20210428 - Sustainable Engineering practices & API Communities: Adoption Best Practices

All contents © MuleSoft, LLC
Anu Vijayamohan
Sustainable
Engineering
practices
Building API
Communities for
Developers
Tereze Gaile Dan Henry

MuleSoft Meetups:
Virtual Muleys (Online Group - English )
Moderator: Angel Alberici
April Edition, 2021
Recording

MuleSoft Meetups: Virtual Muleys
5

Keep in mind!
1. For Trainings and Certifications - https://training.mulesoft.com/. Mule 4 MCD
FREE Certification voucher when completing the Mule 4 Self-Serve course!
2. For Training queries:
https://help.learn.mulesoft.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
3. More Doubts?
○ We have a very good community to help you! https://help.mulesoft.com/
○ Or leverage StackOverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/) ( specially for
those working with Dataweave and Runtime)
6

Guidelines for today
1. Pop questions in the chat and anyone can try to answer!
2. Remaining questions will be asked in your behalf at the end of the
session
3. The Recording will be shared in the Meetups page and in the
VirtualMuleys Youtube Channel
4. Your feedback drives the content of these meetups, ﬁll the
surveys at the end of the event, let us know what you think!
7

Special March: Charity Edition. Why?
8
“...there’s strong evidence* that children in low-income
families that receive food stamps become more
productive and healthier adults, which means that the
program is actually good for long-run economic
growth...” - (Paul Krugman, 2018)
*Source: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20130375

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/marchwiththemules
Special March: Charity Edition. Why?
9
UK based #endchildfoodpoverty was formed by Marcus
Rashford to tackle child poverty and ensure that no
child goes to bed hungry, an issue that has only
worsened with the economic impact of the pandemic
and homeschooling. So let's get active and raise
money!
● Online English Group donated 90£! Thank
you for the attendance 3rd March!

March Recap:
Online English Group recordings
https://mule.is/MQRdF

Kevin Jervis Mark Hemsley
Francis Edwards
Panel Meetup: Toughest integration challenges
Recording available!

Deployment
Considerations
Operationalizing
your C4E
Anu Vijayamohan Arno Brugman

PKO AMER & EMEA
IoT with MuleSoft/Salesforce: game changing green oﬃces
Hub & Spoke Architecture with Salesforce

PKO APAC
Event-Driven Architecture and Deployment models for MuleSoft

Announcements & Updates

MuleSoft Engineering deepdive: Testing
Mule apps with MUnit
5th May
17:00 London (GMT) | 18:00 Europe CEST | 21:30 India (Delhi)
9:00 San Francisco | 12:00 New York
Eduardo Grave Pablo Mangudo
Register now!

● In this short demonstration, we're going to
guide you through the process for exposing API
Groups in Anypoint API Community Manager.
● Oftentimes an API consumer’s needs require a
combination of capabilities that may or may not
be covered by a single API product.
● Instead of oﬀering siloed API products, API
product owners should collaborate with line of
businesses, partners, or external developers to
build packaged solutions from disparate APIs
using API groups.
● MuleSoft Videos Youtube channel:
https://mule.is/cgWShx
Conﬁgure API Groups in API Community Manager | Friends of
Max Demonstration (Dan Henry) [11 minutes]
17

● This Friends of Max video walks you through
how to begin building custom connectors and
contribute it to the exchange
Building Custom Connectors with Mule SDK | Friends of Max
Demonstration (Shashank Tilwalli) [15 minutes]
18

● This video is an overview of API Manager
explaining the diﬀerent policies you get out of
the box, how to create custom policies, best
practices for working with API Manager and an
example for applying policies within API-led
connectivity.
API Policies and Best Practices | Friends of Max Demonstration
(Lou Scheermann) [12 minutes]
19

● OAuth and Open ID Connect are popular
frameworks for securing access to APIs.
However many organizations discover that
Open ID connect introduces gaps for managing
system to system interactions, and full life cycle
client management. We will explore the
capabilities and limitations of these
frameworks, and how you can manage the full
life cycle of client applications in the Anypoint
platform.
Extending OIDC Capabilities to Support Full Lifecycle Client
Management in the Anypoint Platform (Mike Moore) [10 minutes]
20

Register now!

