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.

Itxs 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 objectxs record to other objectxs records in Salesforce loaded by the Data Loader.

Introduction x 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 x 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

1. Introduction to Cloud Computing (Salesforce.com and Force.com)
2. Overview of Database Concepts (Salesforce.com)
3. Introduction to Force.com
4. Building Salesforce Custom App and Objects
5. Object Relationships and Formula Field in Salesforce
6. Salesforce Security Model and Overview
7. Automation in Salesforce
8. Approval Process in Salesforce
9. Introduction to SOQL and SOSL
10. Introduction to Apex
11. Salesforce Data Management
12. Visualforce MVC Architecture on Cloud
13. Salesforce Reports and Dashboards
14. Building a Visualforce (Custom) Page for the Salesforce App
15. Salesforce Sandbox and Overview of Force.com capabilities
16. Learning Apex and Deployment Tools