I am new to Salesforce, but am an experienced developer. I am provided a link to a Salesforce report, which mostly has the right filters (query). I would like to use an REST API to pull that information as CSV or JSON so that I can do further processing on it.
Here are my questions:
Do I need special permissions to make API calls? What are they?
Do I need to create an "app" with client-key & secret? Does my admin need to grant me permission for this too?
There are a lot of REST APIs from Salesforce, which one do I need to get the info from the report? Analytics?
How do I authenticate in code?
You'd have to work with the System Administrator on the security pieces. Anybody who knows how the company works, can all users see everything, is there Single Sign-On in place, how likely is the report to change...
You will need an user account to pull the data. You need to decide if it'll be some "system account" (you know username and password and have them stored in your app) or can it run for any user in this org. It might not matter much but reports are "fun". If there will be data visibility issues 6 months from now, you'll be asked to make sure the report shows only French data to French users etc... you can make it in report filters or have multiple reports - or you can just use current users access and then it's the sysadmin that has to set the sharing rules right. (would you ever think about packaging what you did and reusing in another SF instance? Making a mobile app out of it? Things like that, they may sound stupid now but will help you decide on best path)
The user (whether it'll be system account or human) needs Profile permissions like "API Enabled" + whatever else you'd need normally ("Run Reports" etc). If you're leaning towards doing it with system user - you might want to look at Password Policies and maybe set password to Never Expires. Now this is bit dangerous so there would be other things you might want to read up about: "API only user" (can't login to website), maybe even locking down the account so it can login only from certain IP ranges or at certain times when the job's supposed to be scheduled...
Connected App and OAUth2 stuff - it's a good idea to create one, yes. Technically you don't have to, you could use SOAP API to call login, get session id... But it's bit weak, OAuth2 would give you more control over security. If you have sandboxes - there's little-known trick. You can make connected app in production (or even totally unrelated Developer Edition) and use client id & secret from it to login to sandboxes. If you create app in sandbox and you refresh it - keys stop working.
(back to security piece - in connected app you can let any user allow/deny access or sysadmin would allow only say these 3 users to connect, "pre-authorize". Could be handy)
Login - there are few REST API ways to login. Depends on your decision. if you have 1 dedicated user you'll probably go with "web server flow". I've added example https://stackoverflow.com/a/56034159/313628 if you don't have a ready SF connection library in your programming language.
If you'll let users login with their own credentials there will be typical OAuth "dance" of going to the target page (Google login, LinkedIn, Twitter...) and back to your app on success. This even works if client has Single Sign-On enabled. Or you could let people type in their username and pass into your app but that's not a great solution.
Pull the actual report already
Once you have session id. Official way would be to use Reporting API, for example https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_analytics.meta/api_analytics/sforce_analytics_rest_api_get_reportdata.htm
A quick & dirty and officially not supported thing is to mimic what happens when user clicks the report export in UI. Craft a GET request with right cookie and you're golden. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/57745683/313628. No idea if this will work if you went with dedicated account and "API access only" permission.
Related
This is my first question, so I hope I don't miss a thing. To be clear from the start: I don't expect an answer which dives deep into detail. This is just about getting a general understanding of how to work with this kind of software.
So I don't know if "Identity Management System" is a suitable term for what I mean but when I talk about Identity Management Systems I think of something like Azure AD, which as far as I know provides e.g. web developers the possibility to integrate a way users can authenticate (including access privilege etc.) on their website.
What I'm quite unsure about is how to work with/ integrate such tools in a project. I will try to make it clear with an example: Assuming I have a website let's say this website is a blog. The blog consist of different posts which are stored in my own database which is connected to the website. The posts are written by different users which authenticate with a tool like Azure AD. The user's data is stored somewhere on a server run by e.g. Microsoft. If I want to display the posts togethere with the name, email.... of the user who wrote them, how would I do this?
Is it possible to query the user's data directly from the Identity Management System and display it? This does not sound ideal to me as the consequence would be that data the website uses is stored in two different locations.
Would you kind of copy the user's data from the Identity Management System to the websites database and query it from there? This does not sound like a good solution either because then data would be duplicated.
So whats the "right workflow"?
I appreciate any hints and further information I can get:-)
AFAIK To get the user's information like name, email etc. you can add these claims while generating the JWT token.
To generate access token, you have multiple authentication flows such as Authorization code flow, ROPC flow, Implicit flow.
To add the claims that you need to return with the token, you can make settings like below:
Go to Azure Portal -> Azure Active Directory -> App Registrations -> Your app -> Token configuration -> Add optional claims
When you decode the token via JSON Web Tokens - jwt.io you can find the user information that you need.
To know how to generate access token, you can refer SO Thread which I solved it before.
I have a little bit of problem with the authentication on Sitecore website. Basically there is a button on the navbar, and when user clicks on the button, it redirects the same user to Salesforce to log in (Implementation of SSO). Basically I am using Salesforce as a identity provider and Sitecore Website as a service provider. Now I have a question? When user is logged, how can I get the ID of that user.
Do users in Sitecore User Manager have the same ID as the users in Salesforce, or I can just get a email to identify the user?
P.S: Sorry if this is a really stupid question, but I am a begineer when it comes to making Sitecore websites and the SAML SSO. Thank you in advance
Stop with the Sitecore and Salesforce for a second, you'll need to cover some basics and click through the login process manually before you automate it.
You probably are using a "connected app" in Salesforce that includes OAuth2 config (consumer key also known as client id; a secret; a list of scopes telling what this app is allowed to do on behalf of this SF user; a list of allowed urls that can login using this consumer key and secret. Etc.) It might even have something about Canvas Apps at bottom of the page.
Next would be - who's logging in. A core Salesforce user or do you have Partner Community, Customer Community (recently rebranded to "Digital Experiences").
