Adding Connection String (Pre-Sitecore 9)

Owned by Terry Humphris
Last updated: Jul 04, 2018
2 min read

IMPORTANT: To meet Salesforce security policies you should:

  • Remove/rename default accounts and change default passwords
  • Encrypt all passwords
  • Implement a robust application password policy
  • Minimum 6-8 characters
  • Combination (2 out of 4) of numbers, letters (lower and upper) and special characters


Add a connection string to the S4S system Web service to the <connectionString> element of App_Config/ConnectionStrings.config. 

For Salesforce production and developer environments the connection string should look like:

<connectionStrings>
  <add name="S4SConnString" connectionString="S4S:user id=user;password=password;environment=login.salesforce.com" />
</connectionStrings>

For Salesforce sandbox environments the connection string should look like:

<connectionStrings>
  <add name="S4SConnString" connectionString="S4S:user id=user;password=password;environment=test.salesforce.com" />
</connectionStrings>

The <connectionStrings> element can have a number of connection strings defined. Each one is defined by the <add> tag. This element has a number of attributes but we use only two: 

Attribute

Description

Name

The name of the connection string. Any entity using this connection string will address it by this name.

connectionString

The connection string itself.

The S4S Security Provider module supports the following format of a connection string:

  • Each string starts with the “S4S” prefix.
  • The prefix is followed by the login credentials for the Salesforce partner API.

The login credentials and environment settings are then specified using the following: 

Key       

Description

user id

The Salesforce username that will be used to establish the Partner API session

password

The password for the Partner API user.
If the servers IP address isn’t trusted by the Salesforce Organization being connected to the user's security token can be appended to the password.

token

(Optional) As an alternative to appending the user's security token to the password in the connection string, it can be defined separately to provide the same functionality.  Learn more about how to reset and get your security token.

environment

(Optional) The type of Salesforce environment being connected to. Defaults to Production if unspecified which will also work for developer edition organizations if required.

Possible values:

  • Production
  • DeveloperEdition
  • Sandbox
  • Pre_release

Example connection strings:

S4S:user id=<user_name>;password=<user_password>
S4S:user id=<user_name>;password=<user_password><user_security_token>
S4S:user id=<user_name>;password=<user_password>;token=<user_security_token>
S4S:user id=<user_name>;password=<user_password>;environment=<binding_environment>

The connection string can optionally define the environment to be connected to by appending the following:

;environment=<bindingEnvironment>

Permitted values for the binding environment are one of the following four strings or an endpoint url:

  • Production
    connects to login.salesforce.com (Default)
  • DeveloperEdition
    connects to login.salesforce.com
  • Sandbox
    connects to test.salesforce.com
  • Pre_release
    connects to prerellogin.pre.salesforce.com

The binding environment can also be the string login.salesforce.com required for the Salesforce API endpoint change on 1st of January 2016.  

Next Step

Configuring the Partner API Web Service (Pre-Sitecore 9)

Steps