Salesforce makes easy-to-use Cloud-based business applications that help you stay connected to your Customers, Prospects, Partners, and more. You can enhance the features of Salesforce by setting up Salesforce GitHub Integration. GitHub makes it easy for multiple developers to work on a single project and track the changes in real-time.
GitHub also includes Project Organization and Management features. Now, Salesforce GitHub Integration enhances these very features and helps you and streamline your development process. This eventually boosts your business.
This article walks you through the 4 easy steps to successfully set up GitHub Salesforce Integration. It also introduces you to both these platforms individually and provides you the limitations/challenges involved in this integration. Furthermore, I will also cover the advantages of going with Salesforce GitHub Integration. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Prerequisites
Listed below are the prerequisites of setting up Salesforce GitHub Integration:
- A Salesforce account.
- A GitHub account.
- Working knowledge of Git.
Introduction to Salesforce
Image Source
Salesforce is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that provides your the applications and tools to connect with your Customers, Prospects, Partners, etc. It is one of the best CRMs and enables your business to sell, service and market. With Salesforce, you can easily keep track of Prospects, Sales, and Customers with Leads, Opportunities, Accounts, and Contacts.
Business Cards, Websites, and other prospects that express your customer’s interest in learning more about your products and services are easily tracked in Salesforce as Leads. Salesforce helps you convert these into Opportunities. When you convert a Lead, Salesforce automatically creates an account that stores information about the company that you are doing business with.
Key Features of Salesforce
Listed below are the key features of Salesforce:
- Salesforce gives you access to critical data of the customers and interactive history. It assures hassle-free Contact Management by providing you an overall customer picture including insights.
- It allows you to keep track of your customers and their behavior towards your products and services. This helps you with Sales and Marketing strategies.
- Salesforce provides you a Business Intelligence Tool of its own called Einstein Analytics. It helps you extract fruitful insights and make wise business decisions.
- With Salesforce, you can run multiple Ads Campaigns on a single platform. Moreover, you can extract insights on these campaigns with real-time analysis.
For more information on Salesforce, click here.
Introduction to GitHub
Image Source
GitHub is a Collaboration Platform that helps a developer connect with other developers or his team members to solve problems. With GitHub, developers can build software together as it allows them to make separate changes to their programs in real-time (without getting in each other’s way).
For example, let’s say Harry and Jack are working on a project website. Now, Harry wants to add a whole new ‘frequently asked question’ section to the website, while Jack needs to make some changes in the footer of the website. Now, they could both be making changes on their local computers and then GitHub allows them to submit those changes to the main branch. This allows them to work on their tasks without disturbing each other.
Key Features of GitHub
Listed below are the key features of GitHub:
- GitHub allows developers to coordinate with each other which makes it easier for them to track and update their work on the project.
- It increases the safety of the packages. You can either publish your packages privately (within the team) or publicly to the open-source community.
- It provides you the feature of Version Control. With this, you can keep track of your changes. Moreover, you can easily revert to the changes that you make (if needed).
- GitHub provides you the option of pulling requests. You can pull the code, make changes in your local computer and then push the changes back to the main branch.
For more information on GitHub, click here.
Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline helps to Load Data from any data source such as Databases, SaaS applications, Cloud Storage, SDKs, and Streaming Services and simplifies the ETL process. It supports 100+ data sources including Salesforce, GitHub, etc., for free and is a 3-step process by just selecting the data source, providing valid credentials, and choosing the destination. Hevo loads the data onto the desired Data Warehouse, enriches the data, and transforms it into an analysis-ready form without writing a single line of code.
Its completely automated pipeline offers data to be delivered in real-time without any loss from source to destination. Its fault-tolerant and scalable architecture ensure that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss and supports different forms of data. The solutions provided are consistent and work with different Business Intelligence (BI) tools as well.
Get Started with Hevo for free
Check out why Hevo is the Best:
- Secure: Hevo has a fault-tolerant architecture that ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
- Schema Management: Hevo takes away the tedious task of schema management & automatically detects the schema of incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
- Minimal Learning: Hevo, with its simple and interactive UI, is extremely simple for new customers to work on and perform operations.
- Hevo Is Built To Scale: As the number of sources and the volume of your data grows, Hevo scales horizontally, handling millions of records per minute with very little latency.
- Incremental Data Load: Hevo allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
- Live Support: The Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.
