Overview
Salesforce is one of the best cloud-based CRM systems, which has become a domain standard for small, medium and enterprise businesses. At the same time, Delphi is one of the best desktop development tools for Windows (but of course, it’s worth mentioning, that with the help of FMX we can develop cross-platform desktop software for macOS and Linux as well). Namely this tool (Delphi/RAD Studio/C++ Builder) was used for the development of a great number of financial, banking and other business software. That’s why integration of Delphi software and your Salesforce CRM account, if you are already using Salesforce, is a matter of time.
Salesforce provides a wide range of APIs for different layers — API for data interaction or migrations, UI API, Events API, etc. The application of this wide range of APIs will help you to ensure deep integration between your Delphi software and Salesforce. Of course, you have to get familiarized with all these APIs before hand, because you need to have a deep understanding of the prospects of this integration. And, please, bear in mind that not all Salesforce CRM licenses allow applying API and external integrations.
Ways of Salesforce integration in Delphi
- Data export from Delphi software to any file (json, xml) and its import to Salesforce (you can implement this standard process in a manual or automated mode).
- Data sync using REST API server, developed with Delphi that can be a part of some Delphi software. REST API server can be implemented, using:
- On-premises or virtual machine (VM) based desktop solution, which handles REST API requests for a specific port from you Salesforce account;
- RAD Server REST API server;
- Delphi ISAPI extension REST API web server;
- Direct API calls to Salesforce from Delphi software (REST API/WSDL);
- API calls from Salesforce to external software using schedulers or WebHooks.
3rd-party components for integration
For interaction with Salesforce from Delphi application you can write your own Salesforce API wrapper/implementation or use/buy 3rd-party components. Below you can find a list of the most popular vendors and their solutions (but of course, there are much more other options, you can easily google them):
- CData Salesforce FireDAC Components;
- Devart ODBC Driver for Salesforce.
How to develop an integration roadmap
- Business analysis: At this stage you need to describe your objectives and requirements — what tasks your Delphi software or Salesforce should fulfill.
- Architecture design.
- Research of Salesforce API capacities: Describe whichSalesforce API methods will deal with required features, create a worksheet where you will describe which Salesforce API entrypoint will process requests for your software, which will work with requests for CRUD operations, or for clients table, orders table, etc. Specify the way how Salesforce will notify your software when a new order or claim comes as well as in other cases.
- Implementation.
- Staging environment testing.
- Preparation for release and deployment.
- Production environment testing.
Conclusion
Sometimes integration of a huge accountant system with Salesforce CRM or with any other cloud-based or on-premises CRM can be a real challenge. That’s why we strongly recommend you to find experts in this sphere to help you with this task.,As a result, you will be able to save a lot of time. Today such systems as Salesforce CRM are so enormous that there are professionals who specialize in dealing with only one or a couple of them.. Imagine how much time it may take for a developer, who has never worked with Salesforce before, to study all the features and peculiarities of this system. But that’s just a recommendation — the decision is up to you!
