Accessing data from Salesforce

If you have Salesforce account, you can access and analyze data from Salesforce in Spotfire.

Before you begin

You must have access to a Salesforce account.

Procedure

On the authoring bar, click Files and data .
In the Files and data flyout, click Connect to and select Salesforce.
Click New connection.
- You might have access to shared connections to Salesforce in the library, which you can open to access a prepared selection of data from the external data source. Shared connections are listed under In library. If you access data from a shared connection, you just log in and click OK.
In the Load data from Salesforce dialog, choose your preferred way to log in:
- Log in with Salesforce
  This is typically the most convenient way to log in.
  
  Click to launch the Salesforce login procedure in a separate web browser window. Follow the instructions for logging in, and then return to Spotfire.
- Username and password (security token)
  If you want to log in directly in Spotfire, click to expand and show input fields for entering your username, password, and security token.
  
  Enter your credentials and click Log in.
Note: If you have a Salesforce sandbox that you want to connect to, select the Sandbox check box.
In the Select data from Salesforce dialog, select the data that you want to analyze in Spotfire. When you are happy with your selection, click Continue.
The final step is a summary of the data you are about to add to your analysis. To finish creating the data connection and add the selected data tables to your analysis, click OK.

Results

The selected data from Salesforce is loaded into Spotfire. You can configure your analysis so that the data is saved within the analysis instead of being reloaded each time the analysis is opened. See Storing data within the analysis to learn more about this.

Prerequisites for using the 'Log in with Salesforce' authentication in your Spotfire web client

Using Log in with Salesforce is the most convenient way to connect to Salesforce in Spotfire, and it also enables you to use federated authentication with your own custom domain. If you want to use the Salesforce login procedure in your Spotfire web client, your Spotfire administrator must have made certain configurations:

Your Spotfire Server must be configured to use the HTTPS protocol.
A Salesforce app must be created and configured to allow traffic from your Spotfire Server URL.

Note: For more information, see Configuring the Salesforce connector for use in web clients.

Selecting data from Salesforce

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Use prompts to limit data

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 Prompts in data connections – Limiting data fetched based on user input for more information.

Note: Prompts cannot be added to Salesforce reports, only to tables.

Structural relations in Salesforce

When you select 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'.

Joins and related tables

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Add related tables

When you select data from Salesforce, you can easily add tables that are related to a data table you have selected. In the Select data from Salesforce dialog, to add related tables to a data table, click to select the table in the list of selected tables, and, in the table overview, select Add related tables > Add directly related tables.

Note: 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 add related tables manually, as a custom relation, with Add related tables > Define a 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

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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.