Salesforce connector V2.0 - Amazon Kendra
Supported featuresPrerequisitesConnection instructionsLearn more

Salesforce connector V2.0

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool for managing support, sales, and marketing teams. You can use Amazon Kendra to index your Salesforce standard objects and even custom objects.

The Amazon Kendra Salesforce data source connector supports the following Salesforce editions: Developer Edition and Enterprise Edition.

Note

Support for Salesforce connector V1.0 / SalesforceConfiguration API is scheduled to end in 2023. We recommend migrating to or using Salesforce connector V2.0 / TemplateConfiguration API.

For troubleshooting your Amazon Kendra Salesforce data source connector, see Troubleshooting data sources.

Supported features

Amazon Kendra Salesforce data source connector supports the following features:

  • Field mappings

  • User access control

  • Inclusion/exclusion filters

  • Full and incremental content syncs

  • Virtual private cloud (VPC)

Prerequisites

Before you can use Amazon Kendra to index your Salesforce data source, make these changes in your Salesforce and AWS accounts.

In Salesforce, make sure you have:

  • Created a Salesforce administrative account and have noted the user name and password you use to connect to Salesforce.

  • Copied the Salesforce security token associated with the account used to connect to Salesforce.

  • Created a Salesforce Connected App account with OAuth activated and have copied the consumer key (client ID) and consumer secret (client secret) assigned to your Salesforce Connected App. The client ID and client secret are used as your authentication credentials stored in an AWS Secrets Manager secret. See Salesforce documentation on Connected Apps for more information.

    Note

    We recommend that you regularly refresh or rotate your credentials and secret. Provide only the necessary access level for your own security. We do not recommend that you re-use credentials and secrets across data sources, and connector versions 1.0 and 2.0 (where applicable).

  • Copied the URL of the Salesforce instance that you want to index. Typically, this is https://<company>.salesforce.com/. The server must be running a Salesforce connected app.

  • Added credentials to your Salesforce server for a user with read-only access to Salesforce by cloning the ReadOnly profile and then adding the View All Data and Manage Articles permissions. These credentials identify the user making the connection and the Salesforce connected app that Amazon Kendra connects to.

  • Checked each document is unique in Salesforce and across other data sources you plan to use for the same index. Each data source that you want to use for an index must not contain the same document across the data sources. Document IDs are global to an index and must be unique per index.

In your AWS account, make sure you have:

  • Created an Amazon Kendra index and, if using the API, noted the index ID.

  • Created an IAM role for your data source and, if using the API, noted the ARN of the IAM role.

    Note

    If you change your authentication type and credentials, you must update your IAM role to access the correct AWS Secrets Manager secret ID.

  • Stored your Salesforce authentication credentials in an AWS Secrets Manager secret and, if using the API, noted the ARN of the secret.

    Note

    We recommend that you regularly refresh or rotate your credentials and secret. Provide only the necessary access level for your own security. We do not recommend that you re-use credentials and secrets across data sources, and connector versions 1.0 and 2.0 (where applicable).

If you don’t have an existing IAM role or secret, you can use the console to create a new IAM role and Secrets Manager secret when you connect your Salesforce data source to Amazon Kendra. If you are using the API, you must provide the ARN of an existing IAM role and Secrets Manager secret, and an index ID.

Connection instructions

To connect Amazon Kendra to your Salesforce data source, you must provide the necessary details of your Salesforce data source so that Amazon Kendra can access your data. If you have not yet configured Salesforce for Amazon Kendra see Prerequisites.

Console

To connect Amazon Kendra to Salesforce:

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Kendra console.

  2. From the left navigation pane, choose Indexes and then choose the index you want to use from the list of indexes.

    Note

    You can choose to configure or edit your User access control settings under Index settings.

  3. On the Getting started page, choose Add data source.

  4. On the Add data source page, choose Salesforce connector, and then choose Add connector. If using version 2 (if applicable), choose Salesforce connector with the "V2.0" tag.

