Archives de catégorie : Features

Code Builder – Setup – Step by Step activation guide

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If you were used to develop, and never jumped to VS Code installation on your workstation, you can now access Code Builder, with a much more professional user experience than Dev Console.

Follow this step-by-step guide to enable Code Builder, directly in your Salesforce Org.

You will need to enable from within your Production instance, but would be naturally able to work since then in your developer sandboxes. It will require a production license for each developer needing to use Code Builder, but does not need to be a full Salesforce business license.

Setup – Code Builder – Enable Code Builder

A new package version has been available since early May

The package is then available in Setup > Installed Packages

You can then either enable the Code Builder license to the Platform Integration license,

or manually assign the related permission set group to the concerned users

Remark : you would see the following permission sets when going through the related detailed permission sets

To Launch Code Builder, go to App Launcher

Code Builder instance is then loading in the browser, with an URL address looking like: https://nameoftheinstance-name.fra.001.sf.code-builder.platform.salesforce.com/?folder=/home/codebuilder/dx-project

After loading you will see a screen that will ring a bell :

Let’s connect the instance on which you will work (sandboxes) as you would do with your VS Code’s Command Palette

To do so, please follow the following instructions :

  • Click on Connect an Org button from previous screen. Then, in the displayed popup, select the kind of sandbox to connect to, as you can do, with VS Code’s Command Palette

  • Enter an alias to easily determine the instance

Once the window is loaded (could take a while), please click on the cloud icon, in order to open the Org Browser.

When you choose Open the Org Browser, all the configured instance metadata is retrieved and displayed in your local project under the root directory.

Then to access detailed configuration, choose the metadata in the left panel, and choose to Retrieve and Open Source

Now you can modify and push your code, from CodeBuilder, to your developer sandbox. As in VS Code, be always aware on the sandbox / instance, which your Code Builder is connected to.

To read more on the subject :

Scale Center for Salesforce Org Performance review (beta since Summer’23)

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Salesforce has made available, an org analysis feature, called « Scale Center » to all their Unlimited Edition Client. It has been made available on Full Copy sandboxes as well.

The feature is accessible from the setup menu (look for « Scale Center » in setup’s Quick Find box). You still may try to contact your Salesforce AE, to get, or try to activate the solution for your Salesforce instance.

First, get to Scale Center section, select Org Performance, and activate the feature.

Scale Center – Welcome screen to launch the analysis feature

Once activated, Scale Center will run to collect and analyse your data. It will need a couple of hours to gather all measures.

Scale Center – First data collection process

After performance measures collection, the admin system will be able to define either a quick observation range (last 4h / last 12h / last 24h until now) or define more accurately the time frame for data observation.

Scale Center – Simple range definition on last few years
Scale Center – Custom base range between 2 dates

The Admin System will also be able to compare the time frame, with a previous one, by clicking on Compare checkbox, and then define the second timeframe.

Scale Center – Time frames comparison

Here is below a sample of a performance measure chart on a long time frame

Scale Center – Restitution of the overall performance on a time range

The tool allows the Admin user to define a 30-minute long slot, to deep dive on outliers, or anomalous data that may be highlighted in such chart.

Scale Center – Deep dive on a time slot selection

From this 30-minute long selection, the System Admin will be able to generate either :

  • a dedicated report on a specific axis (Apex, or Database..)
  • a consolidated report, gathering metrics related to all topics of the list below

Scale Center – Report generation starting from the previous time range definition

Start a new analysis report, see report status,

Scale Center – Report definition

From the Setup menu (Setup > Performance > Scale Center > Performance Analysis) a system admin can access all performances reports generated from within the previous screens. You can consult there the last 100 reports generated within your Salesforce Organization.

However, be aware that the generated reports will expire after 30 days.

Scale Center – Analysis report generation in progress

The Performance Analysis report will take a few minutes to be generated. During this preparation time, when clicking on the report in progress, the report is not yet available.

Scale Center – Analysis report not available because in progress

When ready, the report will be accessible by refreshing the page ; it will be tagged as available, in the Analysis related list, from the previous screen.

