Connecting to Salesforce

Edit online

Salesforce is a leading cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that empowers businesses to manage sales, marketing, customer service, and other customer-centric operations. Integrating Salesforce with IBM watsonx Orchestrate enables seamless data exchange, workflow automation, and improved customer engagement across your enterprise systems.

To integrate Salesforce with watsonx Orchestrate, you must establish a secure connection that allows both systems to communicate.

Note:

The Single sign-on (SSO) toggle is enabled only for supported OAuth 2.0 authentication types and applications. If the application does not support an SSO-enabled authentication type, the toggle remains disabled. For supported configurations, see Configuring single sign-on for applications.

Steps to connect

Use the following steps to connect Salesforce to watsonx Orchestrate:

From the main menu, go to Manage > Security.

Important:
In the on-premises environment, use the Manage > Connections navigation path to access connections.
Click the Connections tab and search for the corresponding app name or the Salesforce Connection ID.
Click edit next to the matching connection ID.
Select the authentication method your organization uses (OAuth 2.0 or Key Value Pair).
Enter the Salesforce‑specific connection details described in the corresponding connection details section below.
Complete the Draft and Live setup steps.
Save and test the connection to confirm successful setup.

Authentication methods

Salesforce supports the following authentication types in watsonx Orchestrate:

OAuth 2.0 (Authorization Code): Recommended for production connections
Key Value Pair (KVP): Supported for API key–based and legacy scenarios

Note:

For agents created after September 2025, OAuth 2.0 is the only supported authentication for Salesforce.

Connection ID

Use the following Connection IDs when locating your Salesforce connection in the Connections settings page.


Authentication type	Connection ID
OAuth2 Authorization Code	`salesforce_ibm_184bdbd3`
Key Value Pair	`salesforce_key_value_ibm_184bdbd3` (deprecated)

OAuth 2.0 connection details

If your organization uses OAuth‑based authentication, set Authentication type to OAuth2 Authorization Code and enter the following fields:


Field	Description
`server_url`	The base URL of your Salesforce instance
`authorization_url`	The URL where users are redirected to log in and authorize access
`token_url`	The endpoint used to exchange the authorization code for an access token
`client_id`	The client ID of your Salesforce connected app
`client_secret`	The client secret associated with your Salesforce connected app
`scope`	Use api offline_access. Use api offline_access. This is required because the agent currently supports only the OAuth 2.0 Refresh Token flow for now.

To get these values, see the Salesforce API documentation.

Key Value Pair connection details

If your organization uses API keys or a legacy configuration, set Authentication type to Key Value Pair and add each of the following fields using Add new field:


Key	Description
`base_url`	The base URL of your Salesforce instance (for example, `https://yourInstance.salesforce.com`)
`token_url`	The URL used to obtain the OAuth token (for example, `https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token`)
`client_id`	The client ID of your Salesforce connected app
`client_secret`	The client secret associated with your app
`domain`	The Salesforce domain (for example, login, test, or a custom domain)

Note: When using Key Value Pair, only Team credentials are supported.

To get these values, see the Salesforce API documentation.

What to do next

Now that your app connection is live, you can start using it in watsonx Orchestrate.

Run an agent in Orchestrate Chat to complete tasks using natural language. See Using Orchestrate Chat for more details.
Use relevant agents and tools to perform app-specific actions. See Prebuilt agents and Prebuilt tools for more details.