  5. On the Specify data source details page, enter the following information:

    1. In Name and description, for Data source name—Enter a name for your data source. You can include hyphens but not spaces.

    2. (Optional) Description—Enter an optional description for your data source.

    3. In Default language—Choose a language to filter your documents for the index. Unless you specify otherwise, the language defaults to English. Language specified in the document metadata overrides the selected language.

    4. In Tags, for Add new tag—Include optional tags to search and filter your resources or track your AWS costs.

    5. Choose Next.

  6. On the Define access and security page, enter the following information:

    1. Salesforce URL—Enter The instance URL for the Salesforce site that you want to index.

    2. Authorization—Turn on or off access control list (ACL) information for your documents, if you have an ACL and want to use it for access control. The ACL specifies which documents that users and groups can access. The ACL information is used to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. For more information, see User context filtering.

    3. Enter an existing secret or if you create a new secret, an AWS Secrets Manager secret window opens.

      1. Authentication—Enter following information in the Create an AWS Secrets Manager secret window:

        1. Secret name—A name for your secret. The prefix ‘AmazonKendra-Salesforce-’ is automatically added to your secret name.

        2. For User name, Password, Security token, Consumer key, Consumer secret, and Authentication URL—Enter the authentication credential values you generated and downloaded from your Salesforce account.

          Note

          If you use Salesforce Developer Edition, use https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token or the My Domain login URL (for example, https://MyCompany.my.salesforce.com) as the Authentication URL. If you use Salesforce Sandbox Edition, use https://test.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token or the My Domain login URL (for example, MyDomainName--SandboxName.sandbox.my.salesforce.com) as the Authentication URL.

        3. Choose Save authentication.

    4. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—You can choose to use a VPC. If so, you must add Subnets and VPC security groups.

    5. Identity crawler—Specify whether to turn on Amazon Kendra’s identity crawler. The identity crawler uses the access control list (ACL) information for your documents to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. If you have an ACL for your documents and choose to use your ACL, you can then also choose to turn on Amazon Kendra’s identity crawler to configure user context filtering of search results. Otherwise, if identity crawler is turned off, all documents can be publicly searched. If you want to use access control for your documents and identity crawler is turned off, you can alternatively use the PutPrincipalMapping API to upload user and group access information for user context filtering.

    6. IAM role—Choose an existing IAM role or create a new IAM role to access your repository credentials and index content.

      Note

      IAM roles used for indexes cannot be used for data sources. If you are unsure if an existing role is used for an index or FAQ, choose Create a new role to avoid errors.

    7. Choose Next.

  7. On the Configure sync settings page, enter the following information:

    1. For Crawl attachments—Select to crawl all attached Salesforce objects.

    2. For Standard objects, Standard objects with attachments, and Standard object without attachment and Knowledge Articles—Select Salesforce entities or content types you want to crawl.

    3. You must provide configuration information for indexing at least one of standard objects, knowledge articles, or chatter feeds. If you choose to crawl Knowledge articles you must specify the types of knowledge articles to index. You can choose published, archived, drafts and attachments.

      Regex filter—Specify a regex pattern to include specific catalog items.

  8. For Additional configuration:

    • ACL information All access control lists are included by default. Deselecting an access control list will make all files in that category public.

    • Regex patterns—Add regular expression patterns to include or exclude certain files. You can add up to 100 patterns.

    Sync mode—Choose how you want to update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don't choose full sync as your sync mode option.

    • Full sync: Freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.

    • New, modified sync: Index only new and modified content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source's mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

    • New, modified, deleted sync: Index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source's mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

  9. Choose Next.

  10. On the Set field mappings page, enter the following information:

    1. For Standard knowledge article, Standard object attachments, and Additional suggested field mappings —Select from the Amazon Kendra generated default data source fields you want to map to your index.

      Note

      An index mapping to _document_body is required. You can't change the mapping between the Salesforce ID field and the Amazon Kendra _document_id field. You can map any Salesforce field to the document title or document body Amazon Kendra reserved/default index fields.

