Salesforce is a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform powered by Customer 360. It further offers a complementary suite of enterprise applications that focus on Marketing Automation, Data Analytics, Customer Service, and Application Development. Workbench Salesforce is a web-based tool designed for Salesforce Developers and Admin which allows them to interact with the Salesforce organization to update, insert, search, export, and delete data. You can use this tool to view your organization’s data, perform data testing and loading, troubleshoot and deploy their applications, among other things.
This blog talks about Workbench Salesforce in great detail. This includes the features and the steps involved in setting up SFDC Workbench for your business setup. It also gives a brief introduction to the Salesforce suite first.
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Introduction to Salesforce
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Salesforce serves as an integrated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform that provides a single, shared view across all your departments, including Sales, Service, Commerce, and Marketing. Salesforce can help you empower and develop your Sales teams with integrated Lead Management, Forecasting Tools, and the ability to Quote, Price, and Configure every deal. In addition, Salesforce provides a comprehensive Cloud platform (Sales Cloud) that gives you the Customer Management Solution that is the right fit for every growth phase of your company.
Salesforce Cloud is an all-in-one Sales tool that also doubles as CRM software. Salesforce Cloud is flexible enough to accommodate organizations of any size or industry and scalable for anything you might need from it. In addition, it allows you to access data on the go through its mobile app. It can also help maximize Sales with AppExchange-based integrations, thus boosting business growth.
Here are a few salient Salesforce features:
- It allows you to design mobile-friendly Salesforce apps for every employee. This helps boost productivity and build a more connected workforce. Apart from this, it also enables you to streamline the employee help desk for faster self-service.
- Salesforce offers a boost on its core services with additional functionalities such as Application Integration and Artificial Intelligence. This includes building custom-branded mobile apps, easy integration of data from ERPs, IoT, and Databases, and addition of predictive capabilities to every Service and Sales application.
- You can make your apps more personalized and intelligent to meet your needs in real-time engagement, service, and purchase.
- Salesforce provides a highly curated library of industry-specific expert help. This includes Process Flows, Apps, Templates, and Components built to tackle every single issue faced by the user.
Salesforce CRM further ensures a personalized experience with its Customer 360 Platform. Some of the key products offered by Salesforce as a part of their suite are as follows:
- Salesforce Service Cloud: Salesforce Service Cloud offers all the tools you might need to strengthen Customer Engagement. It allows you to automate business processes with Intelligent Workflows, enable Customer Interactions across each channel, get Actionable Insight into each Customer Interaction, and Drive Revenue with the power of Artificial Intelligence.
- Salesforce Financial Services Cloud: Salesforce Financial Services Cloud gives you 360-degree visibility into the financial profiles of your clients for various sectors ranging from wealth management to retail banking. This helps you put your customer at the center of every interaction.
- Salesforce Analytics (Tableau CRM): Tableau allows you to leverage intuitive Drag-and-Drop Analysis at every skill level. It also allows you to quickly spot Visual Patterns and Share Insights across teams to drive growth.
- Salesforce Einstein: This is an Artificial Intelligence technology developed by the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. The goal of this tool is to provide Marketing and Sales departments with more up-to-date views of Sales prospects and customers.
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud: The Salesforce Commerce Cloud allows you to convert more customers with personalized buying experiences. You can implement your strategies faster with easy-to-use tools. This will enable you to stay agile and start generating a Higher ROI (Return on Investment) sooner.
- Salesforce AppExchange: Salesforce AppExchange is an Enterprise Cloud marketplace. It allows you to find proven experts and apps to help you solve business challenges fast and extend your Salesforce Customer 360 from anywhere. This can be extended across any Department, Industry, and Product. It also offers app guides to help you zero in on the right apps to suit your unique business use cases and challenges.
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Introduction to Workbench Salesforce
Workbench Salesforce is a Cloud-hosted toolkit and is highly adaptable. It is mainly used by Salesforce Administrators and Developers to administer Salesforce organization through Force APIs. With the help of the Workbench Salesforce tool, you can also perform Salesforce Object Search Language (SOSL) and Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL) and modify session settings based on your business requirements.
