Salesforce

How does the Salesforce Integration work

Rally is able to connect to your Salesforce instance through a standard OAuth connection to an individual user account (see below for permissions needed).

After setting up a connection with Salesforce, you are able set configuration settings and create property mappings between Rally Properties and Salesforce Properties. Each of these properties can be configured per property to either sync data from Rally → Salesforce, from Salesforce → Rally, or use a Two Way sync (see below for more details).

Once your Salesforce account has been connected and the integration has been configured, Rally will automatically sync data between Rally and Salesforce every 24 hours. You can pause the automatic syncs, delete the connection, or start a manual sync at anytime by going into your Salesforce Integration settings in Rally.

When syncing, Rally uses the email address of the Contact or Lead to map data between Salesforce and Rally. If an email address from Salesforce is not detected in Rally, Rally will either ignore or create a new person in Rally depending on how you configured the integration.

User Permissions

Before you start configuring your Salesforce Integration with Rally, you need to make sure you have the correct user permissions in your Rally and Salesforce accounts.

Rally User Permissions

In Rally, you’ll need to be either an Ops Manager or a Super Admin.

Salesforce User Permissions

Rally connects to your Salesforce instance through a standard OAuth connection to an individual user account. We recommend using a stand-alone account specifically for Rally (often called a Service Account) so you can see Rally updates in your audit history.

The Rally Service Account will need at least these permissions in order to connect successfully:

  • "API Enabled" must be checked
  • "Session Security Level Required at Login" must be "None"

The objects and fields accessible to Rally are all determined by the user account you use when connecting Rally to your Salesforce instance. Rally will have the same access as the user, so if fields are read-only or hidden for that user, they will be to Rally. In general, you should give Rally "Read", "Create", "Edit", and "Delete" access to all the objects you'd like to manage via Rally.


Setting up the Salesforce Integration

After you have the correct User Permissions, you can now set up your Salesforce integration with Rally. To get started, you can navigate to Settings > Data Connections , click “Connect to Salesforce”, and follow these steps

1. Connect Salesforce to Rally

Click connect to log into your Salesforce account. When connecting Rally to Salesforce for the first time, you’ll need to log into your Salesforce account and grant Rally the following permissions:

  • Access to identity URL service
  • Manage user data via APIs
  • Perform requests at any time

2. Configure the sync

After Salesforce is connected to Rally, you can configure the following sync settings:

Record Type

You can configure Rally to either sync people to Contacts or Leads By default, Contacts will be used.

Additionally, you sync data with the Account that is associated with the Contact or Lead automatically. You can select Account properties during the property mapping step (see below).

List

After selecting which record type, you can select which list of Contacts or Leads Rally will sync with. By default, All Contacts are selected. But, if you had a specific list you wanted to sync to Rally (i.e. Opted In Participants List), you can select that list from the dropdown.

Additional Sync Preferences

The two additional settings you select are to Create new people in Rally during sync and Delete people in Rally if deleted in Salesforce.

As noted before, Rally will check the contact or lead’s email address when determining whether to create a new contact or delete a contact in Rally.

3. Map fields between Rally and Salesforce

The next step is to map Salesforce fields to properties in Rally and select the sync direction.

Note When adding new fields to be synced we will immediately kick off a sync.

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The Identifier Field is an unique string field used to map a Salesforce contact to a person in Rally. Only unique properties in Rally (such as Email) can be used as an identifier field.

Property Mapping

Rally currently supports mapping the following field types from Salesforce to Rally

Salesforce Field TypeRally Field Type
picklist, referencesingle-select*
multipicklistmulti-select*
booleanboolean
double/intnumber
string, textareatext
data, datetimedate

*We only map up to 100 unique property options per select property

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Rally also supports syncing with Account fields. If a Contact or Lead is associated with an Account, you can select any Account field in Salesforce to be mapped to a property in Rally.

Property Level Sync Direction

Rally supports three different sync directions: Salesforce to Rally, Rally to Salesforce, and Two Way. These sync directions are configured per field/property. Here is more details on the sync directions

  • Salesforce to Rally: This will sync data from Salesforce to Rally using the Contact or Lead’s email address to find people in Rally. The sync will use the value from Salesforce to set the value in Rally. If a value for this property already exists in Rally, it will be overwritten by the value in Salesforce. If a value was deleted or removed in Salesforce, it will be removed in Rally.
  • Rally to Salesforce: This will sync data from Rally to Salesforce using the Contact or Lead’s email address to sync with people in Rally. The sync will use the value from Rally to set the value in Salesforce. If a value for this property already exists in Salesforce, it will be overwritten by the value in Rally. If a value was deleted or removed in Rally, it will be removed in Salesforce.
  • Two Way: This will sync data between both Salesforce and Rally using the Contact or Lead’s email address to find people in Rally. This will update data in both Salesforce and Rally depending on the most recently updated property. For example, if Two-Way sync was set on the First Name property, when a First Name is updated in Rally, it will be updated in Salesforce on the next sync. Then, if that First Name was then updated within Salesforce, the name will be updated in Rally on the next sync. If a value for this property already exists in Rally or Salesforce, it will be overwritten by the most recently updated value for that property. If a value was deleted or removed in Rally or Salesforce, it will be removed in Rally or Salesforce.

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Depending on certain property types in Salesforce and Rally, it’s possible only one of these options is available. The restrictions are based on what data can be written to in Salesforce and Rally. For example, in Salesforce, Account data cannot be overwritten from Rally. Meaning Rally to Salesforce and Two Way are not available for this field. Only the Salesforce to Rally sync direction is.

Managing the Salesforce Integration

To manage the Salesforce integration, go to Settings > Data Connections and click “Manage Connection”.

When managing your Salesforce connection, you can update your sync configurations at any time. You can also see a table view of all previous syncs with a link to which people had data updated during the sync.

Lastly, you can take the following actions:

  • Start Manual Sync: This will kick off a sync immediately rather than waiting for the next sync interval.
  • Pause/Resume: This will pause you data from syncing between Rally and Salesforce until you hit resume.
  • Disconnect: This will disconnect Rally and Salesforce and prevent any more syncs from occurring.