      If you map any Salesforce field to Amazon Kendra document title and document body fields, Amazon Kendra will use data from the document title and body fields in search responses.

    2. Add field—To add custom data source fields to create an index field name to map to and the field data type.

    3. Choose Next.

  11. On the Review and create page, check that the information you have entered is correct and then select Add data source. You can also choose to edit your information from this page. Your data source will appear on the Data sources page after the data source has been added successfully.

API

To connect Amazon Kendra to Salesforce

You must specify a JSON of the data source schema using the TemplateConfiguration API. You must provide the following information:

  • Data source—Specify the data source type as SALESFORCEV2 when you use the TemplateConfiguration JSON schema. Also specify the data source as TEMPLATE when you call the CreateDataSource API.

  • Host URL—Specify the Salesforce instance host URL.

  • Sync mode—Specify how Amazon Kendra should update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don't choose full sync as your sync mode option. You can choose between:

    • FORCED_FULL_CRAWL to freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.

    • FULL_CRAWL to index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source’s mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

    • CHANGE_LOG to index only new and modified content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source’s mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

  • Secret Amazon Resource Name (ARN)—Provide the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of an Secrets Manager secret that contains the authentication credentials for your Salesforce account. The secret is stored in a JSON structure with the following keys:

    {
    "authenticationUrl": "OAUTH endpoint that Amazon Kendra connects to get an OAUTH token",
    "consumerKey": "Application public key generated when you created your Salesforce application",
    "consumerSecret": "Application private key generated when you created your Salesforce application",
    "password": "Password associated with the user logging in to the Salesforce instance",
    "securityToken": "Token associated with the user account logging in to the Salesforce instance",
    "username": "User name of the user logging in to the Salesforce instance"
}

  • IAM role—Specify RoleArn when you call CreateDataSource to provide an IAM role with permissions to access your Secrets Manager secret and to call the required public APIs for the Salesforce connector and Amazon Kendra. For more information, see IAM roles for Salesforce data sources.

You can also add the following optional features:

  • Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—Specify VpcConfiguration when you call CreateDataSource. For more information, see Configuring Amazon Kendra to use an Amazon VPC.

  • Inclusion and exclusion filters—You can specify whether to include or exclude certain documents, accounts, campaigns, cases, contacts, leads, opportunities, solutions, tasks, groups, chatters, and custom entity files.

    Note

    Most data sources use regular expression patterns, which are inclusion or exclusion patterns referred to as filters. If you specify an inclusion filter, only content that matches the inclusion filter is indexed. Any document that doesn’t match the inclusion filter isn’t indexed. If you specify an inclusion and exclusion filter, documents that match the exclusion filter are not indexed, even if they match the inclusion filter.

  • Identity crawler—Specify whether to turn on Amazon Kendra’s identity crawler. The identity crawler uses the access control list (ACL) information for your documents to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. If you have an ACL for your documents and choose to use your ACL, you can then also choose to turn on Amazon Kendra’s identity crawler to configure user context filtering of search results. Otherwise, if identity crawler is turned off, all documents can be publicly searched. If you want to use access control for your documents and identity crawler is turned off, you can alternatively use the PutPrincipalMapping API to upload user and group access information for user context filtering.

  • Field mappings—Choose to map your Salesforce data source fields to your Amazon Kendra index fields. For more information, see Mapping data source fields.

    Note

    The document body field or the document body equivalent for your documents is required in order for Amazon Kendra to search your documents. You must map your document body field name in your data source to the index field name _document_body. All other fields are optional.

    Note

    An index mapping to _document_body is required. You can't change the mapping between the Salesforce ID field and the Amazon Kendra _document_id field. You can map any Salesforce field to the document title or document body Amazon Kendra reserved/default index fields.

    If you map any Salesforce field to Amazon Kendra document title and document body fields, Amazon Kendra will use data from the document title and body fields in search responses.

For a list of other important JSON keys to configure, see Salesforce template schema.

Learn more

To learn more about integrating Amazon Kendra with your Salesforce data source, see: