Importing and exporting data is incredibly useful. But as any admin can tell you, it can also be very time-consuming. Data loads often require manual adjustments, ID mappings, and troubleshooting.
Your time is valuable, and automating this process can make you a more efficient admin, freeing you up for important feature requests or maintenance. Historically, this automation has been tough. It required middleware, custom code, and IT partners. But did you know, dear Salesforce Admin, that you can integrate and automate your data with clicks?
I’ve got an exciting use case to share, but let’s discuss a few practices first.
First, MuleSoft Composer isn’t intended for high-volume extract, transform, and load (ETL) operations. But it’s perfect for automating tedious and manual data loads that are a regular part of your business processes.
Second, all of the steps contained in this article should be configured in a sandbox environment and thoroughly tested before moving to a production environment.
So here’s our use case: Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) uses Google Forms and Google Sheets to collect suggestions from employees. Maria, NTO’s #AwesomeAdmin, has to review the Google Sheet each week, export to .csv, and then data load into Salesforce, where each row becomes a Suggestion record. The store operations team reviews the suggestions in Salesforce and chooses which suggestions to implement.
But Maria sees the data load as an unnecessary manual step in an otherwise automated business process. So, that’s why she wants to…
MuleSoft Composer lets you choose prebuilt connectors to many popular services. It’s as simple as click, authenticate, and configure. Let’s take a look.
First, Maria clicks the Google Sheets icon and names the connection.
Then, Maria chooses her preferred Google account. As a best practice, we recommend creating an account specifically for this integration. Next, Maria approves the permission scopes.
After that? Maria is connected!
Once Maria’s connection is established, she can choose the event within Google Sheets that starts the automation process. She can trigger the flow when a new row is added to an existing spreadsheet, when a new spreadsheet is created, or when a row is updated in an existing spreadsheet.
In our example, Maria triggers the flow whenever a new row is created. Then, she chooses a spreadsheet from her preferred Google account and a worksheet within that spreadsheet.
Now that Maria has chosen a worksheet, she can select the fields she wants to bring into Salesforce. Clicking the Select Fields button brings Maria to an intuitive, clean interface.
After selecting the fields she wants to bring into Salesforce, Maria’s ready to add a step by clicking the + below the triggering event.
Maria is then presented with the same option for connectors.
Maria selects Salesforce, names her connection, and clicks Create.
Maria is prompted to authenticate into her Salesforce org. Remember, as a best practice, you should configure this in a sandbox and test it thoroughly.
Then, she allows access.
Now, she’s connected to Salesforce! Maria can take several actions, like creating, updating, deleting, or retrieving record information. Since we’re trying to automate data and save ourselves time on data loads, Maria chooses “Create new record” for her custom Suggestion object.
Next, she chooses the fields she wants to populate, which is a simple field mapping exercise very similar to the Salesforce Data Import Wizard.
And that’s it! She saves and activates the flow.
The end result? A really clean list of Suggestion records in Salesforce.
Maria made sure to follow best practices as she went along. She built her connection in a sandbox first, tested along the way, confirmed her Composer flow worked as designed, swapped her connection to production, tested again, and then activated her Composer flow.
It’s really that easy! If you’re an admin finding that your time is disappearing into the rabbit hole of data cleansing, exporting, importing, and troubleshooting, consider giving MuleSoft Composer a try. If you want to start learning right away, check out this awesome MuleSoft Composer Trailmix.
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