Fetch API data in Salesforce Professional Edition

Posted on December 26, 2017 by Vikas Tyagi, Anshika Ahuja

Overview

Salesforce Professional Edition does not support Apex language directly, So it became difficult to consume any API or external JSON / XML data into Salesforce. This article will focus on the automation for consuming the data into Salesforce from external sources.

As the above scenario can be easily setup in Salesforce EE and DE but this can’t be achieved in Salesforce PE because of Apex limitation.

Salesforce Professional Edition Limitations

  • Apex is not supported in Professional Edition. If Apex is developed as part of an ISV app and included in a managed package then it can run in Professional Edition.
  • One needs to be an eligible partner with Salesforce.com and the app has to pass the security review. The appropriate permissions will automatically be enabled after it passes the security review and will be authorized to run on Professional edition.
  • Account Assignment Rules.
  • Joined Reports.
  • Bucket Fields.
  • Cross Filters.
  • Dynamic Dashboards.
  • Scheduled Dashboards (you can schedule a Report).
  • Workflow / Approvals / Visual Workflow.
  • Person Accounts.
  • Ability to mass Grant Login Access to a System Administrator.
  • Data Export (Weekly Export Service to backup your Salesforce org).
  • 250 emails sent in a single mass email blast.
  • 20 Custom Fields on Activities vs. 100 in Enterprise Edition.
  • 10 Custom Tabs vs. 25 in Enterprise Edition.
  • 50 Custom Objects vs. 200 in Enterprise Edition.
  • Support (Service Cloud).
  • 20 Validation Rules per Object.
  • 100 Custom Fields per Object.

The conditions which needs to be fulfilled to deploy the Apex in the PE

One cannot run Apex in a PE, Only Apex developed in DE can run in PE, if the following conditions are met:

  1. Apex is installed into the PE org via a managed package(Which needs to be approved by the Salesforce for the security review).
  2. Apex does not expose classes as a Web service.
  3. If Apex have passed the Security Review and has been "Apex Authorized".

Solution

As there is no standard solution to consume the data from external data source. So as a alternate solution for this problem is suggested. For Professional Edition organizations, we will need API access, which is not enabled by default. API access can be purchased at an additional cost on top of Professoinal Edition. We will use some external system like C# jobs or Java batches. The C# job can use the Salesforce REST API services to push the data to salesforce.

If to retrieve the data in JSON format and parse it, to insert an account in Salesforce with an attachment selected as per the requirement.

One can achieve this by using REST API web services to retrieve data in JSON format and insert it into the Account format in Salesforce after parsing its JSON format.

Technical Specifications -

The integration can be explained as follows:-

  1. Creating a new .Net Platform App.
  2. Fetching and parsing data received in JSON format.

    3. Fetch API Data In Salesforce Professional Edition

  3. Inserting data into Salesforce.

    4. Fetch API Data In Salesforce Professional Edition

For any query on Fetching API data In Salesforce Professional Edition, contact support@astreait.com