Introducing the AWS AppFlow SDK and APIs 

Amazon and Salesforce are at the forefront of technological innovation in the cloud world, which is continually changing. Amazon AppFlow Salesforce, a fully managed integration tool that enables secure data flow between Software as a Service (Salesforce) and AWS, was only just announced. Users now have a quick and affordable option to transfer data thanks to this new service. It's a great solution for Salesforce customers that wish to adopt AWS right away and reap the rewards.

What is Amazon AppFlow Salesforce? 

Now accessible programmatically, AWS AppFlow Salesforce is a fully managed integration tool that enables users to safely transmit data between AWS services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Developers can build up flows between source and destinations supported by Amazon AppFlow, define connector profiles, and programmatically execute flows thanks to the AWS AppFlow SDK and APIs. Developers can integrate Amazon AppFlow directly into their DevOps pipelines for data integrations by using the SDK and Amazon AppFlow APIs. Users of the Amazon AppFlow API will be assessed the same price parameters and rates as those of the Amazon AppFlow.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps like Salesforce, Marketo, Slack, and ServiceNow and AWS services like Amazon S3 and Amazon are all accessible through the fully managed integration tool Amazon AppFlow. Redshift is accessible with a few clicks.

With AppFlow, you may perform data flow on demand, in reaction to a business event, or almost at any scale and frequency you like. Without taking any additional steps, you may configure data transformation features like filtering and validation to produce rich, usable data as part of the flow itself. Data in motion is automatically encrypted by AppFlow. In order to lessen their exposure to security risks, customers can limit the transfer of data for SaaS apps that are linked with Amazon PrivateLink via the open Internet.

Amazon AppFlow enables you to do the following: 

• Get started quickly- without writing any code, create data flows to transmit data between a source and destination in a matter of minutes. 
• Maintain data synchronization across your SaaS apps and AWS services by running flows on demand or in advance. 
• Put your data together- Combine data from various sources so that you may more efficiently train your analytics tools and save money. 
• Maintain track of your data by using the flow management capabilities in the Amazon app flow salesforce to track when and where your data has been transferred. 
• Keep your data safe; security is of utmost importance. Both in transit and at rest, we encrypt your data. 
• Data transport through AWS infrastructure is private when using AWS AppFlow Salesforce and AWS Privatelink, as opposed to public data transfer over the internet. 
• Create a data catalog for search and discovery purposes by adding the information you send to Amazon S3 to the AWS Glue Data Catalogue. When you catalog your data, you make it simpler for AWS analytics and machine learning services to find and utilize. 
• Create division and files for the transmitted data- for applications that access the data you transfer, use partition and aggregation settings to enhance query performance. 
• Create custom connectors- create connectors for data sources that aren’t already integrated with the service using the Amazon AppFlow Custom Connector SDKs. You may move data between private APIs, on-premise systems, other cloud services, and AWS using connectors. 

AWS AppFlow Salesforce Features 

1. Ease of Use 

• Intuitive User Interface 

Without any coding knowledge, you can create data flows using Amazon AppFlow SDK in a matter of minutes. Without needing to rely on technical teams, you can choose your data sources and destinations, set up optional transformations, filters, and validations, and run your flow using a simple user interface. 

• Triggers for a flexible data flow 

You may set up a regular schedule to maintain data in sync or launch data flows on demand to perform bulk transfers using Amazon AppFlow. Moreover, it has the ability to execute flows in reaction to business events like the opening of a sales opportunity, updating the status of a support case, or finishing a registration form.

• Integrations with native SaaS

Salesforce, SAP, Google Analytics, and Facebook Ads are just a few of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) programs that are natively integrated with Amazon AppFlow, and more integrations are planned. You can transfer data from any supported SaaS service using a few options with Amazon AppFlow.

• Professional data transformations 

You can utilize a CSV file, bulk field mapping, individual field mapping, or Amazon AppFlow Salesforce to map source and destination fields. You may conduct data transformations like merging, masking, filtering, and validation with the aid of Amazon AppFlow. For instance, you can merge first and last names, verify that your data is in the correct numerical format, or hide credit card information.

• Aggregation and Partitioning 

When Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is selected as the destination, Amazon AppFlow divides your data according to the source object schema. The architecture of your data is improved by partitioning to facilitate effective querying by analytical engines like Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift Spectrum. Depending on the destination fields you choose, data is arranged in a hierarchical partition structure.

Moreover, queries perform better when blocks of data can be read sequentially and when data scanning can be parallelized. You can combine records using Amazon AppFlow to create files that are tailored to the size you specify. Parallelism is enhanced and processing overhead is reduced as a result.

