Salesforce (via Apideck)

Access Salesforce through Apideck's CRM unified API — one of 21 CRM connectors that share the same method surface. Code you write here ports to Odoo, HubSpot, Pipedrive and 17 other CRM connectors by changing a single serviceId string. Apideck handles auth, pagination, rate limiting, and retries so you don't write per-tenant Salesforce plumbing.

Quick facts

• Apideck serviceId: salesforce
• Unified API: CRM
• Auth type: oauth2
• Gotchas: page
• Salesforce docs: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs
• Homepage: https://www.salesforce.com

At a glance

• Implementation difficulty: moderate — Edition-Gated API Access
• Vendor partnership required: no (Salesforce Developers) — A free, self-service Salesforce Developer account is all you need — no partner program or app review.
• Apideck-managed credentials: available — The OAuth consent screen shows "Apideck" while testing; use your own External Client App in production.
• Account type required: Salesforce edition with API access (Enterprise, Unlimited, Performance or Developer; Professional via paid add-on)
• Consumer access level: User with the "API Enabled" permission (System Administrator profile includes it)
• Sandbox: available (signup) — Free Developer Edition org: 2 user licenses, 5 MB data / 20 MB file storage; create more orgs as needed.
• Costs: No Salesforce-side fees to build or test; additional daily API calls can be bought from Salesforce.
• Rate limits: 100,000 requests/24 hours (Enterprise) plus 1,000 per user license; 25 concurrent long-running requests.
• Authentication: Authorization Code flow with PKCE.
• Webhooks: Virtual webhooks — contacts, companies, leads, opportunities, activities, notes, pipelines and users (created/updated)

Important to know:

• Starter Suite and the legacy Group and Essentials editions have no API access at all, so consumers on those editions cannot connect until they upgrade. Check your consumers' editions early.
• Since Spring '26 (March 2026) Salesforce blocks creation of new Connected Apps by default — new setups use an External Client App. Existing Connected Apps keep working, but migrating one reissues its Consumer Key and Secret, so the credentials stored in Apideck must be updated.
• The connecting user's profile decides what the API can see: Salesforce enforces sharing rules and field-level security, so connect with a user whose profile can see the records you need; a narrowly-scoped user returns partial data rather than an error.
• Refresh tokens never expire by default, but an org admin can apply an inactivity or fixed-duration refresh-token policy — when they do, affected consumers are dropped and have to authorize again.
• Virtual webhooks poll Salesforce on the consumer's behalf, so change detection draws on the same daily API quota as your reads. An org that exhausts the quota returns 403 REQUEST_LIMIT_EXCEEDED for both until usage falls back under the limit.

Facts synced from Apideck's connector metadata API — GET /connector/connectors/salesforce (overview field) is the live, authoritative version.

When to use this skill

Activate this skill when the user explicitly wants to work with Salesforce — for example, "pull contacts in Salesforce" or "sync leads in Salesforce". This skill teaches the agent:

1. Which Apideck unified API covers Salesforce (CRM)
2. The correct serviceId to pass on every call (salesforce)
3. Salesforce-specific auth and coverage caveats

For the full method surface (parameters, pagination, filtering), use your language SDK skill:

• apideck-node, apideck-python, apideck-dotnet, apideck-java, apideck-go, apideck-php, or apideck-rest

For the raw OpenAPI spec:

• CRM: https://specs.apideck.com/crm.yml · API Explorer

Minimal example (TypeScript)

import { Apideck } from "@apideck/unify";

const apideck = new Apideck({
  apiKey: process.env.APIDECK_API_KEY,
  appId: process.env.APIDECK_APP_ID,
  consumerId: "your-consumer-id",
});

// List contacts in Salesforce
const { data } = await apideck.crm.contacts.list({
  serviceId: "salesforce",
});

Portable across 21 CRM connectors

The Apideck CRM unified API exposes the same methods for every connector in its catalog. Switching from Salesforce to another CRM connector is a one-string change — no rewrite, no new SDK.

// Today — Salesforce
await apideck.crm.contacts.list({ serviceId: "salesforce" });

// Tomorrow — same code, different connector
await apideck.crm.contacts.list({ serviceId: "odoo" });
await apideck.crm.contacts.list({ serviceId: "hubspot" });

This is the compounding advantage of using Apideck over integrating Salesforce directly: code against the unified CRM API once, gain access to every connector in it. New connectors Apideck adds become available to your app without code changes.

Salesforce via Apideck CRM

Salesforce is the reference implementation for Apideck CRM. All Tier 1 CRM resources are supported; coverage is the most complete of any CRM connector.

Entity mapping

Coverage highlights

• ✅ Full CRUD on contacts, companies, leads, opportunities, activities, notes
• ✅ Pagination via cursor (Apideck normalizes SOQL LIMIT / OFFSET into cursor tokens)
• ✅ Field-level filtering via filter[...] query params
• ✅ Deep pagination beyond 2,000 records (Apideck uses queryMore / nextRecordsUrl under the hood)
• ❌ Custom objects — use Proxy API with the SOQL endpoint
• ❌ Apex REST endpoints — Proxy API
• ❌ Bulk API (2.0) job creation — Proxy API

Salesforce-specific auth notes

• Type: OAuth 2.0, managed by Apideck Vault
• Sandbox vs. production: the user picks environment during the Vault OAuth flow. The same serviceId routes to both; connection is bound to whichever was chosen.
• API daily limits: Salesforce enforces per-org daily API call limits based on edition (Professional/Enterprise/Unlimited). Apideck surfaces Salesforce's remaining-limit headers via raw=true — monitor these for high-volume integrations. Hitting the daily limit means API calls fail until the 24h rolling window resets.

Common Salesforce quirks handled by Apideck

• Compound fields (e.g., BillingAddress) — flattened to address.* in the unified shape
• Picklist values — exposed verbatim; no enum normalization
• Record types — available as record_type_id on writes; if omitted Salesforce uses the default for the user's profile
• Polymorphic references (e.g., WhoId on Task) — Apideck resolves to the correct entity type in activity.owner_id

Example: create an opportunity with a contact role

// 1. Create the opportunity
const { data: opp } = await apideck.crm.opportunities.create({
  serviceId: "salesforce",
  opportunity: {
    name: "Acme — Enterprise deal",
    amount: 50000,
    close_date: "2026-06-30",
    stage: "Qualification",
    company_id: "001XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
  },
});

// 2. For contact roles (Salesforce-specific), use Proxy
await fetch("https://unify.apideck.com/proxy", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.APIDECK_API_KEY}`,
    "x-apideck-app-id": process.env.APIDECK_APP_ID,
    "x-apideck-consumer-id": consumerId,
    "x-apideck-service-id": "salesforce",
    "x-apideck-downstream-url": "/services/data/v59.0/sobjects/OpportunityContactRole",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    OpportunityId: opp.data.id,
    ContactId: "003XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
    Role: "Decision Maker",
  }),
});

Sibling connectors

Other CRM connectors that share this unified API surface (same method signatures, just change serviceId):

odoo (beta), hubspot, pipedrive, zoho-crm, activecampaign, close, microsoft-dynamics, teamleader, and 12 more.

See also

• CRM OpenAPI spec · API Explorer
• apideck-connector-coverage — programmatic coverage checks
• apideck-best-practices — architecture, Vault, pagination, error handling
• apideck-node — TypeScript / Node SDK patterns
• Salesforce official docs