Salesforce Integration Patterns and Practices: Maximizing Efficiency Across Your Tech Stack
You must have noticed that the market has been flexible and dynamic these days. Businesses aspiring to stay competitive should make informed decisions based on accurate data, achieve operational efficiency, and provide unparalleled customer experience. Data integration platforms such as Salesforce consulting can improve various critical challenges that come the way.
?Let’s have a look at the Salesforce integration patterns and practices and how you can use them to address diverse integration needs within your business ecosystem!
Salesforce Integration Patterns and Practices
When it comes to requesting and getting a response from an external system in Salesforce, there are several options available:
External Services: This is a simple integration method where Salesforce uses a point-and-click interface in Lightning Flow. The external system needs to provide an OpenAPI or Interagent schema, and it only supports basic data types.
LWC or Visualforce calling external system: Salesforce allows you to consume a Web Service Description Language (WSDL) and generate proxy classes. You can also use HTTP services to perform various operations like GET, POST, PUT, or Delete from a custom user interface.
Trigger: This involves making a callout to an external system when there's a change in data through a trigger. However, this callout must be asynchronous, and it's more suitable for one-way communication (sending data and forgetting about it).
Batch Apex invoking external services: In this method, you can make callouts to an external system using Batch Apex. The execute method in Batch Apex gets a refreshed governor limit every time it runs. However, there are still limits on the total number of callouts or the time allowed for callouts in a single transaction.
These options provide different ways to interact with external systems based on your specific needs and requirements.
2. Fire and Forget
The Fire-and-forget pattern in Salesforce involves sending a message or request without waiting for a response. It's useful for scenarios like logging or event notification where immediate responses aren't needed. This pattern reduces system coupling, enhancing scalability and fault tolerance.?
With Salesforce Platform Events, asynchronous communication between Salesforce and external systems is facilitated. This feature allows systems to publish and subscribe to events, enabling external systems to notify Salesforce about updates or interactions without expecting a response. It's a seamless way to integrate systems and streamline communication without unnecessary delays.
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3. Batch Data Synchronization
Batch data synchronization is a method used to periodically synchronize large volumes of data between systems in bulk, typically at scheduled intervals. Unlike real-time synchronization, which processes individual data changes as they occur, batch synchronization processes data in predefined batches.?
This approach is ideal for scenarios involving high data volumes, limited network bandwidth, or where real-time updates are unnecessary. By processing data in batches, batch synchronization helps optimize resource usage, reduce network overhead, and enhance overall system performance.
4. Remote Call In
Remote Call-In is a communication pattern where a system invokes functionality or services hosted on a remote server or platform. This pattern is crucial in distributed architectures, where different components need to communicate across network boundaries. It can involve synchronous methods like Remote Procedure Call (RPC) or Remote Method Invocation (RMI), or asynchronous mechanisms like message queuing. By leveraging Remote Call-In, systems can utilize external capabilities or resources without duplicating functions locally, promoting code reusability and modular design.
Salesforce facilitates Remote Call-In through various integration methods such as Apex Callouts, Apex REST services, and External Services. This allows external applications to invoke Salesforce functionality or retrieve data remotely, enabling seamless integration with third-party services for tasks like address validation or payment processing.
5. Data Virtualization
Data virtualization enables applications to access and manipulate data from various sources, such as databases, web services, and files as if they were part of a unified data source. Instead of physically moving or replicating data, this pattern provides a layer of abstraction, dynamically integrating and presenting data in real-time.
By facilitating data integration, federation, and abstraction without complex ETL processes, data virtualization promotes agility and reduces data duplication. Salesforce External Objects and Salesforce Connect exemplify this by virtualizing external data sources within Salesforce, allowing companies to access and query data from systems like ERP or legacy databases directly within Salesforce, without the need for data replication. This streamlines data access for applications and users, enhancing efficiency and promoting real-time decision-making.
Bottom Line
In 2024, strategic planning for Salesforce integration is necessary to adapt to rising integration needs and drive business growth effectively. By adhering to the above patterns and collaborating with a Salesforce integration company like DianApps, you will be able to leverage Salesforce. This will ultimately result in better customer insights, increased productivity, and a competitive advantage in the marketplace.