- Live Monitoring: Hevo allows you to monitor the data flow and check where your data is at a particular point in time.
Sign up here for a 14-day Free Trial!
Steps to Set Up Manual Salesforce GitHub Integration
Image Source
This method requires you to have the technical knowledge and experience in working with Salesforce and GitHub. It involves a couple of steps like retrieving content definition, etc that need to be performed manually. This includes manually integrating Salesforce and GitHub to track your Ad Campaigns and connect with your customers more easily. Follow the steps below to set up manual Salesforce GitHub Integration:
Step 1: Log In to your GitHub Account
Log in to your GitHub account as shown in the image below and create a Project Repository (keep its access private). In case you don’t have one, click here to create a new account.
Image Source
Step 2: Clone the GitHub Repository
Install Git on your local computer. Once done, clone the origin GitHub Repository as shown in the image below.
Image Source
Step 3: Retrieve Metadata Files from SFDC
In this step, you need to retrieve all the necessary metadata files from Salesforce Dot Com (SFDC) using the “Package.XML” file. This can be done with the help of the Salesforce Migration Too or any existing Salesforce IDE.
For more information on the Salesforce Migration tool, you can click on this link.
Step 4: Configure the Git Repository
Now, copy the metadata content to your local cloned Git Repository folder (Step 2). Once done, configure the folder as your Salesforce IDE’s Project Workspace. This can be achieved using Git Console or GitHub Plugin installed to your Salesforce IDE. You can use it to commit and push your changes or code to GitHub origin.
That’s it. You have successfully set up Salesforce GitHub Integration manually. You can use these steps to make other Repositories. Now, your team members can clone this GitHub Repository to their local computers and start making changes (after setting this Repository folder as their SFDC Project Workspace).
Challenges Involved in Setting Up Salesforce GitHub Integration Manually
Although you have now successfully set up Salesforce to GitHub Integration, this method involves various limitations. These are the challenges you might have to face while setting up this integration. Listed below are the limitations of setting up Salesforce GitHub Integration manually:
- Setting up manual Salesforce GitHub Integration requires technical expertise and experience in working with Salesforce IDE, Git Console, and GitHub Plugin for Salesforce.
- This method does not involve Continuous Integration. Every time you create a Repository for Salesforce, you will have to go through the same process. Even if you want to set this in Continuous Integration, you will have to use 3rd party platforms like Jenkins. Furthermore, setting up Salesforce GitHub Integration using Jenkins is itself a complex task and requires technical proficiency.
Benefits of Salesforce GitHub Integration
Now that you have a basic understanding of Salesforce & GitHub and have gone through different methods to set up Salesforce GitHub Integration, let’s talk about the advantages of this integration. Listed below are the advantages of Salesforce GitHub Integration:
- Directly Impacts the Market: Irrespective of what you are developing on Salesforce, it directly impacts your market. With Salesforce GitHub Integration, it becomes easier for your team members to collaborate and work on their projects. This speeds up the whole process and impacts the market.
- Increases Security: Salesforce and GitHub both provide robust security measures for your projects. With these 2 platforms integrated together, the security of your Database, Repositories, etc. increases.
- Rollback to a Specific Version: With Salesforce GitHub Integration, you get the ability to Version Control. This makes it easier to roll back any changes made by your team members. This way you can also keep track of all the changes made.
Conclusion
This article introduced you to Salesforce and GitHub. It provided the method that you can use to set up Salesforce GitHub Integration. This method involves using Salesforce IDE or GitHub Plugin for Manual Integration of Salesforce and GitHub. Furthermore, this article also provided you the limitations of using Manual Integration and the advantages of using Hevo Data for this task.
With the complexity involves in Manual Integration, businesses are leaning more towards Automated and Continous Integration. This is not only hassle-free but also easy to operate and does not require any technical proficiency. In such a case, Hevo Data is the right choice for you! It will help simplify the Marketing Analysis. Hevo Data supports platforms like Salesforce, GitHub, etc., for free.
Visit our Website to Explore Hevo
Want to take Hevo for a spin? Sign Up for a 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite first hand.
Share your experience of setting up Salesforce GitHub Integration in the comments section below!
Karan has experience in driving strategic planning, and implementing data-driven initiatives. His experience spans strategic transition planning, data analysis for optimization, product development. His passion to data drives him write in-depth articles on data integration.