Salesforce Tutorial# 11: Salesforce Data Management
Every application or system in the world is data-driven and its management is always crucial for any system to be successful. Salesforce Data Management comes in two flavors Data Import Wizard and Data Loader. In this article, we will briefly take a look at these salesforce data management styles.
Introduction Import-Wizard
The Import Wizard provided by salesforce data management makes it easy to import data for many standard Salesforce objects such as accounts, contacts, leads, solutions, campaign members, and personal accounts.
The import wizard is also supported by all custom objects and you can easily import custom data. The import or insert limit set by salesforce data management is 50,000 records at one time.
It’s always wise and also recommended by Salesforce that you test a small file first to make sure that you’ve prepared your source data correctly.
These browsers support the Data Import Wizard:
- Google Chrome™ version 29 and later
- Mozilla® Firefox® version 23 and later
- Microsoft® Internet Explorer® version 9 and later
- Apple® Safari® version 5 and later
De-Duplication is the default behavior:
Salesforce maintains clean and accurate data. It uses duplicate management to control the duplication of any record. Duplicate management is turned on as default for an account, leads, and contacts. This duplicate management helps the user to minimize duplicates by identifying duplicate records and merging them on a possible level.
To avoid duplicates, you need to set up two separate rules: one is the duplicate rule and the other is matching rule. The purpose of the duplicate rule is to tell Salesforce what action to be taken when duplicates are identified. The matching rule decides how records are compared or merged with one another to avoid possible duplicates.
Use of External IDs
An external id is a unique identifier for a record that can be used when importing records. An External ID is used in place of a related record’s Salesforce ID to associate the object’s record to other object’s records in Salesforce loaded by the Data Loader.
Introduction & Use of Apex Data-Loader
The data loader provides the following set of features over the import wizard:
- The interface is an easy-to-use.
- It has a command-line interface
- The batch mode interface is available with database connectivity
- Support for large files with Drag-and-drop field mapping
- Support for custom objects including standard objects
- Detailed about success and error transactions are logged into files in CSV format
- It has built-in CSV file viewer
Use of different actions (Call) like Import, Update, Upsert, etc.
Import action is taken when you want to insert the new record in the database.
Update action is taken when the previously available record needs to update.
‘Upsert’ is a combination of Update and Insert in which existing records are updated, and records that are not previously present in Salesforce will be inserted.
CLI Support
Following commands are supported by Command Line Interface of Force.com. Using CLI users can create objects, edit, and view records. The programmer can execute APEX code and SOQL queries using CLI.
Available commands:
login Log in to force.com
logout Log out from force.com
whoami Show information about the active account
sobject Manage sobjects
field Manage sobject fields
record Create, modify, or view records
export this command Export data or metadata to a local directory
import this command Import data or metadata from a local directory
query Execute a SOQL query
apex Execute anonymous Apex code
version Display current version
update Update to the latest version
help Show this help
Difference between Import-Wizard & Data-Loader
Import wizard is a good choice when users are less technical, small scale, and records limit is up to 50000 records. Import wizards can import data from Contact, Account, Lead, and Custom objects too. Where data loader is used for complex user handling having a large size of records more than 50000. The data loader can work with any object excluding User.
Tutorial Index
- Introduction to Cloud Computing (Salesforce.com and Force.com)
- Overview of Database Concepts (Salesforce.com)
- Introduction to Force.com
- Building Salesforce Custom App and Objects
- Object Relationships and Formula Field in Salesforce
- Salesforce Security Model and Overview
- Automation in Salesforce
- Approval Process in Salesforce
- Introduction to SOQL and SOSL
- Introduction to Apex
- Salesforce Data Management
- Visualforce MVC Architecture on Cloud
- Salesforce Reports and Dashboards
- Building a Visualforce (Custom) Page for the Salesforce App
- Salesforce Sandbox and Overview of Force.com capabilities
- Learning Apex and Deployment Tools
