Salesforce Platform Developer Practice Exam 2025 - Free Salesforce Developer Practice Questions and Study Guide

To automatically populate the ReportsTo field in Salesforce, the most suitable approach involves creating a before insert trigger. A before insert trigger operates before the records are actually saved to the database, allowing the developer to modify values that have yet to be committed.

In this case, if a new user record is being inserted, the trigger can easily assign a value to the ReportsTo field based on logic defined within the trigger. As the field is set before the new record is inserted into the database, the value will be saved correctly along with the record.

Using a before update trigger does not apply in this scenario, as it is focused on updating existing records rather than assigning values during creation. After insert and after update triggers are executed after the record has been saved, which would prevent any changes made to the ReportsTo field from being effective until the record saves again, thus making them unsuitable for the immediate population of that field upon record creation.