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.
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 Reports and Tables lists, click to select which views to load.
Selected views are added to the middle of the dialog. Each selected view will be loaded into Spotfire as a new data table.
Click on a view in the middle of the dialog to see details for that specific view.

Note: When you click on a view in the middle of the dialog, you will see all the columns that are included in that view. You can then choose which ones to include when the data is loaded. By default, all columns in a view are included.
Click OK when you have added the views of interest, and selected which columns to include in each view.
The selected data is added to the summary view in the flyout.
In the flyout, you can change the name of the new data table. Click OK when you are satisfied.

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.

The Load data from Salesforce dialog

When you create or edit a Salesforce in a Spotfire web client, you use this dialog to select data.

In this example, seven views have been selected from the Reports and Tables lists. Three of them are reports and four of them are tables. The middle part of the dialog shows the added views in a list. The view named 'Order' has been selected in the middle part of the dialog, and to the right, all the columns included in the 'Order' view are shown. Exclude columns that you do not want to load by clearing their corresponding check boxes. To rename columns, click on the pencil icon.

Tip: You can go back and edit the settings in this dialog from the Data canvas. See Editing a data connection from the data canvas for more information.

Limitations when loading Salesforce data in Spotfire web clients

If the Salesforce instance you want to load data from contains very large amounts of data, keep the following limitations in mind when you create or edit a Salesforce connection in a Spotfire web client:

If the Salesforce instance contains more than 1000 reports and tables, the search function in the Load data from Salesforce dialog is disabled.
You might encounter issues when you select and add new data from Salesforce if the total number of columns in all selected reports or tables exceeds 2000. You can, however, create an analysis with such a connection in a Spotfire installed client and open it in the web client.

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 Adding prompts to a Salesforce connection in the web client for more information.

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. 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 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

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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.