Data Connector for Salesforce

Owned by Jodie Miners
Last updated: Jul 25, 2018
3 min read

Initially announced at Goole I/O in 2016, it's finally here! See the Blog Post https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2018/07/connect-salesforce-and-Google-sheets.html

Install the Plugin into Google Sheets https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/data-connector-for-salesf/jijmhhpjhgeafilgjkdeocjepoacekof


Bottom line. If it was the only tool at your disposal, you could make it work, but be very careful using it. But I would much prefer to pay the US$149 or US$299 per year for XL-Connector or the Google Apps version G-Connector (US$300 per year), and remember XL-Connect is free to retrieve data from Salesforce too.  

Login

It's annoying as it hijacks your last used MyDomain URL and you can't change it. Just give us an option to change whatever org I want to log into! So log into your org first!

It uses OAuth which is good. 

Side Panel

It gives a control panel at the side to do the operations you want. 

Reports

The panel doesn't change after the data is imported, so it doesn't look like it's finished, but it is. 

Make sure you return an ID column with your report!

Import

You can Import from into 5 objects at once. This is just a fancy SOQL builder. It is NOT importing data into Salesforce - use the Update function for that. 

The selection panel is nice, it shows name and API naame

You build selected fields you want, that is slow and tedious. 

You can do filtering


Then you choose the relationships

Then click get data!

When I clicked Get Data it completely removed data in my sheet. BEWARE of this button! The button for Reports warns you, this button doesn't

Nice, but slow to set up. 

Update

Why can't it show the name of the column rather than just the column numbers?

Mapping is nice but a bit cumbersome

Seems a bit final!

After running it doesn't say it's finished. It just goes back to the mapping screen. 

Hmm, Upsert doesn't work if you are using Record IDs

So changed it all to Update - you have to do the whole setup again. 

Don't include the ID field in the mapping. 

And my update failed because of a duplicate - this is why you only turn on REPORT for Duplicates, not ALERT. 

Grrrr! If you set it all up based on Row 2, then try to update Row 50, it doesn't work, it's mapped to row 2 only! So you have to go back through the WHOLE mapping exercise again. This is NOT cool this will lead to errors! 


Beware!

Reports export blanks as - so when you go to update these records again it updates them as - literally!

Delete

You have to specify the object to delete from! Salesforce knows this!