Sustainable Engineering Practices
Tereze Gaile
April 28th MuleSoft Meetup

About the Speaker
30
Tereze Gaile, Customer Success, Senior Technical Consultant
● Originally from Latvia, now UK
based
● Worked in a range of roles and
companies in the MuleSoft
ecosystem
○ Deloitte
○ ThirdEye Consulting
● Co-founder of Codename
MAXINE, a partner MuleSoft
D&I initiative and support
group
● Joined MuleSoft Customer
Success about 3 months ago

Agenda
1. Sustainable Engineering Intro
2. Architecture & Development
3. Deployment & Operation
4. Sustainable Engineering in Action
5. Key Takeaways
6. Questions
31

Sustainable Engineering Intro
What is it and why is it important?

Brief overview and introduction to Sustainable Engineering.
What is Sustainable Engineering?
As a discipline, it has been around for a
few decades and solutions try to
balance environmental, societal and
economic criteria.
However, in the technology domain it is
still in its infancy.
33
Designing and/or
operating systems
that use energy
and resources
sustainably.

Wider beneﬁts associated with sustainable engineering practices.
Why is it important?
34
Reduction of IT operational costs
Improving application performance and optimizing
the infrastructure utilization results in cost savings.
Attracting the best talent in the market
Younger generations entering the job market have
strong environmental values.
Improved company image
Recognised for driving positive environment impact
and foster increased customer loyalty.
of companies
worldwide
now report on
sustainability1
80%
1
https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/xx/pdf/2020/11/the-time-has-come.pdf

Architecture and Development
Best ‘green’ practices to adopt during early phases of the SDLC

Improved application performance and simpler development.
Switch to Mule 4!
Mule 4 built upon reactive programming
principles
● Mule app does not need to wait for IO
intensive operations to complete
before doing other tasks.
● Flow execution and thread switching
optimized.
The net eﬀect is greater concurrency and
throughput while reducing the overall
system overhead.
36

Better user experience and reduced energy consumption.
Caching
Implement a caching strategy to:
● reduce load on the mule
instance
● increase message processing
speed
● decrease network latency
MuleSoft oﬀers Cache scope and
HTTP Caching which allows you to
easily conﬁgure and implement
caching in mule apps.
37

Avoid generating excess events.
Slim Down Your Mule Applications - Part 1
38
Avoid sequences of set-variable /
set-payload since this will generate
a new event for each component,
instead combine these in a single
ee:transform.
✅
❌

Compress data and remove variables.
Compress large ﬁles or images in your
mule apps by leveraging the
Compression module.
Also, remove useless metadata or
variables during ﬂow execution when
they are no longer needed.
Some examples include limiting variable
scope or using the remove variable
transformer to reduce memory
consumption.
39

Less is more when requesting data.
40
Take advantage of connectors or APIs that
allow you to specify exactly what data you
need, for example
● Salesforce and Database Connectors
● OData and GraphQL APIs

More eﬃcient event processing.
DataWeave Tips and Tricks
● Do not log complex
DataWeave expressions with
every request
● If payloads are large, include
indent=false property to
improve client parsing and
reduce response size
● Avoid patterns of iterating
over a collection and then
transforming each individual
item
41
BAD: Transforming
each individual item
in a for-each scope
will require more
processing power.
GOOD: Transform
ﬁrst and then iterate
over the collection.
✅
❌

Understand how resources are consumed by your mule app.
Get Application Insight
Incorporate dynamic code analysis or
performance monitoring tools to
understand how the Mule app consumes
resources, analyse energy proﬁles and
identify which parts of the code are least
eﬃcient.
42

Deployment and Operation
How deployment options can impact your CO2
footprint &
optimising app health and server utilisation

Why you might want to deploy to the cloud.
Cloud Deployment
In general, choosing PaaS and iPaaS is a
greener option due to the virtualization of
servers and improved energy eﬃciency
through sheer scale of infrastructure.
When companies manage their own
infrastructure, server utilization can be as
low as 15-20%2
and the unused capacity
ends up as wasted energy.
44
1
https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/environment/the-cloud?energyType=true 2
times more eﬃcient1
(AWS Vs average
enterprise data centre)
3.6

