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salesforceworkbench

Local workstation way to access to Salesforce data

I am running into a question. I want to directly pull data from Salesforce and I found this online workbench which is cool. https://workbench.developerforce.com/query.php Because our company is single signed on finding this workbench and able to see the data is amazing.

However there is a limit of # records. So I wonder how to set up a local workstation workbench to directly visit Saleseforce.com data.

Thank you in advance!!

Mary

Solution

  • You want to just see data, run some queries? Export as CSV? as JSON?

    1. You can use Developer Console (link in upper right corner after you log in, assuming you have system Admin profile / powerful permissions), no need to install anything. Doesn't offer help with writing queries but it's right there for you to use.
    2. Data Loader if you want to export / import a lot. You can even script it to run on schedule.
    3. Weekly export backup (you'll have to manually download zip files with CSVs)
    4. If you really need local instance of Workbench (for example for security reasons) - link to Github repo with source code is right on the front page. Here's wiki with installation instructions
    5. Tools like Talend have SF plugins. Talend Open Studio lets you drag & drop blocks to create flow, import, export data, easily map columns. And in the end it generates Java program so you could modify it a bit. Video is ancient and UIs changed a lot but the help article is not bad.
    6. Or use any other SF library in language you're most comfortable with. Python has simple-salesforce, looks easy enough
    7. Chances are you or another developer in your company uses Eclipse IDE (bit obsolete now) or Visual Studio Code (VSCode) to connect to Salesforce, modify code and pages. Eclipse one was quite decent but there's beta query editor in VSCode too.
    8. SFDX CLI (the actual commandline tool VSCode uses to connect) lets you write queries in commandline, sfdx force:data:soql:query -q "SELECT Id, Name, Account.Name FROM Contact"
    9. I used to love Realfire few years back, really easy to use but it's hard to justify the pricing with all free options listed above. Free package lets you connect to only 1 org. Also once my firewall complained, I think there's something that "phones home". Might be just usage statistics/telemetry but if you need a truly local tool for security reasons this might be a concern.