
We all know Salesforce as a CRM platform that helps organizations in storing and analyzing their records. It is a platform that helps you manage your customer database to provide personalized services to your customers. However, Salesforce can also be used as an ecosystem to build and deploy responsible applications.
Salesforce developers help organizations in building applications that make use of the CRM database in performing automated processes and leveraging the overall functionality of the organization. These applications can be business-specific and industry-specific to streamline processes that are dedicated to a specific organization.
However, users often get confused between native and non-native Salesforce applications. It is very easy for non-technical users to assume any application working with Salesforce to be Salesforce native in nature. However, that is never the case. In order to understand the CRM platform better and optimize the applications built by Salesforce developers, it is important to understand what a Salesforce native application is.
What Is A Salesforce Native Application?
In simple words, a Salesforce native application is an application that is built on the platform of Force.com. As it is built on Force.com, the application established a software structure that allows suitable Salesforce solutions to connect with the concerned application with ease and efficiency.
A Salesforce native application is coded fully on Salesforce. If an application is not coded using Apex or Visualforce or does not make use of Lightning Web Components, it is less likely to be native to Salesforce. If an application can integrate with the Salesforce platform, it is often assumed to be a Salesforce native application. These applications are essentially non-native in nature and have a “native connector” to integrate with Salesforce.
Moreover, a Salesforce native application makes 100% use of Salesforce objects (standard or custom). It only makes use of Salesforce objects for working with other applications on your platform and performing specific business processes. If this is not the case, the application is likely to be siloed instead of being native to Salesforce.
Also, it is important to note that a Salesforce native application does not have any other proprietary API. APIs always play an important role in building and integrating Salesforce applications. They allow the application to transfer data and initiate specific processes. If an application has a proprietary API, it will not allow developers to use all the development tools of Salesforce. It is always important to note that Salesforce native applications will extend the Salesforce API (which does not count as proprietary API).
How To Identify An Application To Be Salesforce Native
If you are not sure whether an application is Salesforce native, here are some of the major questions that would help you make the right decision:
Does the application run without Salesforce?
If the concerned application is capable of running without Salesforce, it is certainly not Salesforce native.
Is the application built on a code other than Visualforce, Apex, or Lightning Web Components (LWC)?
If the answer to this question is yes, the concerned application is not native to Salesforce.
Does the application have a proprietary API?
If the application has a proprietary API, it is not native to Salesforce.
How many screens are over-ridden with Visualforce?
If the application has over-ridden the majority of screens with Visualforce, it is likely to be Salesforce native.
Is it possible to use Salesforce data loader or an import tool with the application?
If the answer to this question is yes, the application is likely to be native to Salesforce.
Major Benefits Of Salesforce Native Applications
Here are some of the major benefits of developing Salesforce native applications for your organization:
Higher Security
In 2021, organizations often store sensitive information about their customers within their databases. This requires companies to ensure high security and privacy of their data while developing applications.
Salesforce native applications operate within the Salesforce cloud and run on the same server as the Salesforce Lightning Platform and all other Salesforce offerings. This implies that the applications developed natively on Salesforce enjoy the same level of security as the rest of the CRM platform, which is considerably high.
This ensures businesses that the developed applications prevent the risks of misconfigurations, unauthorized access of information, fraud, data leaks, and other vulnerabilities.
High Relevance And Accuracy Of Data
Salesforce is a platform that revolves around data and facilitates seamless management of the same. A Salesforce native application ensures that the data stored within your system is 100% secure and accurate. Especially when the records handled by the users contain sensitive information, developers cannot afford to make the smallest mistakes in creating applications. Salesforce native platforms make sure that the data managed by the developers is precise and error-free.
When the users are creating tasks, logging calls, or taking notes, Salesforce native applications ensure that they do not waste their time and effort in refreshing the screen and undertake repetitive processes. They make sure that the users do not encounter records that are out of sync and the databases are not fed with inaccurate records. This facilitates seamless and error-free reporting, allowing users to obtain valuable insights from their CRM records.
Better Identity Management
Salesforce native applications allow you to create a single and secure identity record for each user of the platform. These applications leverage the benefits of Salesforce Identity to facilitate secure and seamless sign-ins. This also allows users to keep their directories in sync and share data between different Salesforce applications with utmost ease and efficiency.
Moreover, the development of Salesforce native applications helps users in viewing engagement, deploying two-factor authentication (for secure sign-ins), and increase overall engagement and productivity of employees via seamless app functionality.
Easy Development
The development of Salesforce native apps is a fairly easy and straightforward method. Salesforce Lightning App Builder provides users with an easy point-and-click feature for configuring custom Salesforce mobile/web app pages, Salesforce Community Cloud pages, native Lightning applications, and Salesforce Lightning Experience pages.
Improved App Performance
Salesforce native applications provide users with better overall performance, helping the users streamline their processes in the best way possible. Integration with external applications requires API calls. This implies that the concerned application is required to send a request to Salesforce for relevant data before Salesforce reads the request, fetches relevant data from the database of the Lightning Platform, and sends it back to the external application via API.
In the case of a Salesforce native application, the application itself fetches relevant data from the database of the Lightning Platform. This allows developers to get rid of the complexity and performance drag involved with the API method. This improves the overall performance of the application, improving its functionality.
Faster Implementation
It is easy for developers to “roll in” native Salesforce applications to the Salesforce setup of your organization. This eliminates the need for field mapping, data synchronization, API testing, and other relevant activities that need to be performed in the case of external applications.
Greater implementation speed allows businesses to get to the market at a faster rate and have a first-mover advantage over their competitors. As the market environment gets increasingly digitized, Salesforce native applications allow businesses to have an edge over their peers, helping them get the desired traction.
Improved Uptime
In the case of external applications integrated with your Salesforce org, there is always a risk of unplanned downtime. Such downtime, especially pertaining to unplanned variety, can lead to your organization losing business, missing out on key opportunities, and lose the precious time required to diagnose issues.
There are no such challenges in the case of Salesforce native applications. Here, you can rest assured that your application is up as long as the Salesforce server is up.
Lower Operational Limits
Based on the Salesforce edition implemented within your organization, you will have to deal with limitations pertaining to the number of API requests that can be made during the course of 24 hours. This affects the performance and operations in the case of external applications that depend on API calls for carrying out every interaction. An external application would stop transacting with Salesforce whenever it exceeds the API limit within 24 hours.
The API call limit caps the number of inquiries fielded by your CRM platform from external information sources. Every time you request for a different page of CRM data (or every time an external solution integration sends/requests information), you tend to consume a call. This implies that your API call limit controls your ability to access the infrastructure of your vendor.
As Salesforce native applications do not make any API calls, they are not subjected to any API operational limits. With these applications, you can rest assured that you will never encounter operational interruption or cutoff, hampering the performance of your application.
The Final Word
If you are willing to leverage the functionality of your CRM platform and optimize your Salesforce database, it is always advisable to develop and deploy a Salesforce native application within your organization.
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