Use data to better provision computing resources.
Monitoring on CloudHub
Visualize and monitor application
performance with:
● Anypoint Runtime Manager
dashboard
● Anypoint Monitoring for more in
depth metrics
Finetune vCore size and number of
workers to optimize resource allocation.
If your mule application at its peak is
consuming 0.5% vCore CPU, what
should you do?
45

Obtaining resource optimization on-prem / customer hosted.
Customer Hosted - Hybrid & RTF
Hybrid
● Can deploy more than one mule
application on a single runtime instance
● Mule serves registered with Runtime
Manager agent so still able to set alerts and
monitor servers
Runtime Fabric
● Deploy multiple containers on one server
while enjoying application separation
● Containers with higher utilisation use less
energy than virtual machines with lower
utilization
46

Sustainable Engineering in Action
Putting the theory to test!

Nested For Each Scopes, Excess Variables and Loggers.
Test 1 - Transformations
48
VERSUS

Test 1 - CPU Results
49
Max CPU at Batch Run 19.4%
Average CPU (4 Batch Runs) 11.7%
Diﬀerence in CPU between unoptimised and optimised mule app.
Mule App
Deploying
Max CPU at Batch Run 5.8%
Average CPU (4 Batch Runs) 3.85%

Test 1 - Heap Memory Results
50
Diﬀerence in heap behaviour between the apps.
A batch run consumes more heap
memory.
Heap memory incrementally
increasing.

Diﬀerence in requesting all the ﬁelds instead of a few.
Test 2 - Data
51
VERSUS

15 users for 15 minutes, automated requests via JMeter.
Test 2 - ﬂood.io Performance Test
52

Test 2 - Results for /all
53
Response Time and Transaction Rate analysis.
Range:
400 -
1.00k ms

Test 2 - Results for /few
54
Response Time and Transaction Rate analysis.
Range:
300 -
700 ms

Key Takeaways

Key Takeaways
1) You have the power to make a genuine
impact on sustainability
2) Reap additional beneﬁts (better API
performance, reduced cost, corporate
responsibility)
3) Get started today and easily apply these
practices to real life use cases
56

Thank you!

Appendix
Detailed Slides

Improved application performance and simpler development.
Switch to Mule 4!
● Mule 4 built upon reactive programming
principles
○ Combines asynchronous data streams and
non-blocking operations
○ Mule app does not need to wait for IO
intensive operations to complete before
doing other tasks
● In Mule 3, manually have to assign a processing
strategy to each flow
○ Automatically self-tuned in Mule 4 to
optimize flow execution and thread
switching. Threads are no longer idle.
● The net effect is greater concurrency and
throughput while reducing the overall system
overhead.
60
There is a lot of great content published if you’re interested in
finding out more. For example, the “Reactive programming - New
foundations for high scalability in Mule 4” Whitepaper.

Better user experience and reduced energy consumption.
Caching
Implement a caching strategy to:
● reduce load on the mule instance
● increase message processing speed
● decrease network latency
This is particularly powerful when the app
receives repeated requests for the same
information or it needs to process large
repeatable streams.
MuleSoft offers Cache scope and HTTP Caching
which allows you to easily configure and
implement caching in mule apps.
61
HTTP Caching Policy in API Manager.
Cache Scope and XML config in Anypoint Studio.

Compress data and be smart with variables.
Compress large ﬁles or images in your mule apps by
leveraging the Compression module and selecting
either the Zip or GZip compressor strategies.
Also, remove useless metadata or variables during
ﬂow execution when they are no longer needed.
Some examples include limiting variable scope or
using the remove variable transformer to reduce
memory consumption.
62
Avoid sequences of set-variable / set-payload
since this will generate a new event for each
component, instead combine these in a single
ee:transform operation.
Compression module and Remove Variable in Studio.
✅
❌

Less is more when requesting data.
63
Take advantage of connectors or APIs that allow you
to specify exactly what data you need (ie. if you only
need 5 fields out of the possible 25 fields, send a
request for those 5 fields only).
For example, the Salesforce and Database
Connectors (among many others) allow you to build
queries to narrow down the desired dataset
through filtering and specifying fields.
Similarly, OData and GraphQL APIs give you the
ability to request the data you need and nothing
more, and consequently slimming down the
payload size.

More eﬃcient event processing.
DataWeave Tips and Tricks
● Do not log complex
DataWeave expressions with
every request
● If payloads are large, include
indent=false property to
improve client parsing and
reduce response size
● Avoid patterns of iterating
over a collection and then
transforming each individual
item
64
BAD: Transforming each
individual item in a for-each
scope will require more
processing power.
GOOD: Transform ﬁrst
and then iterate over the
collection.
✅
❌

Understand how resources are consumed by your mule app.
Get Application Insight
Incorporate either dynamic code analysis or use
performance monitoring tools to understand how
the Mule app consumes resources, analyse energy
proﬁles and identify which parts of the code are
least eﬃcient.
To get started, you can complement performance
test best practices by monitoring the CPU,
memory, disk and network resources consumed
by the mule runtime engine via sysstat for
Performance Monitoring.
There are a whole host of other tools to monitor
your application performance like VisualVM.
65
VisualVM data on a Mule App running locally.

Why you might want to deploy to the cloud.
Cloud Deployment
In general, choosing PaaS and iPaaS is a greener option
due to the virtualization of servers and improved energy
efficiency through sheer scale of infrastructure.
MuleSoft’s CloudHub leverages AWS’s data centres which
are 3.6 times more efficient1
than the average enterprise
data centre.
Furthermore, when companies manage their own
infrastructure, in the majority of cases server utilization is
as low as 15-20%2
and the unused capacity ends up as
wasted energy.
Opting to deploy to the cloud means you can benefit from
optimization of IT resource allocation and reduced
overall operational costs.
67
1
https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/environment/the-cloud?energyType=true 2
Amazon, Sustainability in the Cloud - Cloud Efficiency.

Use data to better provision computing resources.
Monitoring on CloudHub
Visualize and monitor application performance with:
● Anypoint Runtime Manager dashboard
○ CPU, memory usage and number of messages
● Anypoint Monitoring for more in depth metrics and
create
○ JVM (eg. thread count, committed virtual memory,
JVM uptime) or infrastructure (eg. JVM CPU %
Utilization, System CPU % Utilization, System
Memory)
With this data shining a light onto your application
performance and virtual server utilisation, ﬁnetune vCore
size and number of workers to optimize resource allocation.
As an example, if your mule application at its peak is only
consuming a few percent of the vCore’s CPU then consider
using a smaller vCore.
68
Inbuilt dashboard on Anypoint Monitoring.

Obtaining resource optimization on-prem / customer hosted.
Customer Hosted - Hybrid & RTF
Hybrid
● Can deploy more than one mule application on a single
mule runtime instance (not possible on CH)
● Mule serves registered with Runtime Manager agent so
still able to set alerts and monitor servers
● Can get more enriched data by installing Monitoring
Agent
Runtime Fabric
● Deploy multiple containers on one server while
enjoying application separation at the operating level
● Containers with higher utilisation use less energy than
virtual machines with lower utilization (given the same
workload)
● Two options: Self-managed Kubernetes or VMs / Bare
Metal
69
Runtime Fabric on EKS / AKS.

API Communities
Adoption Best Practices

Contents
1. Introduction and Background
a. Implementing your API Community with the right approach
b. Use Cases through User-Centered Design
c. API Community Operating Model
2. Building your Community with the API Consumer’s Journey
72

Introduction & Background

Implementing your API Community with
the right approach

Congratulations on your starting your API Community journey!
Introduction
75
Enabler | Low |
Operational
Indirect | Medium |
Strategic
Direct | High |
Product
Business Value
Contribution
Enabler
Enables technology and platform
Example: APIs that enable critical
integrations
Indirect
Unlocks critical business functionality &
capabilities
Example: A Customer Order API
Direct
Generates direct business value
Example: Monetized API Products
We are
here!

