Salesforce Integration Patterns & Best Practices – with Video

Recently I gave talk in one of most active webinar of Salesforce ecosystem today – Apex hours on topic Integration Patterns and Best Practices in Salesforce.

Response was more than expected and questions were high quality. Therefore, I thought to quickly write high level summary of presentation in this blog post along with Youtube video that you can find towards the end of this post.

Firewall, Proxy and Reverse Proxy

Before integrating anything with Salesforce, as per Architect, it is necessary which system components are important for security and may impact with integration pattern to be used.

Firewalls : It controls and protects Malicious Traffics. Firewall can be hardware or software based.

Proxy aka Forward Proxy : Proxy normally configured in your browser or systems like VsCode, data loader, eclipse to hide your actual identity. Every outgoing request transmits through proxy server to make sure external systems unaware about your true origin and identity

Reverse Proxy : Its used by Web Servers and sits before it. It can server any purpose like authentication or perform security related stuff. Best example is Mulesoft where we can configure API proxy which is used to apply throttling, avoiding DoS attacks or applying SLA as per licenses provided to customer

Factors affecting Integration Patterns

At high level, there are five types of integration patterns in Salesforce

Request and Reply
Fire and Forget
Batch Data Synchronization
Remote Call In
Data Virtualization

1. Request and Reply

Few options available in request & reply integration patterns

External Services
LWC, Visual force calling external system
Callouts from Trigger
Batch Apex invoking external system

Request and Reply Integration Pattern in Salesforce

2. Fire & Forget

Fire & Forget – Platform events created by point & click

Fire & Forget – Platform event created by Apex / Code

Fire & Forget – Callout using Apex (Sub optimal Solution)

3. Batch Data Synchronization

Salesforce Integration Pattern – Batch Integration

4. Remote Call-in

Salesforce Integration Pattern – Using Standard SOAP or REST API to perform DML in Salesforce

Salesforce Integration Pattern – Using custom API built via Apex (Sub Optimal)

5. Data Virtualization

Salesforce Connect vs Custom API Callouts using LWC or Visualforce

Youtube Video on Salesforce Integration Pattern

Apex hours video – Salesforce integration patterns and best practices

Reference

Mastering Salesforce DX and VSCode
Platform Event Basics – Trailhead
Salesforce Documentation on Integration Patterns
Implementing External Services – Episode 10 of Path to code
Integrating Salesforce using Rest API – Episode 8 of Path to code

Posted

February 2, 2020

Salesforce

Jitendra

Tags:

Firewall, Integration, Mulesoft, Proxy Server, Reverse Proxy, Security

Comments

15 responses to “Salesforce Integration Patterns & Best Practices – with Video”

mayank

February 12, 2020

Beautifully explained the whole process. But if i need some custom features than how it would work?

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Naresh

March 20, 2020

Which pattern to use for the scenario –

Lets say we have a home grown quoting application and have to use it for quoting needs from Salesforce, so inorder to sync quotes between two systems, 1. we create a quote in Salesforce 2. invoke the home grown quoting app’s webservice with the quote details from Salesforcce (step 1 like quote id, opp id) to create the quote in home grown application 3. if the callout is successful, update the salesforce quote with the external id from the callout response. 4. If the callout is not successful, then delete the salesforce quote. This seems to be a simple requirement that’s seen in integrations, but in the approach we have taken, we face a lot of overhead and with the platform limitations have to put in workarounds. What is the best practice used in the industry to handle these kind of integration scenarios with other systems from Salesforce?

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1. Jitendra
  
  April 5, 2020
  
  It seems you requirement is realtime but dont understand what is process around external Quote Id ? Another patter that you can think of – Build validation rules in SF similar to external process, Let user save quote in Salesforce with intermediate status like Draft. Let ESB run every x hour and pull quote from Salesforce and push to external system and write back Id. If sync fails, add error message in Salesforce that why sync fail and let user fix that error instead of deleting quote.
  
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  1. Saikat
    
    January 24, 2023
    
    Thanks Jitendra, this makes a lot of sense even for my current requirement.
    
    One follow up question for this scenario. If the validation rules themselves are mastered in another system & the draft quote details are validated from a real-time call to another system (to check everchanging LATEST UPDATED validation rules), does it make sense to create same validation rules in Salesforce side also, so that if sync fails due to bad quote data, user can fix that data & wait for resync, or flag that quote & move on?
    
