Salesforce

Step-by-step guide to set up Salesforce as a destination in RudderStack.

Salesforce is an industry leader in enterprise CRM. It offers a suite of enterprise applications revolving around marketing automation, customer engagement and support, application development as well as analytics.

RudderStack lets you identify your leads in Salesforce without having to use the REST APIs.

Find the open-source transformer code for this destination in the GitHub repository .

Getting started

It is recommended that you create a new Salesforce account to use with RudderStack. This will protect any confidential information present in your existing Salesforce account. However, this is entirely optional. You can also use your existing account to configure Salesforce as a destination.

To create a new account, go to Setup > Administration Setup > Users > New User and select System Administrator as the profile type. This should give RudderStack the required permissions to access the API.

Before configuring Salesforce as a destination in RudderStack, verify if the source platform is supported by referring to the table below:

Connection Mode	Web	Mobile	Server
Device mode	-	-	-
Cloud mode	Supported	Supported	Supported

To know more about the difference between cloud mode and device mode in RudderStack, refer to the RudderStack Connection Modes guide.

Once you have confirmed that the source platform supports sending events to Salesforce, follow these steps:

1. From your RudderStack dashboard, add the source. Then, from the list of destinations, select Salesforce.

2. Assign a name to your destination and click on Next.

Connection settings

To configure Salesforce as a destination in RudderStack, you need to specify the following settings:

• User Name: Enter your Salesforce username in this field.

• Password: Enter the password associated with the Salesforce account.

• Security Token: Enter your Salesforce security token.

For more information on the Salesforce security token, refer to the Salesforce Help guide.

• Map Rudder Properties to Salesforce Properties: This setting is enabled by default and allows you to map the RudderStack event properties to the corresponding Salesforce fields.

• Sandbox mode: Enable this setting if you are using a Sandbox environment for the integration.

For more information on the Salesforce Sandbox mode, refer to the Salesforce Help guide.

• Use contact ID for converted leads: Enable this setting if both the lead and contact field mappings are the same.

Identify

RudderStack lets you get the leads from your website or mobile app into Salesforce through the identify call.

Identifying a potential lead

The following code snippet demonstrates a sample identify call in RudderStack:

rudderanalytics.identify('userid', {
  name: 'Alex Keener',
  title: 'Mr.',
  email: '[e-mail]',
  company: 'Google Inc.',
  phone: '[phone]',
  rating: 'Hot',
  city: 'New Orleans',
  postalCode: '90002',
  country: 'US',
  street: 'Blue Gum Street',
  state: 'LA'
}, {
  'integrations': {
    'Salesforce': true
  }
});

This snippet identifies a unique user based on the userid and the associated traits passed in the identify call.

When the identify method is called, RudderStack checks if the lead already exists using the email property. If yes, the lead/contact is updated with the traits passed in the identify call. If not, a new lead is created in Salesforce.

When you make an identify call with a set of user traits, RudderStack will update the appropriate record in Salesforce depending on whether it is a lead or a contact using its lead or contact ID.

It is mandatory to include 'Salesforce':true in every Salesforce integration object. As Salesforce has strict API limits, this is required in order to prevent the users from hitting their limits. By default, RudderStack does not send identify calls to Salesforce. Hence, any identify call that does not include 'Salesforce':true in its payload will be ignored.

Updating custom fields in Salesforce

If you wish to update custom fields in Salesforce using RudderStack, make sure that you first create those fields in Salesforce before sending the data through RudderStack. For more information, refer to the Salesforce Help guide.

As the Salesforce Leads API requireslastName and company to be present, absence of either of these fields will result in RudderStack automatically appending the 'n/a' to both the fields - even if they have been specified in some previous request.

For example, if you want to collect a custom trait in RudderStack named newProp, create a field label named newProp. This will generate an API name as newProp__c. RudderStack automatically appends the __c to any custom trait.

Make sure the casing is consistent . For example, if the custom fields are created in the camel case, then the traits must be sent to RudderStack in the camel case only.

Updating Salesforce objects

You can create or update any Salesforce object using the identify event. To specify the object type, follow the schema below.

RudderStack looks for the key externalId under context and determines the Salesforce object type by removing the part Salesforce- from the field type. Further, it makes a PATCH request if there is an id present in the request to update the record. Otherwise, a new record is created.

You can pass multiple object types in a single request and RudderStack will create that many requests to Salesforce.

rudderanalytics.identify('123456',
    {
      FirstName: "John",
      LastName: "Gibbs",
      Email: "[e-mail]"
    },
    {
      externalId: [
        {
          type: "Salesforce-Contact",
          id: "sf-contact-id"
        }
      ]
    });

In the example above, RudderStack updates the Contact object in Salesforce with id as sf-contact-id and sends the traits object to Salesforce.

By default, RudderStack creates a Lead object in Salesforce and maps the traits to it, as mentioned above. For other objects, RudderStack does not modify the traits; they are sent to Salesforce as it is.

Supported mappings

RudderStack supports and maps the event properties to several standard fields in Salesforce, as listed in the following table:

RudderStack property	Salesforce standard field
address.accuracy / accuracy	Accuracy
company.annualRevenue	AnnualRevenue
address.city / city	City
company.name / company	Company
address.country / country	Country
address.countryCode / countryCode	CountryCode
convertedAccountId	ConvertedAccountId
convertedContactId	ConvertedContactId
convertedDate	ConvertedDate
convertedOpportunityId	ConvertedOpportunityId
createdById	CreatedById
createdAt / createddate	CreatedDate
description	Description
email	Email
emailBouncedDate	EmailBouncedDate
emailBouncedReason	EmailBouncedReason
firstName	FirstName
geocodeAccuracy	GeocodeAccuracy
id	Id
company.industry	Industry
individualId	IndividualId
isConverted	IsConverted
isDeleted	IsDeleted
isUnreadByOwner	IsUnreadByOwner
jigsaw	Jigsaw
jigsawContactId	JigsawContactId
lastActivityDate	LastActivityDate
lastModifiedById	LastModifiedById
lastModifiedDate	LastModifiedDate
lastName	LastName
lastReferencedDate	LastReferencedDate
lastViewedDate	LastViewedDate
address.latitude / latitude	Latitude
LeadSource	LeadSource
address.longitude / longitude	Longitude
masterRecordId	MasterRecordId
name	Name
company.employee_count	NumberOfEmployees
ownerId	OwnerId
phone	Phone
photoUrl	PhotoUrl
address.postalCode / postalCode	PostalCode
rating	Rating
salutation	Salutation
address.state / state	State
address.stateCode / stateCode	StateCode
status	Status
address.street / street	Street
systemModstamp	SystemModstamp
title	Title
website	Website

FAQ

Which Salesforce Edition should I use to access the API?

Before connecting to the Salesforce API with RudderStack, make sure you are using the right Salesforce edition. You must have either the Enterprise, Unlimited, Developer, or Performance editions to access the API.

Follow this Salesforce help article for more information.

Where do I obtain the Security Token?

You can find your security token under Setup > Personal Setup > My Personal Information > Reset My Security Token.

How do I check the number of Salesforce API calls left for the day?

To check the number of Salesforce API calls, go to Setup > Administration Setup > Company Profile > Company Information. You should then be able to see a field called API Requests, Last 24 Hours, which contains the number of API calls left for the day.

What if I don't include 'Salesforce': true in my identify call?

Salesforce has a very strict API limit. Moreover, RudderStack does not send any identify calls to Salesforce by default. If you don't include 'Salesforce':true in your identify call payload, the call will be simply ignored.

Contact us

For queries on any of the sections covered in this guide, you can contact us or start a conversation in our Slack community.