The Ultimate Guide to Salesforce Integration Patterns and Best Practices

Salesforce is a powerful platform that can help you streamline your business processes, connect with your customers, and grow your revenue. But to get the most out of Salesforce, you need to integrate it with other systems and applications that you use in your organization. Integration is the process of exchanging data and functionality between different systems, such as databases, web services, cloud applications, and devices. Integration can help you automate workflows, enhance user experience, improve data quality, and enable new capabilities.

However, integration is not a one-size-fits-all solution. There are different types of integration scenarios, challenges, and best practices that you need to consider before you start building your integration solution. That’s why Salesforce provides a comprehensive guide on integration patterns and practices that can help you design and implement effective integration solutions for your specific needs.

In this guide, we will introduce you to the key concepts and benefits of integration, the main integration patterns and use cases, and the best practices and tools that you can use to integrate Salesforce with other systems. By the end of this guide, you will have a better understanding of how to leverage integration to optimize your Salesforce platform and achieve your business goals.

What is Integration and Why is it Important?

Integration is the process of connecting two or more systems or applications to exchange data and functionality.

Integration can help you achieve various benefits, such as:

• Automation: Integration can help you automate repetitive and manual tasks, such as data entry, validation, synchronization, and reporting. Automation can save you time, reduce errors, and increase efficiency.
• User Experience: Integration can help you enhance the user experience of your Salesforce platform by providing seamless access to data and functionality from other systems. For example, you can integrate Salesforce with your email, calendar, chat, and social media applications to enable users to communicate and collaborate with customers and colleagues without leaving Salesforce.
• Data Quality: Integration can help you improve the quality and consistency of your data by ensuring that the data is accurate, complete, and up-to-date across all systems. For example, you can integrate Salesforce with your ERP, accounting, and inventory systems to ensure that the data on your products, orders, invoices, and payments is synchronized and aligned.
• Capabilities: Integration can help you enable new capabilities and features that are not available in Salesforce or other systems. For example, you can integrate Salesforce with your AI, analytics, and IoT applications to provide insights, predictions, and recommendations based on your data.

What are the Main Integration Patterns and Use Cases?

Integration patterns are common solutions to common integration problems. They describe the high-level design and architecture of an integration solution, such as the data format, protocol, direction, frequency, and trigger of the data exchange. Integration patterns can help you choose the best approach for your integration scenario, based on your requirements, constraints, and preferences.

The Salesforce development company provides a comprehensive overview of the main integration patterns and their use cases, which you can explore and analyze in the Application Integration Patterns for Salesforce Lightning Platform module.

Here is a summary of the five integration patterns that are covered in the module:

• Request and Reply: This pattern is used when Salesforce invokes a process on a remote system, waits for completion of that process, and then tracks state based on the response from the remote system. This pattern is suitable for synchronous and real-time integration scenarios, such as validating data, retrieving information, or performing calculations. For example, you can use this pattern to validate a credit card number, retrieve a shipping quote, or calculate a tax rate using a web service.
• Fire and Forget: This pattern is used when Salesforce invokes a process in a remote system but doesn’t wait for completion of the process. This pattern is suitable for asynchronous and near-real-time integration scenarios, such as sending notifications, updating records, or triggering workflows. For example, you can use this pattern to send an email, update a status, or trigger a fulfillment process using a message queue.
• Batch Data Synchronization: This pattern is used when Salesforce exchanges large volumes of data with a remote system at scheduled intervals. This pattern is suitable for periodic and batch integration scenarios, such as importing, exporting, or archiving data. For example, you can use this pattern to import leads, export reports, or archive cases using a file transfer protocol.
• Remote Call-In: This pattern is used when a remote system invokes a process in Salesforce, either synchronously or asynchronously. This pattern is suitable for inbound and bidirectional integration scenarios, such as creating, updating, or deleting records, or invoking actions or logic. For example, you can use this pattern to create a contact, update an opportunity, or delete a case using a REST or SOAP API.
• Data Virtualization: This pattern is used when Salesforce accesses data from a remote system without storing it in Salesforce. This pattern is suitable for real-time and read-only integration scenarios, such as querying, filtering, or displaying data. For example, you can use this pattern to query a product catalog, filter a customer list, or display a dashboard using an external object or a Lightning web component.

What are the Best Practices and Tools for Integration?

Integration is not only about choosing the right pattern, but also about following the best practices and using the right tools to implement your integration solution.

Some of the best practices and tools that you can use to integrate Salesforce with other systems are:

• Use the Layer Approach: The layer approach is a design principle that helps you separate the different aspects of your integration solution, such as the data, logic, and presentation layers. This can help you simplify your integration solution, improve its performance, and make it easier to maintain and modify. You can learn more about the layer approach and how to apply it in the Practice the Layer Approach unit.
• Use Connectors for Data Integration: Connectors are prebuilt components that enable you to connect Salesforce with other systems and applications without writing code. Connectors can help you save time, reduce complexity, and ensure compatibility and security. Salesforce provides various connectors for different types of data integration scenarios, such as Data Loader, Salesforce Connect, and MuleSoft. You can learn more about connectors and how to use them in the Connectors for Data Integration module.
• Use APIs for Application Integration: APIs are interfaces that enable you to interact with other systems and applications programmatically. APIs can help you customize your integration solution, extend its functionality, and integrate with any system or application that supports APIs. Salesforce provides various APIs for different types of application integration scenarios, such as REST API, SOAP API, Bulk API, and Streaming API. You can learn more about APIs and how to use them in the API Basics module.
• Optimize Your Org Performance at Scale: As your integration solution grows and handles more data and transactions, you need to ensure that your org performance does not degrade and that you comply with the limits and best practices of Salesforce. You can use various tools and techniques to optimize your org performance at scale, such as Bulk API, Platform Events, Big Objects, and Einstein Search. You can learn more about org performance at scale and how to improve it in the Org Performance at Scale module.

Conclusion

Integration is a key factor for the success of your Salesforce platform and your business. By following the integration patterns and practices that Salesforce provides, you can design and implement effective integration solutions that meet your specific needs and goals. If you’re considering hire a Salesforce developer to collaborate with YES IT Labs, know that they are among the best in their class. We hope that this guide has given you a good overview of the integration concepts, patterns, use cases, best practices, and tools that you can use to integrate Salesforce with other systems and applications. To learn more and get hands-on experience with integration, we recommend that you complete the Explore Integration Patterns and Practices trail on Trailhead.