Salesforce Cloud Mode Integration

After you have successfully instrumented Salesforce as a destination in RudderStack, follow this guide to correctly send your events to Salesforce in cloud mode.

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

Identify

You can use the identify call to create or update leads in Salesforce.

A sample identify call is shown below:

rudderanalytics.identify('1hKOmRA4GRlm', {
  name: 'Alex Keener',
  title: 'Mr.',
  email: 'alex@example.com',
  company: 'Google Inc.',
  phone: '+1-202-555-0146',
  rating: 'Hot',
  city: 'New Orleans',
  postalCode: '90002',
  country: 'US',
  street: 'Blue Gum Street',
  state: 'LA'
});

Note the following:

• You don’t require a userId to create a lead in Salesforce.
• When you call identify, RudderStack checks if the lead already exists in Salesforce using the email property. If yes, the lead/contact is updated with the traits passed in the identify call. Otherwise, a new lead is created.
• When you make an identify call with a set of user traits, RudderStack updates the appropriate record in Salesforce depending on whether it is a lead or a contact using its lead or contact ID.

Update custom fields

To update custom fields in Salesforce using RudderStack, make sure to first create those fields in Salesforce before sending the data through RudderStack.

For more information, see this Salesforce Help article.

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, to collect a custom trait in RudderStack named newProp, you must 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 across the custom fields and identify traits 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.

Update Salesforce objects

You can create or update any Salesforce object using the identify events. To do so, include an externalId object within your identify call containing the Salesforce object type (for example, Salesforce-Contact, Salesforce-Lead, etc.) and the corresponding id.

RudderStack looks for the externalId object within your identify event and determines the Salesforce object type by removing Salesforce- from the field type. Then, it makes a PATCH request if there is an id present in the request and updates the record accordingly.

A new record is created in Salesforce if:

• The id field is not present in the externalId object, or
• The id does not exist in Salesforce.

A sample identify call highlighting the externalId object schema is shown below:

rudderanalytics.identify('1hKOmRA4GRlm', {
  FirstName: "Alex",
  LastName: "Keener",
  Email: "alex@example.com"
}, {
  externalId: [{
    type: "Salesforce-Contact",
    id: "sf-contact-id"
  }]
});

In the above example, RudderStack updates the Salesforce Contact object with id as sf-contact-id and sends the user’s traits (first name, last name, and email) to Salesforce.

Create new records

To create new records, include only the type field in the externalId object within your identify call.

Do not include the id property when creating new records as it will cause an API failure.

rudderanalytics.identify('1hKOmRA4GRlm', {
  FirstName: "Alex",
  LastName: "Keener",
  Email: "alex@example.com"
}, {
  externalId: [{
    type: "Salesforce-Contact"
  }]
});

If you do not specify the type field, RudderStack creates a Lead object in Salesforce by default and maps the traits to it. For other objects, RudderStack does not modify the traits—they are sent to Salesforce as is.

Create multiple objects

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

You can use this technique to create multiple Salesforce leads with the same email address.

rudderanalytics.identify('1hKOmRA4GRlm', {
  FirstName: "Alex",
  LastName: "Keener",
  Email: "alex@example.com"
}, {
  externalId: [{
      type: "Salesforce-Contact"
    },
    {
      type: "Salesforce-Lead"
    },
    {
      type: "Salesforce-Lead"
    }
  ]
});

Supported mappings

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

FAQ

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.

How to fix “No such column ‘X’ on sobject of type Y” errors?

If event delivery to Salesforce fails due to a provided field not existing even though the field exists, check the field-level security settings for that field in Salesforce.

You will likely get this error when the field is not marked as visible to the role your RudderStack Salesforce user is using. To fix it, make the field visible to the appropriate role.

Questions? Contact us by email or on Slack