Sumit Sarkar conducted a 5 day proof of concept to integrate invoice data from an on-premise system into Salesforce using Lightning Connect. On day 1, he obtained connection information and learned the invoices were stored in both ERP and a data warehouse. On day 2, he planned the data model relationships with an analyst. On day 3, he set up developer and trial accounts to produce OData. On day 4, he encountered an issue building a related list and got help from an online community. On day 5, he migrated the proof of concept from his developer org to a new sandbox for further testing.

1. Lightning Connect:
Lessons Learned
Sumit Sarkar
Chief Data Evangelist
Sumit.Sarkar@progress.com
@SAsInSumit

2. What is Lightning Connect?

3. ​ Lightning Connect maps Salesforce external
objects to data tables in external systems.
Instead of copying the data into your
organization, Lightning Connect accesses
the data on demand and in real time. The
data is never stale, and we access only what
you need.
​ Recommended when:
• You have a large amount of data that you don’t want
to copy into your Salesforce organization.
• You need small amounts of data at any one time.
• You want real-time access to the latest data.
What is Lightning Connect?

4. 5 Day POC and Lessons Learned

5. Based on article from Salesforce developers site
​ Session today will have more drama

6. Day 1
​ Request Connection Information for POC
Time: 15 minutes
Level of Difficulty: Easy
Contacted Progress Software IT and Sales Operations with my intent to do a proof of concept
(POC) for Lightning Connect to integrate invoices from our system of record behind the
corporate firewall with our Sales Cloud as an External Data Source.
Colleagues involved:
Balaji Srinivasan, Sr Manager IT
Lessons Learned:
Learned that invoices are stored in both ERP and the Data Warehouse. Data Warehouse
access was recommended for this POC since it’s historical in nature.

7. Day 1
​ Request Connection Information for POC
Corporate Firewall
Invoices

8. Day 2
​ Data Model Relationship Planning
Time: 15 minutes
Level of Difficulty: Easy
My credentials to the data warehouse were created and I set up a quick call with our Sales
Operations analyst who provided the entities in the data warehouse that contain invoice data,
which happen to be “Invoice.”
Field nameFilter criteria
Invoice_SoldTo= account.Customer_Number__c
Colleagues Involved:
Brian Rourk, Sales Operations Analyst
Lessons Learned:
When new to external data, there are people who already know the data really well.

9. Day 2
​ Data Model Relationship Planning
Corporate Firewall
Invoices

10. Day 3
​ Get Started with Developer and Trial Accounts
Time: 60 minutes
Level of Difficulty: Easy
Provided Salesforce our production organization ID to evaluate Lightning Connect. In the
meantime, I created a developer account in Salesforce that comes with Lightning Connect
(limited to 1 external data source) at https://developer.salesforce.com/signup.
Next I created a trial account in DataDirect Cloud (http://www.datadirectcloud.com) to produce
OData from our on-premise data warehouse for Lightning Connect External Objects.
Colleagues Involved:
N/A – Salesforce Account Team
Lessons Learned:
It was helpful to find a self-service click-not-code solution for producing Odata for Lightning
Connect.

11. Day 3
​ Get Started with Developer and Trial Accounts
Corporate Firewall
Invoices
Developer Account

12. Day 4
​ Building Related Lists in Developer Sandbox
Time: 60 minutes
Level of Difficulty: Intermediate
I ran into an issue creating a related list with external
objects by following this tutorial from tquila.
So I posted my question to the Salesforce
community and received an answer that same day
from Carolina Ruiz Medina, Principal Developer at
Financial Force.
https://developer.salesforce.com/forums/
ForumsMain?id=906F0000000AyT7IAK
Lessons Learned:
The Salesforce Community has seen everything.

13. Day 4
​ Building Related Lists in Developer Sandbox
Corporate Firewall
Invoices
Developer Account

14. Day 5
​ Migrating the POC From Development to Sandbox
Time: 60 minutes
Level of Difficulty: Easy
Then I received a note from James Green at Salesforce that Lightning Connect has been
successfully enabled on our org. I requested our Sales Operations create a
new sandbox since the feature cannot be directly enabled for existing sandboxes.
My new sandbox was then ready to go, thanks to SalesOps: https://cs15.salesforce.com
I double-checked creation of an external data source and verified the type
“Lightning Connect: OData 2.0” is available, which means it worked; and I’m no longer
limited to just one as in my developer account!
Colleagues Involved:
Brian Rourk, Sales Operations Analyst
Lessons Learned:
Create a new sandbox AFTER Lightning Connect or new features are enabled on
my org.

15. Day 5
​ Migrating the POC From Development to Sandbox
Corporate Firewall
Invoices
cs15.salesforce.com

16. Demo

17. Demo
​ With live invoice data

18. Future projects

19. Future projects
​ Internal Roadmap for Lightning Connect
1. Service Cloud entitlement against ERP.
2. Oracle Marketing Cloud integration to create related lists for marketing activity in the
Contact object (email send, email open, campaign details, etc).
3. Google analytics integration to show content for page views / domains in the Account
object.
4. Integration with Sumologic Big Data Analytics to track user experiences of cloud
services.
Lessons Learned:
Even though we’re using DataDirect Cloud for all of these, not all OData sources
are the same.

20. Q&A
@SAsInSumit
www.linkedin.com/in/meetsumit