The Force.com Platform offers a powerful, scalable, and secure Web Service API to support integration use cases common to large enterprises. In this session, we will revise some of these patterns then focus on a specific pattern used to solve asynchronous integrations. We will delve in to the specific techniques related to this pattern and put them to use by forming real world end-to-end integration use case illustrating maintainability, scalability, extensibility, and security.
2. Safe Harbor
Safe harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:
This presentation may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If any such uncertainties
materialize or if any of the assumptions proves incorrect, the results of salesforce.com, inc. could differ materially from the results
expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make. All statements other than statements of historical fact could be
deemed forward-looking, including any projections of product or service availability, subscriber growth, earnings, revenues, or other
financial items and any statements regarding strategies or plans of management for future operations, statements of belief, any
statements concerning new, planned, or upgraded services or technology developments and customer contracts or use of our services.
The risks and uncertainties referred to above include – but are not limited to – risks associated with developing and delivering new
functionality for our service, new products and services, our new business model, our past operating losses, possible fluctuations in our
operating results and rate of growth, interruptions or delays in our Web hosting, breach of our security measures, the outcome of any
litigation, risks associated with completed and any possible mergers and acquisitions, the immature market in which we operate, our
relatively limited operating history, our ability to expand, retain, and motivate our employees and manage our growth, new releases of our
service and successful customer deployment, our limited history reselling non-salesforce.com products, and utilization and selling to
larger enterprise customers. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of salesforce.com, inc. is
included in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year and in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the most recent
fiscal quarter. These documents and others containing important disclosures are available on the SEC Filings section of the Investor
Information section of our Web site.
Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other presentations, press releases or public statements are not currently
available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase our services should make the purchase decisions
based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com, inc. assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these
forward-looking statements.
9. Integration Assessment Criteria
We are looking to solve with the following criteria in mind:
▪ Secure
▪ Bulkified
▪ Extensible
▪ Mobile friendly
▪ Maintainable
▪ Transaction Integrity
▪ Guaranteed message delivery
▪ Reports and monitoring
10. Notify / Callback Pattern
Middleware
Salesforce.com
Workflow
Rule
Outbound
Message
Remote
Listener
Queue /
Orchestrate
Remote
System
WF Action
Outbound
Message
Send Outbound
Message
(Notify)
Acknowledge
Web
Service API
Queue
Ack
Retrieve data
Invoke
11. Process Lifecycle
8 Sales P.O. in ERP
7 Fulfillment (Create &
6 Fulfill P.O. complete.
5 Populate External query data
4 Approval / processID update)
3 CreateRep Back office task(s)
2 – Acknowledge and an Opportunity
1
closes
Another transaction order a
A created purchase messageasis needs
An optional tasks If Salesforcerequires a soft
Back retrieved fromSalesforcethat action to the
Datafulfillment system hasinitiatessent to thebefires.
The outbound messagesuchsimpleprocess that
office step. occur is internal notify.
Outbound Message (configured approval
via workflow)
sent system
requires and retrieve to the a required
fulfillmentcreation Purchase 24hr
foreign key the ofprovidescreated
process, to run. ERP the Salesforce etcfor
ERP to bothreference and data OrderP.O. the
CallbackSalesforceThis needs to be delivery
OBM in system.
transactional with the system
transaction from Salesforce. update in
guarantee.
Salesforce.
4
3
Cloud Gateway
1
2
5
Web Service APIs
8
5
ERP
6
8
Transaction A
6
6
Transaction B
8
7
Fulfilment
12. End To End Solution - Security
Cloud Gateway
ERP
Web Service APIs
Transaction A
Transaction B
Fulfilment
14. Assessment Against Criteria
Criterion
Assessment
Secure
✓
Network, Transport and Application level security.
Dual firewall DMZ.
Web Service Gateway
Maintainable
✓
Salesforce: Clicks not code
Cloud Gateway: Yes (product dependent)
Guaranteed Delivery
✓
First Mile: Outbound Messaging
End to end: Middleware / Cloud Gateway
Bulkified
✓
Outbound Message: 100 records per message
Mobile Friendly
✓
Asynch outbound message. Not tied to UI.
Transaction Integrity
✓
Callback by cloud gateway. Message ID filtering.
Reports and Monitoring
✓
End to end: Via Middleware
First Mile: Salesforce Outbound Messaging
Extensible
15. Alternatives
Apex Callout via @Future contexts
▪ Code (extensibility & maintainability)
▪ Governor limits (10 @Future x 10 Callouts each)
▪ No retry mechanism
▪ No reporting for first-mile delivery
Visualforce Apex Callout (Asynchronous)
▪ Code
▪ No retry (especially when user navigates away)
▪ No reporting for first-mile delivery
16. Options Analysis
Criterion
Outbound Message
Apex Callout (VF)
Apex Callout (@Future)
✓
✓
✓
✓
X
X
Guaranteed Delivery
✓
X
X
Bulkified
✓
X
✓
with limits
Mobile Friendly
✓
X
✓
Transaction Integrity
✓
✓
✓
assuming a callback
Reports and Monitoring
✓
X
X
Secure
Extensible
Maintainable
17. When good things go bad…
What happens when there are functional / validation errors
▪ Asynchronous messages do not give users feedback
▪ Users will need feedback as to the current status
• E.g In Queue, Sent, In Error etc
▪ Operations / Support team needs access to proactively investigate
and quantify errors.
18. Integration Control Fields
▪ Each object / record sent to the master system has 3 fields
▪ Integration Action (Add, Modify, Delete)
▪ Integration Status (Sent, Complete, Error)
▪ Integration Error Code
▪ A workflow rule fires and sends an outbound message when
the integration action is set to ‘Sent’
19. Notification Centre
When the integration status stays at ‘Sent’ for > 90 seconds
When the integration for parent or child record is set to ‘Error’ then rollup error to Customer
Notifications centre is also used for Business Rules and Manual entries
20. Where To Get More
• Download and review the Salesforce.com Integration
Patterns and Best Practice paper
http://bit.ly/1aMHrVC
Visit the integration page on wiki.developerforce.com
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Integration
• Create a developer account
https://events.developerforce.com/signup
• Use the Integration CookBook
http://developer.force.com/cookbook/category/integration/
22. We want to hear
from YOU!
Please take a moment to complete our
session survey
Surveys can be found in the “My Agenda”
portion of the Dreamforce app