Scale Center – Analysis report available for consultation after generation

To read more on the subject :

Winter’24 – Permission Set Summary (Beta)

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In Winter’24 preview, there is a new feature that is in beta testing, that allows to consolidate and present an overall vision of all permissions present within a given Permission Set.

To access this summary, you should navigate in Setup, to the given permission set, and click on « View Summary (beta)« 

A complete summary of all included permissions, of this Permission Set, is then displayed, without needing to deep dive in the usual permission menu (that you could see in the grey section of the bottom of the previous screenshot).

The top section of the page displays :

  • A first block with the Permission Set summary information,
  • Information about all permission set groups, which include the Permission Set

The section below presents :

  • The System Permissions present within the enabled Permission Set (before you had to go to the System Permission sub menu, and scroll through the whole page with all System Permissions, to see which ones have been enabled),
  • The Object permissions
  • The Field permissions

Salesforce Summer’23 – API v21-30 retirement (Summer’25!) – Integration problem with Microsoft Power BI

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For Summer’23 release upgrade, Salesforce have originally announced that they will stop supporting API (Soap, REST, Bulk) version from version 21.0 to 30.0.

Salesforce Platform API Versions 21.0 through 30.0 Retirement

Release Update announced for Summer’23

For information, as you can see in recent Summer’23 related communications, these versions will be retired but will continue to run technically until Salesforce Summer’25 release !

That extra-time gives every Salesforce teams 2 years to update all API usages to newest API versions, and concomitantly ensure in the meantime that the « oldest » API are not used anymore by applications or tools connected to Salesforce (to push data to Salesforce, or get data from Salesforce), in your clients IT landscapes (ETL/ESB, data visualization tools, Salesforce custom API requests from client websites or mobile applications…).

https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2023/05/an-important-update-to-our-legacy-api-retirement-plan

To prepare for the API retirement, for our clients, we may organize technical discovery sessions with application owner (of all the applications connected to Salesforce) to discover which API version is used by these applications / these usages… but you will need to investigate technically as well through all the applications connected to Salesforce.

To get all these usages, you may use a VS Code extension like SFDX-Hardis (and especially Detect Legacy API use function)

Extract of Apex version legacy usages – retrieves with Hardis SFDX extension

I wanted to highlight a special usage I identified about a very well-known (and used) data visualization application : Microsoft Power BI.

Microsoft Power BI connection to Salesforce uses default v29.0 version, when the vesion is not explicitly configured in the report source.

A PowerBI configuration file, without mention of Salesforce API Apex version

To be able to make PowerBI use the desired Salesforce APEX API version, Data or Business consultants have to mention the API version to use, directly in the connexion configuration (Salesforce Login URL could be replaced by the domain name URL of the concerned Salesforce instance) : 

Source = Salesforce.Data("https://login.salesforce.com/", [ApiVersion=57.0])

Just be cautious about :

  • Always work with the version of your production environment

In Salesforce release preview periods, you may have preview sandboxes on version N+1, although your production and non-preview sandboxes are in version N. It would generate errors if a configured API connection, based on the sandboxes you are testing the reports with, are deployed in order to connect with the production instance. Always leverage on the API version of the production instance.

To read more about 

Salesforce Spring’23 – Data model – new Gender Data Fields

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In Spring’23 release upgrade, Salesforce deployed new gender fields : Gender Identity & Pronouns.

This data model upgrade concerns Lead, Contact, and Person Account objects :

  • API names on Lead & Contacts : GenderIdentity & Pronouns
  • API names on Person Account : PersonGenderIdentity & PersonPronouns
Change modal to accompany clients to adoption of Gender Data

By the past, Salesforce had already implemented these fields in their Non-Profit Success Pack (NPSP). With Spring’23 release, it is now integrated in Salesforce core platform, beyond mere client referential, feeding all the clouds, especially marketing products.

New GenderIdentity standard field on Contact standard object – Picklist values
New Pronouns standard field on Contact standard object – Picklist values

Equality is a strong core value at Salesforce, one among the 5 core values on which Salesforce relies (Trust , Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and the more recent Sustainability) and develop all its business.

