Common Salesforce to Salesforce Integration Issues

Those who haven’t worked in internet journalism themselves may not (and probably would not) know this, but we often draw cues on topics to discuss from general inquiry and discussion over social networks, blog comments, forums and other channels. So, we can often, as a result, be at the whim of terminology problems, as is the case with Salesforce to Salesforce integration issues. See, with Salesforce being so popular largely due to the immense integration support it offers by design, and as a product of so many other vendors clamoring to support this concept. Of course, this kind of integration is magnificent for so many obvious reasons, so the idea of Salesforce to Salesforce integration issues by how they sound, will raise panic flags in anyone who’s taken a shine to Salesforce not having integration problems at all. Now, there have been some rather well known issues come up here and there, and there are some definite issues looming on the horizon that they will have to soon contend with. But, in truth, this phrase doesn’t mean what I think a lot of people would automatically think it does. I think people misinterpret this as getting various Force.com services to integrate, or something of the sort. At first, I kind of thought this too, and so I dismissed the very existence of it as absurd. What it Really Is: What this really means is bi-directional integration of another system with Salesforce. They can both read from one another, and transmit to one another in a full loop. This kind of circular I/O is actually relatively a problem right now, because you will find that a lot of integration modules only go one way or the other. Famously, in recent times, was a problem with Outlook. Honestly, the fault has never been explained in a clear enough way for me to be sure what the issue there is, but suffice it to say, a service as big as Outlook not working is an issue. Future Problems: The biggest problem that’s going to come along soon enough is that while HTML5 and AJAX and other things are doing a lot to make browser-based delivery as good as it can be, there really is going to be a point of diminishing returns with this indirectly, and it’s directly linked to this kind of integration thing. Every API in existence for web services are proprietary on a level not seen on local design platforms. This means that integration worked on by logical thought in construction may not jive with some of the quirks of a given web system, even though they should. This is going to result in a lot of failure to integrate without struggle in the future, as this stuff gets more diversified but with no sign of standardization tighter than baseline W3C and ISO specs. But, for now, such Salesforce to Salesforce integration issues are not prevalent, and are only potential future problems. With the exception of Outlook, and the linearity of a lot of designs, there aren’t that many problems quite yet. I am sorry to say them becoming problems later is very, very possible.
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Amanda is the Lead Author & Editor of Rainforce Blog. Amanda established the Rainforce blog to create a source for news and discussion about some of the issues, challenges, news, and ideas relating to Salesforce usage.