This second generation Salesforce connector offers the following advantages over the Salesforce Legacy connector:

• Indexing of Salesforce permissions rather than applying the same permission on all source items (see Indexed Salesforce Security)

• Improved performance and reduced API calls

• Indexing of Knowledge Base articles and CRM content files

• Takes advantage of recent Salesforce API versions

Indexed Salesforce Content

The connector can index the following Salesforce content:

• Service Cloud standard/custom objects and fields

• Multilingual Knowledge base articles

• Chatter feed items and files [more]

• CRM Content (binary files such as PDF)

• Sharing permissions

• Sandbox and production environments

• Inactive users

• User visibility

Note: The Salesforce connector does not support to rebuild only one KB or Chatter document or one whole object as it appears to be possible from the index browser (see Applying an Action on a Document From the Index Browser) .

Indexed Salesforce Security

The connector can index the permissions of each Salesforce item allowing the index to only return Salesforce search results that the user performing the query has the permissions to see.

The Coveo index replicates the Salesforce security model for:

• View All permissions

  The Salesforce connector fully supports all View All permissions given through a user profile, more explicitly View All Data which applies to every object, View All User which allows a view all on the user object, and View All on specific objects such Accounts, Cases, Leads, and Contact.

  Note: As Salesforce does not support View All Data on ContentVersion, the permission is replicated in the connector.

• Sharing permissions

  An administrator can secure private objects with the owner, collaboration group, group, user, bosses of a given user, subordinates of a given user, or Community (also called Network) sharing permission types.

  Note: CES 7.0.8225+ (March 2016) Portal Super User permissions are supported by the connector.

• Profile associated to the user

  The profile specifies standard and custom object permissions for users associated to this profile.

  Note: Any user which is granted Read access for an object by his profile is entitled to search for records of the given type.

• Organization-wide defaults sharing settings

  These settings specify the level of access your users have to each other's data.

  Note: CES 7.0.8388+ (June 2016) The external sharing model (organization-wide defaults) is supported by the connector.

• Shared content

  A user can share private content with specific users or groups.

  Note: File sharing settings applied to Chatter files and CRM Content documents are also supported. File sharing settings are not the same as the sharing settings for private objects.

• CRM Content

  CRM Content users have access to CRM Content Documents when they are entitled to read such documents in the library to which the documents belong.

• Chatter

  Chatter posts and comments inherit the permissions of the record onto which they are posted, no matter if that record is public, private, a group or a user.

  Note: Public and private CollaborationGroups are supported.

• Communities

  Sharing sets are supported in Communities.

• Role hierarchy within the organization

  With a role hierarchy, private documents are visible by the owner, but also by all parents of the owner in the hierarchy.

• Permission sets

  Permission sets given to individual users can extend (not restrict) their permissions beyond what is specified in their profile.

• License type

  A user license entitles a user to different functionality within Salesforce and determines which profiles and permission sets are available to the user, so the Coveo index indirectly replicates user license type permissions by indexing permissions from profiles and permission sets.

Note: The connector does not support the following security aspects: 

• Apex managed sharing

• IP based permissions

  The Coveo connector cannot index restrictions on login IP addresses or hours configured in Salesforce. The consequence is that your Salesforce users can access Coveo search interfaces and review Salesforce content from any IP address at any time.

• Field level security (FLS)

  For Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Salesforce editions, visibility of individual fields can be granted or denied to users or groups to fine-tune the access control in a permission set or a profile. The Coveo connector cannot index these permissions. The consequence is that a user that is denied access to a field could see the content of this field in Coveo search results. Note however that this is also the case for Salesforce search results (see the Salesforce document Field-Level Security Overview).

• Permission changes replicated with re-indexing, not with incremental refreshes

  When permissions change in Salesforce for a profile, permission set, object sharing, or object security level (Public versus Private), the changes are not replicated in the index on the next incremental refresh. You must refresh the source to capture permission changes.

• Shared personal groups

  A user can share content with a personal group. These sharing permissions cannot be indexed because they are currently not reported by the Salesforce API. The consequence is that members of the personal group will not see the shared content in Coveo Organization results. This limitation is therefore not a security hole.

• Frozen users are not supported

  The user that are frozen using the Freeze button are not denied access to the search (see Freezing User Accounts).

• Knowledge Base (KB) item permissions:

  In Salesforce, you can map User Roles to KB data categories (e.g.: members of the Technical Agent role can only see KB articles under the Technical data category). This mapping information is not available from the Salesforce API and therefore cannot be indexed. Similarly, the permissions given through permission sets to grant only some users access to only one Article Type cannot be retrieved through the Salesforce API.

  Consequently, in search results, all users can see all KB articles under all data categories.

• When the organization-wide default is set to Controlled by Parent, a maximum master-detail relationship depth of two levels is supported (see Sharing Default Access Settings).

  Example: When you index a subdetail object, the detail parents are correctly determined but the master parents are considered public because there are three levels (master-detail-subdetail).

Incremental Refresh

The incremental refresh feature refreshes the content of the index based on the modification date of the objects in the Salesforce environment. If an item is modified, the incremental refresh feature refreshes the item automatically.

Notes:

• The incremental refresh feature limitations: 

  • Does not work when the last incremental refresh was performed more than 30 days ago. This will trigger a full refresh of the content.

  • Not supported for all not replicateable deleted objects such as deleted ContentVersion (CRM Content and Chatter files) attachments and other items.

  • CES 7.0.7914– (October 2015) A source full refresh or rebuild is needed to capture the deletion of knowledge base articles and the attachment (or the contrary) of articles on a case.

• CES 7.0.8047+ (December 2015) After you upgrade CES, it is recommended to perform a full refresh of your source(s) containing KB articles to take account of possible URI changes. You will also possibly have to change the ObjectsToGet configuration file depending on your needs (see Salesforce Connector Configuration Recipes). Theses modifications allow the connector to fully support the incremental refresh as well as the publish status changes of KB articles using stable URIs now produced by default.

• CES 7.0.7914– (October 2015) Stable URIs can only be produced with the help of Coveo Support for the latest version of online articles when draft and archived articles are not indexed.

Customizable ObjectsToGet Configuration File

You can customize items that the Coveo crawler retrieves from Salesforce (see Creating a Salesforce ObjectsToGet Configuration File).

Customizable Mapping File

You can customize how the fields of Salesforce objects are mapped to searchable fields in the Coveo index (see Creating a Salesforce Mapping File).