What is Salesforce Connect? A Guide to Data Engineers

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June 26, 2024

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20 min read

Organizations often struggle to store, manage, and retrieve data spread across multiple external databases and systems. This data distribution can lead to malfunctions, errors, inconsistencies, and increased operational complexity.

If your organization relies on Salesforce, among other options, for managing customer relationships, sales, or business operations, consider using Salesforce Connect for a streamlined solution. It helps integrate external data sources directly into Salesforce, facilitating real-time access to data. This integration ensures that you can easily access critical business information in Salesforce for enhanced decision-making.

In this article, you will understand what is Salesforce Connect, its benefits, drawbacks, and the complete setup process.

What Is Salesforce Connect?

Salesforce Connect is an integration feature within the Salesforce CRM platform that enables you to view, search, and modify data external to the Salesforce native environment in real-time.

Instead of copying data into your Salesforce org, Salesforce Connect retrieves data in real-time as per your requirements. This functionality allows you to access external data as if it were stored within Salesforce itself, avoiding the need to duplicate data within your Salesforce environment. The resulting benefits include reduced storage requirements and the availability of up-to-date data.

‍Note: In Salesforce, an org is the virtual environment provided to each customer; it includes all of the customer's data and applications.

How Does Salesforce Connect Work?

Salesforce Connect utilizes external objects to mirror the functionality of custom objects within Salesforce. However, unlike custom objects, these external objects don’t store data themselves; instead, they point to data residing in external systems or databases.

Salesforce Connect uses various parameters to authenticate and access external objects. To access external objects, it supports three different types of adapters—OData, Apex Custom Adapter, and Cross-Org Adapter. Let’s discuss these in detail.

Cross-org Adapter

The Cross-org Salesforce connect adapter allows you to access and integrate data across multiple Salesforce orgs via the Lightning Platform REST API. For instance, you can integrate data from many Salesforce orgs to provide your service agents with a unified view of customer transactions or interactions.

OData

The OData adapter uses the Open Data Protocol to access data external to Salesforce. You can use this adapter to integrate external data sources that comply with the OData protocol into your Salesforce org and publish an OData provider. This capability is particularly beneficial for obtaining real-time data from legacy systems like SAP and Microsoft, providing your account executives with an integrated data view.

Apex Custom Adapter

An Apex custom adapter uses the Apex Connector Framework to help develop your custom adapter for situations in which other adapters aren't suitable for your needs. A customized adapter can access data from any source. For instance, the adapter can retrieve data via callouts from a REST API or the Internet. However, certain data can also be generated or changed programmatically within Salesforce.

Setting Up Salesforce Connect

Proper configuration of Salesforce Connect is crucial for enhanced operational efficiency and ensuring seamless connectivity between systems. Here are the steps to help set up Salesforce Connect for effective data integration:

Step 1: Set Up Salesforce Org

Log in to your existing Salesforce account.
Ensure you have the necessary permissions like Manage Customize Application and ModifyAllData and PrivacyCenter.
Navigate to Salesforce Connect Settings in the Setup menu to activate Salesforce Connect.

Step 2: Establish a Connection with External Data Source

Navigate to the quick find box from the Setup menu and search for External Data Sources. Now, click on New External Data Source.
Provide essential details such as the External Data Source, Name, URL, Enable Search, and Format.
Based on compatibility with your external system, select the correct external system type, such as OData 2.0/4.0.
Select the Authentication Protocol from Password Authentication or OAuth 2.0.‍
Configure additional settings like Object Relationships and Custom Fields in accordance with the data source requirements.
Click on Save to save your work.
Click on Validate and Sync to confirm your connection to the external system.
You can select tables and click Sync to develop a Salesforce external object and custom field for every table column compatible with a Salesforce metadata field type.

Step 3: Examine the Connection

Navigate to the appropriate Salesforce page to find the external data.
Verify the visibility and accessibility of external objects and perform data retrieval tests by querying or exploring them.
Perform verification and troubleshoot any issues.

Step 4: Adjust and Improve the Connection

Depending on performance and use case, configure data caching or indexing to optimize connections.
Employ security measures like named credentials and remote site settings to improve security.

