Salesforce Integration

Overview

The Salesforce integration connects Friender Assess to your Salesforce org via a Connected App using the OAuth 2.0 Web Server flow. Our observation agents analyze CRM operational patterns — deal stage transitions, activity volume, pipeline movement, and opportunity velocity — to understand how your sales and customer success workflows function in practice.

Friender never reads customer PII, deal notes, or email content. We collect only structural metadata: stage transition timestamps, activity counts, opportunity field change history, and pipeline aggregate metrics. This provides a clear picture of your sales execution dynamics without exposing customer-sensitive information.

Prerequisites

• Salesforce admin access — you must have the System Administrator profile or the "Manage Connected Apps" permission to authorize third-party OAuth applications
• A Friender Assess account with an active assessment engagement
• Your Salesforce instance must be a Production or full-copy Sandbox org. Developer Edition orgs may have API limits that restrict data collection
• API access must be enabled for your Salesforce edition. Enterprise, Unlimited, and Performance editions include API access by default. Professional Edition requires the API add-on
• If your org uses IP restriction policies or login IP ranges, ensure Friender's IP range is whitelisted (provided during onboarding)

Setup Steps

Step 1: Navigate to the Integrations Dashboard

From your Friender Assess dashboard, open the left sidebar and click Integrations. Locate the Salesforce card in the CRM section.

Step 2: Click "Connect Salesforce"

Click the Connect Salesforce button. This initiates the Salesforce OAuth 2.0 Web Server flow and redirects you to your Salesforce org's login page.

Step 3: Authorize the Salesforce OAuth Connection

Log in to Salesforce with your admin credentials and review the Connected App authorization request. Click Allow to grant access. Friender requests the following OAuth scopes:

• api — access to the Salesforce REST and SOAP APIs for querying object metadata and field history. This is the base scope required for any API integration
• read_only — restricts all API access to read-only operations. Friender cannot create, update, or delete any Salesforce records

The combination of api and read_only ensures that Friender has API access but is strictly limited to read operations. No data modification is possible with these scopes.

Step 4: Select Objects

After authorization, you'll be redirected back to the Friender dashboard to select which Salesforce objects to include in the assessment:

• Opportunities — stage transitions, close dates, amount ranges, and pipeline velocity (recommended)
• Activities (Tasks & Events) — activity volume, type distribution, and task completion patterns
• Cases — case lifecycle, escalation patterns, and resolution time (for customer success analysis)
• Leads — lead conversion rates, routing patterns, and time-to-first-contact
• Custom objects — if your org uses custom objects for key workflows, you can include them with field-level selection

For the best analysis, include at minimum Opportunities and Activities. Adding Cases and Leads provides a more complete picture of your customer-facing operations.

Step 5: Confirm & Start Collection

Review your object selections and click Confirm. The initial import queries field history tracking data and record metadata from the past 90 days. Depending on your data volume, this can take 2-8 hours. A progress indicator is visible on the integrations dashboard.

What Data Is Collected

The Salesforce integration collects CRM workflow metadata. Here is a complete list of data points:

• Deal stage transitions — opportunity stage change timestamps, stage duration, and progression/regression patterns (e.g., Prospecting → Qualification → Negotiation → Closed Won)
• Activity counts — number of tasks, calls, emails (count only), and events logged per opportunity, per user, and per time period
• Pipeline velocity — time-in-stage metrics, deal cycle time from creation to close, win rate by stage, and conversion rate between stages
• Opportunity metadata — record type, amount range bucket (not exact amounts), forecast category, and close date accuracy (predicted vs. actual)
• Owner transitions — when records change owners, how many reassignments occur, and handoff patterns between team members
• Case lifecycle (if included) — case status transitions, escalation events, and time-to-resolution metrics

The following data is never collected:

• Customer names, company names, or contact information (PII)
• Deal notes, descriptions, or comment text
• Email body content or subject lines
• Exact dollar amounts (only bucketed ranges for pattern analysis)
• Attachments, documents, or files
• Chatter posts, feed items, or internal communication content

Permissions Required

The Salesforce integration requires two OAuth scopes via the Connected App:

Scope          Purpose
api            REST/SOAP API access for querying object metadata
read_only      Restricts all operations to read-only (no data modification)

Additionally, the authorizing user's Salesforce profile must have:

• API Enabled permission — required for any API-based integration
• View All Data or object-level read permissions for the selected objects — needed to query cross-user records for organizational analysis
• Field History Tracking must be enabled on the objects you want to analyze (especially Opportunity Stage) — this is configured in Salesforce Setup > Object Manager > [Object] > Fields & Relationships > Set History Tracking

You can revoke Friender's access at any time from Salesforce Setup > Apps > Connected Apps > Manage Connected Apps > Friender Assess or by revoking the OAuth token from Setup > Security > Session Management. Revoking access immediately stops all data collection.

Troubleshooting

OAuth Authorization Fails

If the Salesforce OAuth redirect fails or you see an "invalid client" error, verify that your Salesforce edition includes API access. Professional Edition requires a separate API add-on. Also ensure that your admin profile has the "API Enabled" system permission — some custom profiles may have this disabled by default.

Connected App Blocked by Admin

If your Salesforce org has "Admin approved users are pre-authorized" enabled for Connected Apps, a System Administrator must explicitly grant access to the Friender Assess Connected App. Go to Setup > Apps > Connected Apps > Manage Connected Apps > Friender Assess > Policies and set "Permitted Users" to "All users may self-authorize" or add the appropriate profiles/permission sets.

Field History Not Available

If stage transition data is missing or incomplete, Field History Tracking may not be enabled for the Opportunity Stage field. Enable it from Setup > Object Manager > Opportunity > Fields & Relationships > Set History Tracking. Note that enabling Field History Tracking only captures changes going forward — historical transitions before enablement are not retroactively available.

API Rate Limits

Salesforce enforces API request limits based on your edition and number of licenses (typically 100,000 requests per 24-hour period for Enterprise Edition). Friender's import process is designed to stay well within standard limits, but if your org is already near its API ceiling from other integrations, the import may be throttled. Monitor your API usage from Setup > System Overview > API Usage (Last 24 Hours). Contact hello@joinfriender.com if you need help optimizing API consumption.

Sandbox vs. Production

If you connected a Salesforce Sandbox instead of your Production org, disconnect the integration and reconnect. During the OAuth flow, ensure you use your production login URL (login.salesforce.com) rather than the sandbox login URL (test.salesforce.com). Full-copy Sandboxes can be used for testing the integration before connecting Production.

Need help? Return to the Integration Setup overview or contact us at hello@joinfriender.com.