As Salesforce mentions they wish to provide to their employees an ecosystem where they can feel themselves the way they are, it was natural for them to deploy in their products, for their customers, the same kind of attention, they provide to their employees.

Just be cautious about :

  • The fields are not yet available on unrefreshed Non-Preview Sandbox.

The fields had been deployed/delivered by Salesforce on production environments (with Spring’23 release upgrade, early February) and on preview sandboxes (early January). However, be aware that non-preview sandboxes had not been upgraded with these fields. So you may experiment some CI/CD issues or deployment errors, if you use automatic integration/deployment processes and tools, because they will identify a data model discrepancy, and they will not be able to deploy these standard fields. A sandbox refresh is still possible to update your non-preview sandboxes to match Spring’23 delivered data model, but it is still a laborious operation that needs to be planned and well organized among all teams / users / stakeholders.

  • These fields may not appear on your extractions. They may even generate errors !

As the fields came in with API v57.0, you will need to use this last v57.0 API version to access these fields. Otherwise Salesforce API will not let you access them.

Error when querying new gender fields in current « not v57.0 compliant » Salesforce Inspector / API

For example, Salesforce Inspector is still in version 1.14 aligned with Winter’23 release (v56.0) while a GitHub Pull Request has been created in Salesforce Inspector’s GitHub repository to ask the author to make the extension compliant with latest Salesforce API.

To read more about (publications et guides written by Salesforce)

Salesforce Trailblazer TDX 2023 – 5 FREE Integration User

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Free Salesforce swag is always something that Trailblazers, Salesforce clients, and Salesforce-addict consultants are looking for… but when it comes to free licences, that’s a whole other issue !

In last TDX 2023 (TrailblazerDX 2023) on March 7th and 8th, Salesforce announced the addition of 5 FREE Integration user (= API Only) users for their clients (with Salesforce Enterprise and Unlimited editions), to be deployed, in a phased way as of March 14th, with additional licences at a very challenging price.

And, here they come !!

Salesforce, with its last Spring’23 patch 13.1, introduced the Salesforce Integration user license along with a Profile named API Only.

As indicated by its name, this new profile is dedicated to back-office operations / integrations.

5 new licences added for free and available for integration/technical user assignment

Naturally, in past and ongoing Salesforce implementations, Salesforce Architects and Technical Lead still recommend to use dedicated user (with either System Admin or Custom technical-oriented profile) to handle integration use case within Salesforce (still with proper connected app configuration as a best practice).

Each integration type is often covered by a dedicated user (or at least it should be).

That often leads to contexts with up to 3 or 5 dedicated integration users for integrations. Even if is aligned, this way, with administration & security standards, all these users consumes « all included » highly-priced « business » licenses slots.

From an admin point of view, there is no need anymore to create / clone new custom profile (who has cloned it from System Admin profile with out modifying it ? Moreover, who has always handled them directly as Admin ? ). The new API Only profile is here on the shelf.

New Profile – API Only naturally – accessible in Salesforce setup

As it is an « API Only » enabled profile, the users who will be assigned this new profile, will only be dedicated to integration use cases, because users would not be able – as it should always be the case for technical / integration users in order to avoid security-related access issue – to login to Salesforce login page by using the user credentials (that generally never expire, by the way).

The existing and new users – dedicated to integration use case – are now to be transferred / created with this new license and profile. Have fun & free some licenses !

Just be cautious about :

  • Automatisms / Apex code / bypass triggers… that may leverage profiles names. They should be taken in account concomitantly with the profile assignment switch to the new license/profile.
  • Check your integration after your license switch (with non-regression testing) on sandbox before impacting the configuration. Obvious comment, but that does not hurt to write it 😉

License and profile are available, as the others, in user creation setup page

For information, to be complete, an known issue has been logged by Salesforce, because some clients, who had already created a custom « API Only » profile with the same security idea, have encountered issues in their code. The issue is currently handled by Salesforce and will be solved in an upcoming patch.

In addition :

  • A Integration licence will be available in Developer Editions to test the feature
  • For customers who would need additional licenses, it will be possible to buy additional licenses at a very challenging $10 per user per month price (current public licences price shared by Salesforce).

To read more about Integration users :