice__c.Amount__c used across the org?" - in the demo org that field is summed by a roll-up on the parent, feeds a formula, and is written by Apex, so you see the declared, parsed, and heuristic tiers side by side in one answer. Synthetic "Verdant Energy" org, served fully offline: no Salesforce login, no sf CLI, nothing to configure. more on the demo →
How it works
When you name a field, the router resolves it to a canonical ID (and asks a clarifying question if several match), then walks the incoming edges in the dependency graph and grep-scans the source for any reference the graph doesn't already model. You can hand it whatever you already have - a bare field name, an object plus field, or a fuzzy substring - and the answer echoes the resolved scope it applied back as appliedScope, so you can confirm it landed on the field you meant rather than a same-named neighbour:
› where is the Industry field on Account used? ▸ 7 components reference CustomField:Account.Industry__c: ValidationRule · Flow · ApexClass(2) · Layout · Report · FieldSet provenance offline_snapshot · edges: declared, parsed, heuristic
What it catches
| Reference type | Confidence |
|---|---|
| Layouts, field sets, validation rules, record types | declared - Salesforce states it directly |
| Flows, formulas, Apex (parsed source) | parsed - from AST/XML parsing |
| Dynamic SOQL / reflective Apex mentions | heuristic - grep-level, spot-check it |
The tools behind it
find_field_anywhere- lexical search for a field across every retrieved component.field_360- the full profile of a field: definition, references, what fires when it changes.find_component_usages- the universal "where is X used" dispatcher for any component, not just fields.
Honest limits
Usage answers are only as complete as your last refresh and the metadata you retrieved. Dynamic field access is invisible to static analysis, so it labels heuristic matches and never reports a confident "unused" it can't back up. See how it's tested.
That distinction matters most when you are planning a cleanup, because a usage result of zero is the exact moment people over-read the evidence. For what a zero does and doesn't license - which references block a delete outright, which ones break something quietly weeks later, and why field population is the wrong signal to sort a backlog by - read the dependency-first method for deciding whether a Salesforce field is safe to delete.
Frequently asked
How do I find where a Salesforce field is used?
Salesforce's built-in Where is this used? button covers many reference types but misses some (formula text, certain Apex references) and only works one field at a time in Setup. sf-intelligence answers the question from a dependency graph plus a source grep of the retrieved metadata, so you can ask 'where is Account.Industry__c used?' in plain language and get Flows, Apex, layouts, validation rules, reports, and more in one answer.
Does it find field references inside Apex and formulas?
Yes - it parses Apex and formula source and reports references with a confidence label. Static analysis can't see dynamic SOQL or reflective field access, so those edges are marked heuristic and it tells you plainly that 'no references found' means 'no static evidence', not a guarantee the field is unused.
Can it tell me if a field is safe to delete?
That's the related question - see what breaks if you delete a field. Usage tells you what references a field; the delete simulation weighs those references and adds coverage caveats before giving a verdict.
Ask once, not field by field.
Register the read-only MCP server and ask where anything is used.