● Taking a user-centric approach to design
○ Think about your API Consumers!
● Involving the right people from the start
● Having a clear vision
● Defining your non-functional requirements (e.g
SSO, single vs multiple communities etc)
Taking the high road, and avoiding the road to disaster
Introduction
76
What does work
● Rushing to set up your community
● Going straight into technical implementation
● Surfacing API’s from Exchange, into API
Community Manager, without identifying the API
Consumer
● Building API Community based on the business
group structure defined in the Anypoint Org
● Failing to confirm what your customer needs
What does not work

~8 week journey
Steps building up to release
77
Discovery and Planning Setup / Refresh Pre-Go Live Review Regular Operations
Milestone
Deﬁne the following:
● Community goals / vision
● Use cases / user stories
● Community audiences
● Wireframes / site structure
● Design & delivery decisions:
○ Security
○ Environment strategy
○ Release management
○ Email relays
● Operating model

Deﬁning a Vision / Value Proposition
79
“Twilio's mission is to fuel the future of
communications. We enable developers to
build, scale and operate real-time
communications within software
applications.”
“The power of
Visa Network.
Delivered as
APIs.”

Use Cases through User-Centered Design

Start with the consumer
Cultivate a thriving ecosystem
Observe, Measure and
Iterate
Drive API consumption
Design and Deliver your
API products
Outside-in customer
experience
Embrace openness and
experimentation
Deﬁne your API business
model
Engage with partners and
co-create
Consumer

To understand API Users
Using User-Centered Design
82
The User
1. Understand
context of use
2.
Specify User
Requirements
3.
Produce
Design
Solutions
4.
Evaluate
Design
against User
Requirements
Successful
Design
Solution
● Iterative design
process
● Involve users
throughout the
design process
● Create highly usable
products

For User-Centered Design
Engineer/Developer Designer Product Manager Marketer Business Stakeholder
Multidisciplinary Design Teams
83

To create a customer-facing experience that meets the goals of your
enterprise and the API consuming developers.
Mapping the API Consumer Journey
84
Discovery & Learning
Envisioning &
Experimenting
Developing &
Troubleshooting
Deploy &
Monitor
Learn & Evolve
Learn More

To create a customer-facing experience that meets the goals of your
enterprise and the API consuming developers.
Mapping the API Consumer Journey
85
Discovery & Learning
Envisioning &
Experimenting
Developing &
Troubleshooting
Deploy & Monitor Learn & Evolve
DIY
Store
Journey
API
Consumer
Journey
Discovering the shop
on the high street
Finding the API
Portal online
Looking through
the colour
swatch, ﬁnding a
colour you like
Finding an API
Product that has
potential
Thinking about
which room you
could paint with
this colour
Asking the store
rep for tips on
painting with this
paint
Thinking about use
cases it would
provide value to
Asking questions in
the forum about
the API product
Buying a trial size
and testing it at
home
Using the mocking
service to understand
the expected
behaviour
Requesting access to a
sandbox API to trial
integration
Making a purchase
and painting your
Living room
Waiting for the
paint to dry and
checking the ﬁnish
Making a purchase and
requesting access to a
Production API
Building your Client
Application, connecting it to
the API and monitoring the
performance
Providing feedback
that you want the
same colour for
woodwork
Providing feedback that it
would be nice if the API did
these 4 other things

The UX Honeycomb - A Framework to help
prioritizing on the DX journey
86
Credible
Valuable
Usable
Findable
Useful
Accessible
Desirable
Think Feel
Use

API Community Operating Model

To grow the maturity of your API Program
Extending the capabilities of your API ecosystem
88
Exchange services
Exchange
- Auto-generated
- Searchable catalog
- Reuse internal best practices
API Consumer
C4E Architect
API Developer Technical
Writer
Existing
C4E

