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Apply SOQL best practices

This is real work, not a feature someone invented — it comes from real job ads and real questions people asked. Below are four ready AI prompts: get it done, make it easy for the next person to say yes to, work out the right move when you are stuck, and stop it coming back.

4prompts
See the prompt↓All Salesforce tasks

The same task, four prompts

today's deadline · the next reviewer · the stuck moment · the pattern
AExecute — do the immediate taskI need to query all active Opportunities for accounts in California that have a 'Stage' of…+
I need to query all active Opportunities for accounts in California that have a 'Stage' of 'Proposal Submitted' or 'Negotiation'. Include the Opportunity Name, Amount, Close Date, and Account Name.
when the reply comes backPush once: ask it to sharpen the weakest part, and to say what it assumed. Helpful?
BImprove — make it easier to acceptBefore I build this report for the sales leadership team, make sure the query for active…+
Before I build this report for the sales leadership team, make sure the query for active California opportunities is efficient. It needs to pull data for 500+ opportunities. How can I structure it to avoid hitting governor limits or running slowly, especially when filtering on 'Stage' and joining to Account, so the report loads quickly and reliably every time?
when the reply comes backPush once: ask it to sharpen the weakest part, and to say what it assumed. Helpful?
CDecide — diagnose the stuck momentMark from sales ops just called; the new 'Q3 Pipeline' dashboard is timing out for everyone,…+
The new dashboard for 'Q3 Pipeline' is timing out when users try to load it, and I suspect the underlying SOQL query is the culprit.
Mark from sales ops just called; the new 'Q3 Pipeline' dashboard is timing out for everyone, especially on Monday mornings. I built the SOQL query to pull all open opportunities for the current quarter, but I'm worried it's doing a full table scan or hitting some governor limit with the volume of data. I tried adding an index to 'CloseDate', but it didn't seem to help much. What's the most likely cause of a SOQL query timing out on a dashboard with many records, and what’s the first thing I should check or change to make it performant without sacrificing data accuracy?
when the reply comes backPush once: ask it to sharpen the weakest part, and to say what it assumed. Helpful?
DBecome — change the patternI'm constantly running into performance bottlenecks or governor limits with my SOQL queries,…+
I frequently encounter performance issues or governor limits with my SOQL queries in Apex and Flows.
I'm constantly running into performance bottlenecks or governor limits with my SOQL queries, especially in complex Apex triggers and Flows. I try to optimize them, but I often miss subtle issues until they fail in production. This causes delays and requires emergency fixes. What habit should I change to consistently write efficient SOQL queries that scale with our data volume and avoid governor limits, especially when dealing with large datasets and complex joins?
when the reply comes backPush once: ask it to sharpen the weakest part, and to say what it assumed. Helpful?

Questions people actually ask

honest answers, no sign-up

Every task here was seen in the real world. Someone doing the job named it, a real job ad asked for it, or a lot of people asked about it online.

If nothing real showed a task, it is not on the page. That is the whole rule.

They are the same job approached four ways, because what you need depends on where you are.

Get it done today. Make it easy for the next person to say yes to. Work out the right move when you are stuck. Learn the pattern so the job stops coming back.

For most of these jobs it can carry the heavy thinking - draft it, sort it, check it, rehearse it with you.

It cannot sit in your chair, take the blame when a number is wrong, or notice what nobody wrote down. Let it do the first 80%. Keep the last 20% that is truly yours.

No. Copy any prompt and paste it into the AI you already use. No account, no score, no wall in the way.

Any of them. The prompts describe the work rather than naming a product, so they are not tied to one assistant.

That is also why they keep working when you switch.

Change it freely. Every prompt is a starting line, not a rule.

Put in your real numbers, your real names and your real deadline. The more you make it yours, the better the answer comes back.

The tasks come from real job ads, published job data and the questions people ask in public forums.

The steps come from Salesforce's own documentation, with practitioner sources for the traps the manual does not mention.

Push once. Ask it to sharpen the weakest part and to say what it assumed.

Most wrong answers come from a missing detail rather than a bad prompt - tell it the thing it could not know.