Salesforce Integration
Since
2015
What is Salesforce Integration?
Salesforce Integration is the process of bringing two or more systems together, which allows you to streamline separate processes.
Think of cases in your own technology stack in which information is kept in one system but also required in another. By integrating them, you can easily manage all that information through multiple business processes that run across multiple systems.
We live in a digital era and we constantly need to improve our efficiency and our customers’ experience to remain competitive – it’s rare that a system works in isolation now. We need to become better and better at integrating our systems so that we can do it faster and in a scalable manner.
Salesforce Integration Capabilities
As I write, I’m thinking: “how can I talk about APIs and not make it boring?” I’m going to keep this section short and ‘to the point’, but I hope it captures your interest and encourages you to learn more about APIs.
You need a high-functioning API that allows any two applications to communicate with each other. When we are talking about integrations, it’s important that we understand their timing and direction. Timing falls into two categories:
- Synchronous: You make a call to another system, but you have to wait for a response in return. The processing won’t continue until the response has been received.
- Asynchronous: You make a call to another integrated system, but you don’t have to wait for a response – further processing can continue. For example, if you have a background job that will take a long time to process, you don’t want to wait for the response from that to be created (as you risk a timeout).
The other consideration is the direction of the integration, which can be outbound or inbound. Ask the question of which system is the initiator; if the answer is Salesforce then it’s an outbound call, and if it’s another system, it’s an inbound call.
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Types of Salesforce Integration Architectures
Each type of integration architecture offers both benefits and drawbacks worth noting. I will take you through the following three types:
Point-to-point integration
01
Hub-and-spoke integration
02
Enterprise Service Bus integration
03
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App-Based Salesforce Integration Approach
App-based integrations are low-code or no-code approaches to integrating Salesforce CRM. A proprietary app like MuleSoft Composer, which is available from Salesforce App Builder, or a third-party app like Zapier or Coupler.io can be used for this. Although some of the most complex integrations may not be possible using this method, it is quite simple to set up – this describes really well both the main benefit and the main drawback of this method. Due to the fact that you can conduct the integration process yourself, app-based integration is a great option for SMEs and solopreneurs.
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Time-Based Integration Processes
Salesforce integration can be Synchronous, Asynchronous, and a Batch process. Let see when to use which time-based Salesforce Integration processes.
A user action creates a request, and the user is blocked from continuing until the response is returned. A very near real-time response is expected and needed.
Synchronous Process
01
A user action creates a request, and the system does not wait for the response before letting the user move to the next task. Analogous to near real-time process
Asynchron- ous Process
02
Large data volumes are broken into chunks and processed in queues based on available resources. Can be implemented through Bulk API,SOAP/REST API.