Salesforce

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that helps businesses manage their sales, marketing, service, and other customer-related activities. This document describes how to connect IBM watsonx Orchestrate to Salesforce and use its skills on watsonx Orchestrate.

Tip: The Salesforce app connects to the Salesforce Core Platform environment. If you want to connect to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud environment, use the Salesforce Account Engagement app.

Before you begin

  • If you don't have a Salesforce account, you can create a Developer account to try Salesforce for free. If you want to create a free Salesforce account to test with watsonx Orchestrate, make sure that you create a Developer account rather than a Trial account. If you connect to watsonx Orchestrate with a Trial account, the Salesforce skills do not work.

  • Your edition of Salesforce needs to be enabled for API access ("API enabled"). If you're using a free trial of Salesforce, it is not API enabled; sign up to the Developer edition instead.

  • By default, the API access is only allowed on Standard, Developer, Unlimited, and Performance editions of Salesforce. The professional edition on Salesforce does not come with free API access, and you might need to pay to enable the API access or upgrade to a higher edition.

  • Ask your Salesforce administrator if your edition of Salesforce is API enabled, and if necessary request API enablement or upgrade to a higher edition that has API access.

Connecting to Salesforce

Note: The Salesforce app requires you to allow pop-up windows and redirects in your browser for validation. If you have trouble to connect to the Salesforce, check the address bar to see whether you must turn off the pop-up window and redirect blocking.

Connect to the app according to the credential type that you or your team want to use.

If you want to connect the app to the Orchestrate Agent skill set, skill sets from AI assistants, or the Team skill set with Team credentials, refer to Managing app connections.

If you want to connect to the app to the Personal skill set or the Team skill set with Member credentials, refer to Connecting to apps.

Configuring the connection

Configuring the connection on watsonx Orchestrate SaaS

To connect watsonx Orchestrate to a standard Salesforce production environment:

  1. Click Connect app.

  2. Optional: In the Custom URL field, enter the custom URL to connect to a specific production, sandbox, or your company's personalized login page.

  3. Click Connect app. watsonx Orchestrate offers your Salesforce account as the default choice to connect to.

  4. Specify the Username and Password.

    Username: The email address used to log in to Salesforce. Password: The password for the specified email address.

  5. Click Log In > Allow to enable watsonx Orchestrate to access your Salesforce account.

Configuring the connection on watsonx Orchestrate on-premises

To connect watsonx Orchestrate to a standard Salesforce production environment:

  1. Click Connect app.
  2. In the Custom URL field, enter the custom URL to connect to a specific production, sandbox, or your company's personalized login page.
  3. In the Client ID field, enter the consumer key generated when you create a connected app for watsonx Orchestrate in Salesforce.
  4. In the Client secret field, enter the consumer secret generated when you create a connected app for watsonx Orchestrate in Salesforce.
  5. In the Access token field, enter the consumer key generated when you create a connected app for watsonx Orchestrate in Salesforce.
  6. In the Refresh token field, enter the refresh token generated from the application client ID and client secret.
Note: The icon A green check icon appears to show that the app is connected. indicates that the connection was successfully established.

Configuring skills through dynamic schema discovery

Salesforce might have some custom fields that are specific to organization and update the data with varying fields. IBM watsonx Orchestrate skills use dynamic schema discovery to adapt automatically to diverse data structures, enable the system to process data with varying fields, types, and formats without explicit programming. This flexibility reduces the need for manual schema updates or custom coding for each new data source.

To configure the skills using dynamic schema discovery, do the following:

  1. Connect to the Salesforce application using the organization provided credentials.

  2. Configure the skills from skill studio.

    The skills are updated automatically through dynamic schema discovery.

    • Click menu menu.
    • Select Skill studio > skills and apps > Configure prebuilt apps.
    • In Choose an app, select Salesforce.
    • In Choose skills to configure , check the skills that you want to configure and click Configure.

  3. Add the configured skills to team skill set or personal skill set or AI chat.

Getting the connection values

Follow the steps to get the connection values to connect watsonx Orchestrate to Salesforce.

Custom URL

Use the custom URL field to connect to a specific production, sandbox, or your company's personalized login page. The type of environment or subdomain you can connect to depend on your Salesforce edition. For example, sandboxes are available in some editions like Professional, Standard, Performance, and Unlimited, but aren’t available in the Developer Edition. See the following instructions for more information:

  • If you're connecting to a specific production instance, enter the login URL in the Custom URL field in the following format (without the https:// prefix):

    • <instance>.salesforce.com where <instance> represents the name of the production instance that you're connecting to; for example, na19, eu11, or ap1 for the North America, EMEA, or Asia Pacific regions.

  • If you're connecting to a standard sandbox that's being used for development or testing, enter the login URL in the Custom URL field by using either of these values (without the https:// prefix):

    • test.salesforce.com (the generic, non-instance-specific URL)
    • <instance>.salesforce.com where <instance> represents the name of the sandbox instance that you're connecting to; for example, cs19.

  • If you're connecting to your company's personalized login page (with a configured subdomain) in a production environment, specify the URL in the Custom URL field by using the following format (without the https:// prefix):

  • subdomain.my.salesforce.com where subdomain represents the name of a subdomain defined within your Salesforce org to replace the instance name; for example, myCompanyName.

Tip: If you're using the Developer Edition, the custom URL must be the hostname that you use to log in to your developer instance. Sometimes, for example, it ends with -dev-ed.my.salesforce.com rather than the typical .my.salesforce.com.
  • If you're connecting to your company's personalized login page (with a configured subdomain) in a sandbox environment, specify the URL in the Custom URL field by using the following format (without the https:// prefix): subdomain--sandboxname.instance.my.salesforce.com
    where:
    • subdomain represents the name of a subdomain defined within your Salesforce org to replace the instance name,
    • sandboxname is your assigned sandbox name, and instance is the name of the sandbox instance; for example, myCompanyName--mySandboxName.csN (where N is a number).
Important:

Following are the steps to get the connection target from your Salesforce instance:

  • Log in to your Salesforce account.
  • Click the profile icon.
  • Copy the entire string of characters (including the dashes) below your profile name.
  • Use the copied string as connection target while connecting to Salesforce from watsonx Orchestrate.

Technical parameters

The following table contains the technical parameters required by some skills of this app and instructions to retrieve them.

Parameters Details
accountName The ID that identifies your account, which is your email address.
Case ID To get the Case ID, use the Get all case team members skill.
Member ID To get the Member ID, use the Get all case team members skill.
Team Role ID To get the Team Role ID, use the Get all case team members skill.

What to do next

After you connect to the app, you can use the Salesforce skills. For more information see, Using the chat.

To learn about the available skills, see List of prebuilt apps, skills and skill flows.

Info: Find information on known issues here.

Parent topic:

→ Connecting to apps