Here are a few common features of Workbench Salesforce:
- Anonymous Apex
- Password Management
- Metadata Explorer
- Data Management Capabilities
- Metadata Retrieval/Deployment
- REST API Explorer
To login to Salesforce Workbench go to https://workbench.developerforce.com and choose the type of environment you want. You can choose from two options: Production or Sandbox. Enter your credentials to log in to Salesforce Workbench. If you want to log into the Developer Edition, choose Production as your environment.
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Understanding the Advantages of Workbench Salesforce
Here are a few key advantages of Salesforce Workbench:
- Easy Data Extraction: You can easily remove information identified with users. For instance, profiles and roles, and the permission sets.
- Data Management: Salesforce Workbench lets you upload a zip file where you can insert, delete, or update binary files. You can prepare a zip file where all the binary files are present for this process. You can also use the Smart Lookup tool when you’re updating, deleting, or inserting which will provide you with standard or Foreign Lookup fields to find the relevant Salesforce ID. Salesforce Workbench also helps you modify records by just clicking on the unique ID provided in the query.
- CSRF Protection Configuration: Cross-site Forgery is primarily carried out by hackers to trick the users into manipulating or inserting data on their behalf through a trusted website of the user. Salesforce Workbench integrates CSRF Protection to safeguard your data against these attacks. It relies on a “secret” stored on your Salesforce Workbench environment. It is recommended that you change the default secret to something that you can confidentially protect. Go to config/overrides.php file, find the “CSRF SECURITY SETTINGS” and change the default “CHANGE ME”. You also need to uncomment the line by removing double backlashes.
Setting Up Workbench Salesforce
Here are the steps involved in setting up Salesforce Workbench for your use case:
Workbench Salesforce Setup: Log In to Workbench Salesforce
- Step 1: Log in to Salesforce Workbox through your Salesforce account credentials and choose your API versions and desired environment. Check off the Terms and Conditions checkbox and click on the “Login With Salesforce” button.
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- Step 2: Navigate to a Jump to Menu where you can switch between different options as follows:
- Apex Page
- Insert
- Update
- Delete
- Upsert
- Undo
- Apex Class
- Approval
- Workflow
- SOQL Query
- SOSL Query
Select the task you wish to perform from the above-mentioned list in the dropdown as given below:
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Workbench Salesforce Setup: Explore Dropdown Items
- Step 1: On the top menu bar, you can see the following five drop-down items:
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Click on the Info option to reveal the following three sections:
- Metadata Types and Components: Here, you can select any metadata component from the following list:
- Approval
- Workflow
- Apex Class
- Apex Page
All the related information will be displayed on the screen.
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- Standard and Custom Objects: You can choose an object and the related information will be depicted on the screen.
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- Session Information: This component displays the current User Session details. You can cancel or end any other session present in Salesforce Workbench if you are a Salesforce Administrator. Apart from this, various details will be displayed when selecting the Session Information tab. This includes the accessibility mode and the connection, profile ID, session seconds valid, and User Information like email, full name, etc.
Workbench Salesforce Setup: Selecting Queries
- Step 1: As specified before, there are two types of queries: SOSL and SOQL Queries. In the query section, you can select various fields and objects and apply a condition to build a query. You can view the records in matrix form or as a list. You can later download it in a CSV format.
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Workbench Salesforce Setup: Exploring Data
- In the Data option, you can choose a particular object and perform any of the following operations:
- Update
- Insert
- Upsert
- Delete
- Undo
You can also upload records from CSV or ZIP files. You can view the records by simply clicking on the View in the Salesforce button. This will take you to your org.
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Workbench Salesforce Setup: Exploring Migration and Utilities
- Step 1: Next, you can explore the Migration tab. It allows you to retrieve the package through package.xml. You can then directly deploy it in the Salesforce organization.
- Step 2: You can explore the Utilities tab next. It consists of the following components:
- Apex Execute: You can delete, create, and update a record through this. You can create new objects through SOQL queries. All the newly created objects containing null values for the fields will have to be set after their creation.
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- REST Explorer: This option lets you choose the HTTP method to perform the REST API service.
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- Password Management: By using this method, you can set and reset passwords in Salesforce.org.
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Conclusion
This blog talks about the different critical aspects of Workbench Salesforce in detail which includes its key features, advantages, and the steps involved in setting it up.
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