Open incognito window and go to https://openidconnect.herokuapp.com/
For login host leave as is if you have production user or test.salesforce.com if you go from sandbox (you can also use branded urls, mycompany--dev.my.salesforce.com etc). If you have a community user you'll have to change the url to whatever is the community base url, like https://dev-mycompany.cs123.force.com/mycommunity
Don't change anything else, click next, next, next. This will take you through OAuth2 "web server flow" (one of many ways to log in). You type the username/password to SF screen and go back to that herokuapp with "authorisation code". The app has few minutes to swap that code for actual final "access token" and couple other pieces of info. Final step in this wizard calls OpenId "userinfo" - returning some info about the user that logged in. That's where you could pull the email if needed (and if there are extra fields you'd like SF to return in this process that's configurable too)
Close that browser window. Check the "connected app" in SF. Open new incognito window, do same thing but this time put your url, consumer key and secret (you might have to edit the app in SF first to allow callbacks to https://openidconnect.herokuapp.com/callback).
So now you should have rough idea about whole login process. Your sitecore app probably does same thing, receives authorisation code and exchanges it for final token. At that point you have valid SF session ID you could use to call that "userinfo", run queries (if the app allowes API access, check the "scopes") etc.
I doubt the Sitecore developer created it all by hand, you probably have some Spring stuff like spring.security.oauth2.client... My Java days are long gone but if you get better at manual click-click-click through the flow you should be able to follow existing code?
It's a big topic and there are other ways to do it (other OAuth flows, sending info about the current user when you have external page embedded in SF as iframe, you'd need to read about "canvas apps")... but that's best guess based on info you provided. You might want to check some trailhead courses too like https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/projects/build-a-connected-app-for-api-integration/implement-the-oauth-20-web-server-authentication-flow
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/intro_oauth_and_connected_apps.htm
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_streaming.meta/api_streaming/code_sample_auth_oauth.htm (Java but very hand-crafted raw HTTP, probably that Spring security is better)
I am working on a integration with Salesforce using REST APIs and, as part of the project, I need to send updates to Salesforce and these updates are not user triggered, they are system triggered.
Because of that, what I expect to see on Salesforce Field History is not a user name but the name of our Connected App (the app that made the update).
What I see today is the user name because the way the integration was made initially using OAuth Authorization Code flow.
To change that part of the project, I followed the link (OAuth 2.0 JWT Bearer Flow for Server-to-Server Integration): https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sf.remoteaccess_oauth_flows.htm&type=5
Making that, I was expeting to generate a token for a System, not for a User, but that's not what happened: when I used the token generate from the JWT Bearer Flow and ran the update, the Field History still shows the user name.
What could I do then?
Which are the options in Salesforce to achieve the behavior I'm expecting?
The most important, in my opinion, is to have a Token for our system, not for a user.
Thanks!
Everybody is an user in Salesforce. Even if you access unauthenticated pages (some contact us form? case or lead capture) - it gets tracked under special Guest User.
It sounds stupid but gives you unified interface to control permissions (Profiles/Permission sets). You want guests to access only FAQ articles and make cases? Sure thing, do it in profile, don't get paranoid about people trying to guess right URLs. You think an app was hacked? You can terminate the session just like any other "user". Want to allow login only in certain hours and from certain IP? Sure.
An app connecting with JWT will still need username (main difference being it's "just" certificate for signing the request instead of password).
Your best bet is to create dedicated "Mr System", "SystemX integration" account. It sounds like waste of license but in the long run saves you questions "why did you edit my account at 1 am" and you could even use it as backup account if you use SSO and it ever fails...
One thing I do currently in an enterprise app is logon to a single admin email account that has delegation over other users and using delegation, we are able to manipulate email/calendar/contacts of users.
I'm looking to use the Microsoft Graph API and I have managed to use admin delegation and gain access to various resources, however last modified (on Onedrive/Sharepoint) is showing the app instead of an individual user.
I understand I can use Oauth and logon as individual users, capture a token and then do what I need under the context of that user, but, I need to do this server side where tasks run. Is there anyway to use admin approved delegation/impersonation from the app so that the users don't have to signin?
e.g. standard that works:
https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites/my-site.office.com/drive/root:/file.txt:/content
Looking to add a user tag, but this doesn't work:
https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/user/{id-of-user}/sites/my-site.office.com/drive/root:/file.txt:/content`
After searching for ages, the closest I have read seems to be in here however, I was wondering if there was a standard way of doing this - I haven't been able to get the JWT part of this working (and not sure if this is even the correct thing I am looking for).
I have a Asp.net MVC application that uses Azure AD and OpenID Connect OWIN middlewares to handle authentication. Everything works fine except for one thing : if a user is already logged-in on another Microsoft Application lets say a Office 365 account or maybe a live mail account, when trying to login it recives a page saying that it is not allowed to log into my app, which is correct, but some how I need to catch that situation in my code to allow the user to sign in with a different account. Is there a way of doing that? This is by design? I mean : the user have to log in only with a live/azure account at the time ? I couldn't find any documentation about this.
As of today there is typically one user at a time, but we will soon support for you a way to select a specific user instead of automatically signing you in with the most recent one.
One way you can work around this today is by injecting the parameter "prompt=login" in your sign in requests. You can do that in the RedirectToIdentityProvider notifications, similarly to what is showin in http://www.cloudidentity.com/blog/2014/11/17/skipping-the-home-realm-discovery-page-in-azure-ad/ for domain_hint. This will cause the sign in experience to always start with a fresh prompt even if the user is already signed in. The draw back is that you'll never get SSO this way. Hopefully our account switiching feature will become available soon, keep an eye on http://blogs.technet.com/b/ad/ for announcements