Salesforce Webhook Integration: 2 Easy Methods

Do you want to set up Salesforce Webhook Integration? Are you struggling to find a secure way to use Webhooks to load your Salesforce data? If yes? You’ve landed at the right page! Follow our easy step-by-step guide to help you successfully integrate Salesforce with Webhooks.

This article aims to teach you how to set up the Salesforce Webhooks Integration and load your Salesforce data to a data warehouse/ destination of your choice with ease.

Introduction to Webhooks

There are two ways in which your apps can communicate with each other to share the latest information: Polling and Webhooks. A Webhook will transfer (PUSH) information as soon as it has it, similar to a notification you receive when you get a new email/payment/order, etc. Just like the notifications you get from your bank or social media, Webhooks work in the same way and always keep your applications abreast with the latest data.

Today, any properly configured data warehouse that gives you useful insights would invariably interface with Webhooks from a multitude of sources, like your business website, social media accounts, statistics from CRM/marketing/sales/billing/footfalls, etc.

Introduction to Salesforce

Salesforce is the world’s leading CRM solution on a PAAS model. Salesforce offers various tools such as Data Export Wizard, Data (Apex) Loader, etc., allowing you to load your Salesforce data into other applications. To use your Salesforce data for analytics and business insights, you will have to transfer it (via an ETL process) to a data warehouse and then use a BI tool to analyze your data. Salesforce automatically transfers the latest data to your data warehouse, keeping you up-to-date with your business activities.

Key features of Salesforce:

• Contact Management: Salesforce offers smooth contact management by providing access to critical customer data and interaction history. It provides great insights on how to use customer data to get a better understanding of their behavior using various trends, metrics, etc.
• Dynamic Dashboards: Salesforce’s interactive dashboards provide a complete view of how well the business is performing using key factors such as market trends, customer behavior, etc. You can easily create dashboards and generate real-time reports for your business.
• Opportunity Management: It is one of the best features of Salesforce. It provides you with an in-depth view of the customers’ timeline, buying patterns, metrics, etc., and lets you strategize your next move.
• Email Integrations: Salesforce supports full integration with applications like Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, etc., and lets you synchronize your calendars and schedules. It even provides offline access to important emails and lets you develop personalized templates for potential customers.

Prerequisites

• Working knowledge of Salesforce.
• Working knowledge of Webhooks.
• A Salesforce account.
• A general idea of APIs.

Method 1: Using Custom ETL Scripts to achieve Salesforce Webhook Integration

Step 1: Create a Webhook Endpoint

• Set Up Your Script: Write a basic server that listens to incoming POST requests, as Salesforce webhooks typically send data in this way.
  Here’s a simple example in Python with Flask:

from flask import Flask, request, jsonify

app = Flask(__name__)

# Define the webhook route

@app.route(‘/webhook’, methods=[‘POST’])

def webhook():

    data = request.json  # Parse incoming JSON data

    # Process the received data

    print(“Received data:”, data)

    # Acknowledge receipt with a 200 status

    return jsonify({“status”: “success”}), 200

if __name__ == ‘__main__’:

    app.run(port=5000)

Step 2: Configure Webhook in Salesforce

• Navigate to Salesforce: Go to Setup in Salesforce.
• Create an Outbound Message:
  • Search for Outbound Messages.

• Create a new outbound message, selecting the desired object (e.g., Account, Contact).

• Choose the fields you want to send in the webhook.
• Provide your webhook URL (e.g., http://yourdomain.com/webhook if using a deployed server or Ngrok URL if local).

Step 3: Test the Webhook Integration

• Trigger the Workflow: In Salesforce, create or update a record that matches the workflow criteria.

• Check Your Script Output: Observe the incoming data in your script logs to verify the data structure.
• Handle Errors: Make sure the script responds with an HTTP 200 status; otherwise, Salesforce may retry the webhook.

Limitations of Manual Method

• API Call Limits: Using webhooks may tend to increase the overall number of API calls, which might very well reach the API call limits set by Salesforce.
• No Native Support: Native support is missing from Salesforce for webhooks, and you would need to solve the problem by either outbound messages or a custom API listener of your own.
• Increased Complexity: You could be forced to write custom Apex classes or third-party services, which brings in more complexity plus maintenance effort.
• Limited Real-time Trigger: You cannot get close to near real-time triggering since Change Data Capture and Streaming API are both natively not supported by Salesforce.

Method 2: Using Hevo Data, a No-Code Data Pipeline

Step 1: Creating a Data Pipeline

Create a new Data Pipeline for your Salesforce data. Select Webhooks as the medium to transfer data from your data source. If you already have a Data Pipeline set up, you need to switch to a new Webhooks URL, as the old Webhooks URL will depreciate on 31st October 2020.

Step 2: Configuring the Data Source

Hevo Data will now provide you with an HTTP endpoint that you need to specify in your Salesforce account, through which Salesforce can push data via a Webhook to the data warehouse of your choice.

Connect Hevo Data with Salesforce by providing your credentials such as account Id and password, along with a name for your data source. You can also specify the events that you want to transfer from Salesforce. 

Once you’ve provided all the details, a new dialogue box will now open up, where you need to provide your Salesforce credentials to authorize Hevo to access your data as follows:

You can now start transferring your data in the JSON format of size up to 16 MB to a data warehouse of your choice using Hevo Data’s Webhook Functionality without writing any code. Hevo will automatically perform data refreshes to ensure that you always have up-to-date data in your data warehouse.

Check out what makes Hevo amazing:

• Real-Time Data Transfer: Hevo with its strong integration with 150+ sources, allows you to transfer data quickly & efficiently. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
• Data Transformation: It provides a simple interface to perfect, modify, and enrich the data you want to transfer. 
• Secure: Hevo has a fault-tolerant architecture that ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
• Simplicity: Using Hevo is easy and intuitive, ensuring that your data is exported in just a few clicks. 
• Completely Managed Platform: Hevo is fully managed. You need not invest time and effort to maintain or monitor the infrastructure involved in executing codes.
• Webhook Security: Webhooks deliver data to a public URL. To ensure secure data transfer, Hevo uses SSL encryption and accepts only 128-bit encrypted data, and allows transferring data only through your Salesforce URL.
• Live Support: The Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.

Conclusion

This article teaches you how to successfully set up Salesforce Webhook Integration. It also provides in-depth knowledge about the concepts behind every step to help you understand and implement them efficiently. This method, however, can be challenging, especially for a beginner & this is where Hevo saves the day. Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline, helps you transfer data from a source of your choice like Salesforce in a fully automated and secure manner without having to write the code repeatedly for free. Hevo, with its strong integration with 150+ sources, allows you to not only export & load data but also transform & enrich your data & make it analysis-ready in a jiffy.

Want to take Hevo for a spin? Sign Up for the 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite firsthand.

Tell us about your experience of working with Salesforce Webhook Integration! Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

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