• Glue Data Catalog Integration

Your data's preparation and registration into the AWS Glue Data Catalog are automated by Amazon AppFlow in a few choices. Using AWS analytics and machine learning services like AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler, you can share, find, and access data from the increasing library of more than 50 SaaS connectors from Amazon AppFlow.

• Create a custom connector

You can create your own connectors using the Amazon AppFlow Connector Software Development Kit (SDK) to securely transport data between your unique endpoint, application, or other cloud service and the managed SaaS and AWS connectors in the Amazon AppFlow library. Using the same open-source SDK that internal AWS teams use, create and test integrations. Starting your custom connector right now is possible with Python and Java.

2. Cost Savings 

• Pay as you go 

When compared to developing connections yourself or using alternative application integration services, Amazon AppFlow is more affordable. To utilize Amazon AppFlow, there are no setup fees or license costs; instead, you simply pay for the number of flows you execute and the amount of data handled.

3. Scalable 

• Massive data transfer

Millions of Salesforce records, Marketo leads, or Zendesk tickets can be transferred more easily thanks to Amazon AppFlow's ability to process up to 100 GB of data per flow.

4. Secure and Reliable

• PrivateLink sets defaults for data privacy.

AWS By limiting the amount of data that is exposed to the internet, PrivateLink makes the security of data exchanged with cloud-based services simpler. Amazon AppFlow automatically builds and configures private endpoints for SaaS apps that have PrivateLink enabled, ensuring that your data is kept private by default.

• Custom encryption keys 

You can use Amazon keys to encrypt data or provide your own custom keys to encrypt data. All data traveling through AppFlow is encrypted both in transit and at rest.

• IAM policy execution

With Amazon AppFlow, you can enforce fine-grained permissions and maintain consistent access across your business without writing new policies by using your current AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies. Application administrators may securely build and manage data flows without relying on technical teams with the help of carefully enforced IAM policies.

• Integrated dependability

A highly available architecture was used in the development of Amazon AppFlow to guard against single points of failure. You don't need to configure AWS scaling, monitoring, auditing, or billing functionalities because Amazon AppFlow makes use of them.

Amazon AppFlow Salesforce Use Cases 

Here are a few use cases that demonstrate how using Amazon AppFlow can be advantageous.

• Salesforce opportunities should be transferred to Amazon Redshift tables.

Build a flow that is activated each time a new record is created in Salesforce Cloud, calculates the potential sales, and then moves the updated record to an Amazon Redshift table.

• Slack chat analysis

Build a flow that moves discussion data from a Slack channel to Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, or Amazon S3 for archival and analysis on a regular basis.

• Support tickets should be moved from Zendesk for analysis and storage.

Build a manually triggered flow in Zendesk that sends ticket data to Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, or Amazon S3 for archival and analysis for all tickets with the same case number.

• Weekly aggregation of data to S3 at 100GB per flow

Build a flow that will transfer data from Salesforce, Marketo, ServiceNow, and Zendesk to Amazon S3 on a weekly basis in an aggregate amount of up to 100GB per flow with minimal latency.

• 360-degree customer visibility

Integrating data from sales, customer service, and marketing will give you a 360-degree perspective of the customer journey.

• Boost SaaS data

A custom ML model created for Amazon SageMaker can be used to enrich data for various SaaS platforms, such as Salesforce, to help direct customers to the right sales support.

• Build workflows based on events.

Create records in Salesforce from fresh Marketo leads by automating activities in one program based on data from another.

What Advantages Does AWS AppFlow SDK Offer?

By using Amazon AppFlow, you may avoid spending a lot of time and money on highly qualified engineers to build and manage unique API connections for Amazon services to exchange data with SaaS apps. The majority of the interconnections that SaaS application administrators and business analysts require can be easily implemented without requiring IT to wait months for integration projects to be finished. Particularly, the advantages consist of: 

• Speed and Agility: Instead of spending days or weeks creating custom connectors, Amazon AppFlow enables you to integrate apps in minutes. There is no coding or administration required because features like data paging, error reporting, and network retries are incorporated by default. With Amazon AppFlow, you may enhance the quality of the data flow by masking, mapping, merging, filtering, and validating the data flow as part of the flow itself.
• Data encryption is possible using AWS-managed keys on your own set of keys. In addition, it enables customers to leverage Amazon VPC endpoints enabled by AWS PrivateLink to throttle the flow of data over the open Internet. This reduces the possibility of internet attacks and the danger of confidential information being exposed.
• Scalability: Amazon AppFlow expands effortlessly without provisioning or planning, allowing you to transmit enormous amounts of data without having to divide it up into separate batches. You can easily move millions of Salesforce records or Zendesk tickets using Amazon AppFlow while only running one flow.
• Reliability: Although operating using AWS's robust infrastructure, AppFlow offers a highly available design with redundant, isolated resources to prevent any single failure. 