All contents © MuleSoft, LLC 89
C4E Architect
API Consumer
Exchange services
API Community Manager
- Branded, personalized experiences
- Forums, blogs and events
- Support case management
Exchange
- Auto-generated
- Searchable catalog
- Reuse internal best practices
API Developer Technical
Writer
To grow the maturity of your API Program
Extending & Scaling the capabilities of your API
ecosystem
API Program
Manager
Community
Operator
Community
Builder
API Product
Manager(s)
Existing
C4E
Extended
C4E

Digital center of truth for
internal assets and APIs
Internal
Marketing
Drives the Community Vision with support from the wider
organization
The API Program Manager
90
API Program Manager
Internal
Comms
Legal
Customer
Care
Sales
External
Marketing
Learning &
Development
Internal Communities
Drive API product adoption to
create new connected
experiences
External Communities

Regular Operations
Supporting Product Teams to expose APIs as Products
API Community Operating Model
91
Setup or Refresh
(Ad-hoc)
Community
Builder
API Program
Manager
Community
Operator
API
Product(s)
API
Community
Platform
Product
Team n+1
Product Team A
Payments API
API Developer
Technical
Writer
Orders API
API Product
Manager
Product Team B
Technical
Writer
Product API
API Developer API Product
Manager

Building an engagement layer around the APIs
Tutorials
Case
Studies
Operating model Jobs to be Done
Forums
Docs
APIs
API Team
(API PM, Dev
Tech Writer)
Support
API Team
(API PM)
Community & API Teams
(Operator, Dev, Tech Writer)
Community Team
User
Groups
Events
Community Team, API Team API Team
(API PM)
API Team
(Dev, Tech Writer)
Create and improve assets
Build and grow ecosystems
API Team
(API PM, Tech Writer)
API Program
Manager
Vision

Information ﬂow to API consumer
Layered architecture to build engagement around APIs
General
information
Consumer speciﬁc
information
Business context
Specs
Technical Docs
API Product Manager(s)
Community Operator
Tech Dev
Tech Writer
Business Lead
API Program
Manager
Vision

Building your Community with the API
Consumer’s Journey

Out of the Box vs Customisation
96
For API Communities
Salesforce Lightning Platform
Exchange
API Manager
Monitoring
Salesforce Digital
Experiences
Branding, templates, CMS/DXP
& Community Builder
Anypoint Core Platform
API Community Manager
Templates, layouts and reusable
Lightning components for the
API lifecycle
Community
Members
Data
Bridge
Connectivity
between
platforms
Data
Bridge
Connectivity
between
platforms

Using Consumer Journey Mapping
How to approach development of your
Community
97
Discovery &
Learning
Envisioning &
Experimenting
Developing &
Troubleshooting
Deploy &
Monitor
Learn & Evolve

Design your API
Community
Fundamental Foundations
Discovery &
Learning
Envisioning &
Experimenting
Developing &
Troubleshooting
Deploy &
Monitor
Learn & Evolve
Community

Design your API
Community
Fundamental Foundations
Discovery &
Learning
Envisioning &
Experimenting
Developing &
Troubleshooting
Deploy &
Monitor
Learn & Evolve
API Consumer Concerns
Community Team Concerns
Community

Demo

Checklist
Next Steps
□ Deﬁne API Community Vision
□ Deﬁne Use Cases
□ Agree on Audiences
□ Agree on Operating Model
□ Develop Wireframes
□ Setup ACM
□ Review the ACM Self-Serve Guide
□ Operate and administer ACM
Want to become an expert?
● API Community Manager Trailmix for Community Owners
● API Community Manager Trailmix for Community Builders
101

Key Takeaways
● Think about what type of APIs you want to expose in your community
● Have a solid vision and start with the API consumer
● Make sure you’ve deﬁned a robust operating model to support your
community
● Use the API Consumer Journey to structure the development of your API
Community
○ Use our self-serve guide to do so
● Take it a step further with our Community Cloud Trailmix!

