Salesforce Integration with Outbound REST APIs

Our client, a leading fintech offering education loans, needed a solution to sync their Salesforce platform with a third-party Loan Origination system. The third-party system exposed a suite of RESTful APIs but required OAUTH2 and JWT tokens for authorizations.

Objective:

To implement a secure, real-time synchronization mechanism between Salesforce and the loan origination system. The mechanism had to be triggered contextually based on certain events or criteria in Salesforce.

Solution:

OAUTH2 Implementation:

• Using Salesforce’s Apex, we designed a class dedicated to retrieving the OAUTH2 access token.
• This class was responsible for securely storing the client ID, secret, and other essential credentials.
• On successful authorization, the access token was cached for future requests.

JWT Authorization:

• We leveraged Apex to generate JWT tokens, which were signed using the RSA SHA256 algorithm.
• The private key was securely stored in Salesforce, and the JWT token was used to request an access token from the third-party system.

Flow Integration:

• Salesforce Flows were created to dictate when and how the API calls should be made.
• These flows were event-driven, triggered by actions like completed loan application submission in Salesforce.
• On each trigger, the Flow would call the relevant Apex class, which in turn interacted with the outbound API, passing the necessary authorization tokens.

Data Synchronization:

• On successful API call, data was either pushed to the third-party system or pulled based on the requirements.
• We implemented error-handling mechanisms to manage potential API failures or data inconsistencies.

Results:

• Real-time Sync: With the integrated Flow and Apex logic, Salesforce achieved near real-time synchronization with the third-party inventory management system.
• Enhanced Data Integrity: By employing OAUTH2 and JWT, we ensured secure data transactions, maintaining data integrity and confidentiality.
• Scalable Solution: The solution was crafted to accommodate an increasing number of API calls as the CRM platform scaled.

Conclusion:

Our approach allowed the client to seamlessly integrate their Salesforce instance with a crucial third-party system. It not only automated significant parts of their Loan Application management but also brought in efficiency, accuracy, and scalability.