Loading Data from Salesforce

The Salesforce connector gives you access to your Salesforce data tables and reports, and you can import them into Spotfire for further analysis. When accessing data using the Salesforce connector, custom queries are not supported, and only in-memory data analysis is available.

Creating a new connection to Salesforce:

To load and start analyzing data from Salesforce in Spotfire, you must create a connection to Salesforce.

1. Click Files and data .

2. In the Files and data flyout, click Connect to.

3. In the list of connectors, click Salesforce.

4. In the Salesforce flyout, click New connection.

5. In the Connection to Salesforce dialog, choose your preferred authentication method and log in:

   A. Logging in via the Salesforce website
   For the most convenient login procedure, or if you want to use federated authentication with a custom domain, click Log in with Salesforce... to launch the Salesforce login procedure in your web browser. In your web browser, follow the instructions and allow access for Spotfire, and then return to Spotfire.

   B. Logging in directly in Spotfire
   If you want to log in with username and password (and typically security token) in Spotfire, which is a prerequisite if you want to use the connection in analysis files that will be opened in Spotfire Automation Services or Scheduled Updates, enter your credentials, and then click Connect.

Result: A connection to Salesforce is established, and the Views in Connection dialog is displayed, where you can select what reports and tables to load.

Selecting data to load from Salesforce in your connection:

When you have connected to Salesforce, you can select what reports and tables to load in the Views in Connection dialog.

1. In the Available tables in database list, select the reports and tables you want to bring into Spotfire and click Add >.

   Comment: If you are loading data from reports, see Importing Salesforce reports for additional information.

2. For each added view, choose which columns to import into Spotfire, by selecting or deselecting them in the Columns in selected view list.

3. When the configuration is done, click OK to close the Views in Connection dialog.

4. The final step is a summary view of the data tables that will be added to your Spotfire analysis. Click OK to confirm.

Result: The data that you selected from Salesforce is imported into Spotfire.

Tip: Because of the large amount of tables and columns in Salesforce, it can take a long time to import Salesforce data. One way to limit the amount of transferred data is to use prompts when working with Salesforce data tables. This will provide a better user experience, because only relevant data will be loaded into Spotfire. See Adding Prompts to Data Connections for more information.

Tip: When selecting reports and tables to load, you can join together related tables into a single view. Spotfire recognizes a number of common relations, but sometimes you might need to add custom relations. See Structural Relations to learn more about adding relations. Generally, primary key columns in Salesforce are named 'Id', while names of foreign key columns contain 'Id' as part of the name, for example 'MemberId' and 'OwnerId'.

Working with joins and related tables

Add related tables

When you select data from Salesforce, you can easily add tables that are related to a data table you have selected. To achieve this, click to select the data table in the Views in connection list, and then select Relations > Add related tables.

If you use Add all related tables with Salesforce data, only related tables 1 level down are added. Because of the large amounts of data and relationships in Salesforce data, using Add all related tables is not recommended.

Custom relations

You can also add related tables manually, as a custom relation, with Relations > New relation.... If you want to use custom relations, it is important that you know your Salesforce data and the relationships that are defined between tables. When you use custom relations with Salesforce data, keep the following restrictions in mind:

• To be able create a custom relation to join tables from Salesforce, the relationship between the tables must be defined in Salesforce.

• You can only use the join method Left outer join. Other join methods are not supported.

Importing Salesforce reports

You can import your Salesforce reports along with your data tables into Spotfire, but a few things might be good to know beforehand.

• Report names are localized, and depend on the language configured on the Salesforce account.

• Prompting, on-demand, and relations are not supported for reports.