Unique Pricing Plans for AWS AppFlow Salesforce 

Amazon AppFlow is even more appealing because of the pricing structure. Even though the market is filled with other solutions that are identical to AppFlow, none of them can match its cost-effectiveness. Customers just pay for the number of flows they execute and the volume of data they process; there are no up-front costs associated with using AppFlow. Every successful stream is paid for by you. A call to the source program to transfer data to the destination represents the start of a flow. Even if there is no new data on the source system to transfer, flow runs to check for fresh data nevertheless incur expenses.

The monthly processed data by volume for Amazon AppFlow aggregates all flows that are present in an AWS account and is charged per GB. Schema mapping, filtering, and field validation are a few examples of data processing. You only pay the charges associated with the data processing of the flows when using Amazon AppFlow; the AWS data transfer fees are not your responsibility.

Related AWS Services 

The following services are compatible with Amazon AppFlow: 

• CloudTrail by AWS 

AWS CloudTrail, a service that offers a record of actions made by a person, role, or an AWS service in Amazon AppFlow, is connected with Amazon AppFlow. All API requests made to Amazon AppFlow are recorded as events by CloudTrail. Both code calls to the Amazon AppFlow API operations and calls from the Amazon AppFlow console are to be recorded. You can allow continuous delivery of CloudTrailevents, including events for Amazon AppFlow, to an Amazon S3 bucket by setting up a trail. 

Even without configuring a trail, you can still access the CloudTrail console’s event history to see the most recent events. You may identify the request that was made to Amazon AppFlow, the IP address from which it was made, who made the request, when it was made, and other information using the data collected by CloudTrail. 

• CloudFormation by AWS 

For you to model and provision AWS and outside application resources in your cloud environment, AWS CloudFormation offers a common language. AWS CloudFormation enables you to model and provide all the resources required for your applications across all regions and accounts in an automated and secure manner using programming languages or a straightforward text file. 

You now have a single source of truth for all of your AWS and outside resource needs. For secure, effective, and repeatable creation and configuration of Amazon AppFlow resources along with the rest of your AWS infrastructure, Amazon AppFlow supports AWS CloudFormation. 

• EventBridge by Amazon 

To receive events from Amazon AppFlow sources like Salesforce, Amazon AppFlow interfaces with Amazon EventBridge. You can now publish events that Amazon AppFlow has ingested to a partner event bus in Amazon EventBridge. Salesforce platform events and Change Data Capture events can be ingested by Amazon AppFlow.

To route events to AWS services like AWS Lambda, AWS Step Functions, Amazon Simple Queue Service, and others, rules in Amazon EventBridge can be set up to match patterns from events like those from Salesforce. 

To further improve security and reduce the likelihood of internet-based attack vectors, you can use Amazon AppFlow’s private data transfer option to make sure that events don’t get exposed to the public internet while being transferred between AWS and Salesforce. 

• AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) 

IAM is a service provided by Amazon that aids administrators in securely managing user access to AWS resources. You can manage who has access to Amazon AppFlow within your organization thanks to its integration with the IAM service. 

How Do Consumers of Salesforce Fare Under Amazon AppFlow? 

Utilizing the bidirectional capabilities and changing data-gathering capabilities of Amazon AppFlow, it enables third-party applications on AWS to update Salesforce and vice versa. You can quickly produce rich, automated data that spans several applications using AppFlow. 

The default Salesforce data loader cannot successfully provide many more functions, but AppFlow can. Users of Salesforce can rapidly extract data and save it in Amazon S3 object by object. Users of Salesforce can now move data without rapidly acquiring a costly integration package thanks to Amazon AppFlow Salesforce. 

Conclusion 

Salesforce objects and fields can be quickly connected and mapped using AppFlow. As a result, you can schedule and run tasks through the AWS AppFlow UI without worrying about additional licenses. For instance, if you gather information about your customers' app and website usage and need to move it to S3. Salesforce is unable to carry out this task because a Salesforce database cannot be directly connected to a SQL database. You may effectively merge all of these data points into an S3 environment using AppFlow. And the advantages are considerably greater if your data lake already uses S3.

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps like Salesforce, Marketo, Slack, and ServiceNow and AWS services like Amazon S3 and Amazon are all accessible through the fully managed integration tool Amazon AppFlow. Redshift is accessible with a few clicks.
• The monthly processed data by volume for Amazon AppFlow aggregates all flows that are present in an AWS account and is charged per GB. Schema mapping, filtering, and field validation are a few examples of data processing.
• By using AppFlow, you may avoid spending a lot of time and money on highly qualified engineers to build and manage unique API connections for Amazon services to exchange data with SaaS apps.