Use Cases of Salesforce Connect

Salesforce Connect can benefit businesses across various industries. Some of the use cases are discussed below:

Managing Inventory in Real Time: Retail companies can utilize Salesforce Connect to link their inventory management systems with Salesforce in real-time, providing visibility into inventory across all warehouses. This facilitates enhanced supply chain data management, helps prevent stockouts, and streamlines order processing.
‍Consolidated Financial Data for Customers: Financial institutions can use Salesforce Connect to integrate their banking systems with Salesforce. This integration provides customer support agents with a consolidated view of customer data, including transaction history and investment portfolios, directly within Salesforce. Access to such data enables them to provide personalized customer service.

Benefits of Using Salesforce Connect

You can use Salesforce Connect to seamlessly integrate external data into Salesforce, bridging the gap between disparate data sources and Salesforce instances. Here are some advantages of using Salesforce Connect.

Salesforce Connect provides a unified platform for working with external data within Salesforce. You can perform searches, create reports, and leverage Salesforce’s robust automation features without needing to switch between different platforms.
With direct access to external data, Salesforce Connect reduces the need to replicate data within Salesforce. This helps optimize storage costs and reduces data redundancy.
Salesforce Connect allows you to connect with all data sources in real-time. This ensures that you can access the most recent data without requiring manual syncing.
You can easily connect Salesforce to any web APIs that adhere to compatible protocols like OData. This gives you the flexibility to customize your data integration for your specific needs.

Limitations of Salesforce Connect

While Salesforce Connect offers powerful data integration capabilities, it’s associated with certain limitations as well. Understanding these limitations helps you adapt appropriate measures for seamless data flow:

Salesforce Connect prevents you from creating more than 200 external objects, restricting the number of data sources that can be integrated with Salesforce.
With Salesforce Connect, a query can only have up to four joins between external and other objects. While this constraint preserves query performance, it can limit the complexity of data relationships that can be analyzed directly through Salesforce.
A page for reviewing data through Salesforce Connect can have a maximum of 2000 rows. As a result, retrieving larger datasets must be done in segments.
The Salesforce Connect setup can be complex and time-consuming. Inadequate configurations can lead to data inaccuracies or inefficient data retrieval.

An Efficient Alternative to Salesforce Connect: Airbyte

While Salesforce Connect offers a solution for integrating external data sources into Salesforce, it is incapable of moving data out of Salesforce. For managing data pipelines across various platforms, including moving data out of Salesforce, Airbyte offers a streamlined alternative without needing multiple tools.

Airbyte is a no-code ELT data integration platform. It enables you to consolidate data from various sources, such as SaaS applications, flat files, or databases, into your preferred central repository, such as a data lake or warehouse.

Airbyte offers a library of more than 350 pre-built connectors, which helps automate your data pipeline creation. It also provides the flexibility to build customized connectors within just a few minutes using the Connector Development Kit (CDK).

Some of Airbyte’s key features are listed below.

PyAirbyte: Airbyte offers an open-source library for Python developers, PyAirbyte. This library packages the Airbyte connectors, enabling the extraction, transformation, and loading of data from multiple sources.‍
Customized Transformations: Airbyte lets you effortlessly connect with dbt, a robust data transformation tool, allowing you to leverage its capabilities for cleaning and modifying your data before analysis.‍
Change Data Capture: It supports the Change Data Capture (CDC) technique to help you capture all the changes made to the source data and reflect them at the destination.‍
Data Security Features: Airbyte prioritizes the protection of your sensitive data by following industry best practices. This includes implementing encryption methods to safeguard data. Additionally, it incorporates authentication mechanisms and robust access controls to confirm that only authorized users can access the organization's data.

Final Thoughts

Salesforce Connect provides a robust solution for integrating data from external sources directly into Salesforce. It offers real-time access to the data, maintaining data integrity without the need for replication.

Using Salesforce Connect, you can enhance your operational efficiency and make informed business decisions based on comprehensive insights. This guide offers you a complete overview, use cases, various benefits, and limitations of Salesforce Connect.

FAQs

Q. What are Salesforce Connect's OData limitations?

For Salesforce’s Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions, there is a limitation of 20,000 OData API callouts per hour. If this threshold is insufficient for your requirements, you will have to submit a support case to request an increase in the limit.

Q. What is a file connect in Salesforce?

Salesforce Files Connect allows you to access, share, and search external data within Salesforce from platforms like Box, Quip, Google Drive, and SharePoint.