Salesforce’s External Services allow you to integrate external web services into the Salesforce platform without writing code. External Services bridge the gap between Salesforce and external applications, making it easier to extend Salesforce’s capabilities with services that reside outside of its ecosystem. This article will cover an overview of Salesforce External Services.
How External Services work?
- Registering the Web Service: Register an external web service with Salesforce, providing an OpenAPI specification. This specification details the operations that the web service can perform.
- Invocable Actions: Once registered, the operations defined in the OpenAPI spec become “invocable actions” within Salesforce. This means they can be called upon or ‘invoked’ by Salesforce’s automation tools.
- Flow Builder Integration: These invocable actions are then available in point-and-click tools like Flow Builder, which allows you to automate processes in Salesforce. You can use these actions to interact with the external web service declaratively, meaning you can set up integrations and workflows without needing to write any custom code.
- You can access Salesforce External Services from Setup.
What is external web service?
- An external web service refers to any function, action, or process that’s developed and hosted outside the Salesforce platform.
- For an external web service to work with Salesforce’s External Services, it must be REST-based. REST stands for Representational State Transfer, which is an architectural style for designing networked applications. It uses a stateless, client-server, cacheable communications protocol – the HTTP protocol.
- The secure version of HTTP, HTTPS is typically used by these APIs to ensure secure communication over the internet.
- Once these criteria are met, the external web service can be registered with Salesforce’s External Services, making its functions available within Salesforce as invocable actions.
- This integration allows Salesforce users to leverage a vast array of external services directly within their Salesforce environment.
What is an API specification?
- An API specification, or API spec, is essentially a contract between the web service and its users, detailing how the service can be used.
- It is designed to be understood by humans (for ease of use and clarity) and machines (for automation and integration purposes).
What is an invocable action?
- Invocable actions are key components in Salesforce that allow users to extend the platform’s functionality.
- Invocable actions serve as building blocks that can be used within Salesforce’s tools like Flow Builder or Einstein Bots. They are declarative, which means you can set them up without writing code.
- These actions provide a consistent way for admins and developers to implement various types of actions across different tools on the Salesforce platform.
- When you register an external web service with Salesforce’s External Services, the operations defined in the web service’s OpenAPI spec become available as invocable actions. You can then access and use these actions within tools like Flow Builder to automate processes and integrate external functionalities into your Salesforce workflows.
To know more about External Services, click External Services (salesforce.com).
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