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Rajeev Kumar Singh

May 3, 2020

Thank you. This is great session.
Could you please help me out how we can send real time data to Salesforce from legacy system.

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Rajeev Kumar Singh

May 3, 2020

If third party entered any record then same record should be enter in our Account record. How we can achieve this bidirectional Integration.

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Dave Pattison

June 4, 2020

I am enjoying viewing this session but I wonder why you don’t mention the Streaming API (PushTopic) as an integration pattern option? I Get that Platform Events can achieve the same thing. But Governor Limits on platform events, as in how many you can publish in a day, are far more restrictive, aren’t they? And with CDC you send ALL changes. But if all you want to do is to distribute changes to a subset of fields on a subset of records, are PushTopics the best option for that?

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Vaishali Patil

August 11, 2020

Thank you for wonderful session.

I am having multiple requirements and want to check feasibility of platform events.

1. On Opportunity close I need to update multiple external applications Currently I am using multiple Batch APEX approach and running the batch in every 10 mins. While performing this API callouts need to generate JSON request with multiple fields on opportunity and opportunity child objects. In some of the cases external systems are updating my opportunity as callback using SF data API/composite API. Can I use platform event as Fire and forget to notify external systems and the call back will remains same as is?

2. There are multiple future calls in opportunity process execution, Can I replace future calls with platform events?

3. The current daily volume of cases is very huge around 75 K opportunities per day and I am using Enterprise edition org. Will platform event suitable for such high volume of cases per day.

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Vaishali Patil

August 18, 2020

Thank you for wonderful session.

I am having multiple requirements and want to check feasibility of platform events.

1. On Opportunity close I need to update multiple external applications Currently I am using multiple Batch APEX approach and running the batch in every 10 mins. While performing this API callouts need to generate JSON request with multiple fields on opportunity and opportunity child objects. In some of the cases external systems are updating my opportunity as callback using SF data API/composite API. Can I use platform event as Fire and forget to notify external systems and the call back will remains same as is?

2. There are multiple future calls in opportunity process execution, Can I replace future calls with platform events?

3. The current daily volume of cases is very huge around 75 K opportunities per day and I am using Enterprise edition org. Will platform event suitable for such high volume of cases per day.

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David Rabinak

February 1, 2021

Hi Jitendraa, great blog and explanation as always! I am wondering about the scalability of the Platform events / CDC though. Especially with regards to syncing data out of the platform.
I understand from Salesforce docs that there is currently platform event / change data capture a daily limit of delivered events to CometD clients – 50k per day.

How I read that limit:
If I used e.g. Mulesoft to subscribe to a Salesforce platform event / CDC then this 50k per day (24hours) would apply. But this 50k daily limit is also shared with CometD clients inside Salesforce e.g. EmpAPI component.

Streaming API docs mention that the limit of delivered PushTopics is actually 1M per day (24 hours).

Comparing 50k vs 1M seems a bit (I mean a lot) sad.

Another comparison – Outbound messages do not seem to have allocations and limits around delivered messages (on the other hand there is the issues with potentially not delivering the messages in order)

Almost as if the main use case was to use platform events / CDC for event driven architecture “inside” the Salesforce platform (potentially also allowing outside systems to publish on the event bus and subscribing inside Salesforce) but not to communicate outside?

Am I misunderstanding the limits? Apart from this I am a fan of Platform events 🙂

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Rajashekhar

March 9, 2021

Thank you for the session.

I am working on building integration framework document that helps to follow standard path to connect between systems. As we do have multiple integration patterns to connect systems, It would be tough to stick with single framework. Could you please share some ideas on building this.

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Happisales

July 30, 2021

Thank you for the wonderful session.
It really helped me to know the sales force integration pattern best practices.

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Abhishek Mathur

August 18, 2021

Gone through the blog post and I must, I am very impressed by the details mentioned in here. Salesforce integration is a complex process and I think this post will prove very helpful for those who are looking for Salesforce integration services.

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Anamika

November 16, 2021

Good article on Salesforce Integration.

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Preludesys Salesforce Integration

May 5, 2022

Thanks for the blog. Salesforce Integration offers streamlined data flow to improve your decision making with critical insights on customer data.

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