Appendix

Community Roles & Responsibilities (1)
105
C4E Role Responsibilities Skills Suggested Org. Function
API Program Manager ● Oversees overall vision & strategy for community
● Ownership of the community, branding, look and feel
● Lead community implementation
● Evangelise API community
● Guidance on cadence and tone of communications and
marketing
● Onboard API consumers and API Product Managers
● Drive API consumer engagement
● Track and report KPI metrics
● IT Strategic Vision
● Sufficient skills to use the Community
● Leadership
● User/Developer Experience
● Facilitation
● Communication
● Change Management
● Organization
● Program Manager (or equivalent)
API Product Manager ● Provide primary technical oversight throughout the API
lifecycle, from initial API design to deprecation/retirement
● Approve prospective consumption requests
● Work with individual API consumers to ensure that
requirements are met for using the API
● Coordinate with API Developers and API Testers to deliver
new functionality or update existing functionality
● Knowledgeable in Anypoint platform
capabilities, as well as in using
MuleSoft technology
● Knowledgeable in best practices
● Clear understanding of IT roadmap
● Communication
● Business skills
● Research and Analytical
● Prioritization
● IT Management
Community Operator ● Manage members, defining permissions and access
● Configure community settings
● Ensure the stability of the community and maintaining
access with the Anypoint platform
● Managing the rollout of new API Community Manager
version updates
● Knowledgeable in Anypoint platform
capabilities, as well as in using
MuleSoft technology
● Change Management
● Incident Management
● Problem Management
● Ownership and initiative
● Platform Operations

Community Roles & Responsibilities (2)
106
C4E Role Responsibilities Skills Suggested Org. Function
Community Builder ● Customize appearance & develop new functionality
● Building components or templates
● Customizing page layouts
● Modifying community appearance
● Experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript,
Apex
● Salesforce Customization
● Community Builder
● Web Design
● Testing/debugging
● UX/UI
● Front End Web Developer

Key Delivery Considerations for ACM
Factor Description Key Questions Why this is important?
User Interface
Design
Community UI can be customised
heavily. This impacts delivery effort and
ongoing support.
● Are there any UX flows available?
● How many custom Lightning components will be
required vs out-of-box?
● How many of the components can be re-used?
Community UI can be customised with out of the box or custom
components. It can be heavily modified if needed. If you have UX
flows, please share them. If you don’t please consider developing
them with support from ACM-enabled resources.
Feature
Complexity
The extent to which other areas of the
platform (e.g. processes, workflows)
need to be customised to meet
requirements.
● Will existing functionality / flows be used? (e.g.
onboarding process etc).
● What new functionality will need to be built?
The Salesforce platform is a powerful tool. Code or config can be
used to meet requirements. An 80% Config / 20% Code split is
recommended. All code requirements should be tightly reviewed
in the interest of long-term supportability / scale.
Development /
Rollout
Approach
Rollout approach could be big bang, or
MVP based.
● Will an MVP approach be taken? (our
recommendation)
● How will the platform be launched? (Walk / Crawl /
Run?)
● How will you ensure the community is adopted and a
success?
An MVP and Walk / Crawl / Run approach reduces scope
complexity and delivers value in the first release, and subsequent
releases. Planning an adoption strategy will help the community
be a success in the long-term.
Timescales Critical timelines that must be hit. ● What dates are being worked toward?
Fixed timescales will impact the quality, scope and/or cost of the
implementation (see previous slide).
Delivery Teams
The org structure of the delivery team.
We recommend use of Services
combined with customer resources.
● Who will be responsible for delivery of this project?
Customer, partners or a combo?
The combination of resources involved in delivery will effect the
short, medium and long-term success of ACM.
Deployment
Model
Handling code changes across
environments.
● How will changes be deployed across Environments?
Will there be any DevOps processes or release
pipelines?
Use of pipelines can reduce deployment effort and improve
quality / frequency of releases post go-live.
Support and
Governance
Post Go-Live support model.
● Who will support and govern the community once
live?
Support must be enabled on ACM and Salesforce in order to
make post go-live support model a success.
Single vs Multi
Comms
To combine or separate communities
(see next slide).
● Will there be one Community for all users? or
separate communities (e.g. divided by Business Unit)?
Use of single or multiple communities is a strategic decision that
significantly impacts solution complexity.

Single vs Multiple Communities
108
108
Factor Single Multiple (e.g. by LoB) Additional Comments
Branding Custom branding can be achieved in either Single or Multi community models Not impacted by single v multi.
Components Lightning components can be used across communities. Not impacted by single v multi.
API Visibility / Access API Access is granted based on User / Account level, and community visibility can be controlled whether single or multi. Not impacted by single v multi.
Access to Social Data
Chatter posts, comments, groups etc are accessible by all.
I.e. Upstream user can see posts from a Downstream
community user.
Chatter posts, comments, groups etc cannot be shared
across communities.
I.e. Upstream community user would not be able to see
posts from a Downstream community user
Impacts ability for devs to view
comments on single API across
communities.
Community User
Management
One user, one community One user, multiple communities
Registration needs to cater for
community assignment, if multi.
Case Management Cases will be routed to different support teams (by LoB), this can be supported by either single or multiple communities. Not impacted by single v multi.
Community
Administration
Multiple Community admins can be within same
administration function
Community admins can be created per community, and
can solely update and influence that community
Ongoing Maintenance One change affects the whole community definition.
Definitions are separate, giving autonomy to each LoB.
Although, this requires dual maintenance
Note: Config is bundled into one
metadata file per community.
Config Complexity of
building different
experiences
More complex, single community is customised to deliver
different experiences to different users.
Less complex, individual communities are customised
specific to needs.
Building multiple experiences on a
single community adds complexity to
overall config.
A Community is a group of people with common goals / interests. With an online community (and as a general guideline), you want to group
users that either need to interact with each other or utilise common functionality within the same Community.

Consideration Description Business Impact Effort to Implement / Address
Organization
Strategy
The ACM org (landscape) shall be
independent from an already existing
Salesforce org landscape.
High
Usually the user group of ACM (externally
and internally) are distinct from already
existinhg salesforce orgs.
Also, the SDLC for the ACM org shall be
independet
Medium
Align with an existing Salesforce team, they shall
understand that it is less effort for them to accept an
idependent environment landscape given the
different business context.
Release
Management
Strategy
This concerns how config / code will be
managed and deployed between
environments.
High
If there is no process in place for managing
releases, then changes can be different
across environments, and if not managed
this can be costly.
Medium
Config / code can be deployed through Salesforce UI
(Change Sets), or pipelines using the Metadata API.
See the following slides for options.
Environment
Strategy
Salesforce offers different types of
sandbox, some are free or paid for
depending on your license agreement.
High
Depending on what test environments are
being used for (e.g. Pen testing etc),
different sandbox types are recommended.
Medium
Plan upfront what environments you want / need,
and ensure that you have the right sandboxes
provisioned and available.
Config vs Code
Salesforce promotes a 80% / 20% split
on using configuration over code. The
more config you can use, the easier the
system is to maintain in future.
Very
High
Generally speaking, the greater the
codebase, the higher cost of future
development / ongoing support, and the
harder it is to easily make changes.
Low
The easiest way to ensure a good balance here is to
keep in mind the trade off of config vs code
throughout the project, as a key design decision on
all features. Remember: where possible, use config!
Email Relays
Email Relays is a feature of Salesforce
that enables System generated emails to
be sent through your email service.
Very
High
Without a relay, Salesforce emails can be
blocked by email providers. E.g. password
reset emails not received by users.
Alternative approach: Setup DKIM keys to
validate the sender
Low
The customer needs to setup the connection
between Salesforce and their Email Provider. This will
require liason with internal Email Server teams.
Single Sign On
Salesforce supports multi-IDPs for SSO,
and can act as an IDP to other apps too.
High Improved adoption and ease of use. Medium
Simple to set up on Salesforce side, but requires
availability of IDP on customer side.
Client App
Approval
ACM provides an OOTB solution for
requesting access to APIs, but some
organizations may need to extend this
High
Building out your own custom client
application approval process, will mean you
(the customer) will ultimately support the High
Customer requires experience and knowledge of
Salesforce Flows/APEX, but will also need to clearly
Key Technical Considerations for ACM

20210428 - Sustainable Engineering practices & API Communities: Adoption Best Practices

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