Squirro for Salesforce Installation#
Squirro for Salesforce can be installed from Salesforce’s AppExchange.
This guide is aimed at Salesforce administrators and covers the full process of installing Squirro for Salesforce into an existing Salesforce.com CRM installation.
App Installation#
Navigate to AppExchange and search for Squirro.
Alternatively the app listing can be accessed directly. This link will take you directly to the installation process.
Click Get it Now and follow the login procedure. Then follow the guided “Install in Production” or “Install in Sandbox” flow to install the package in your Salesforce instance or sandbox.
As part of the installation process, you will be prompted to whitelist https://*.squirro.cloud as a CSP Trusted Site. This is required to control the Content-Security-Policy headers, which allow embedding of content from these sites (specifically Squirro dashboards which will be embedded). Despite the header talking about allowing Third-Party access, this does not allow those sites to access any data from your Salesforce instance.
Reference: See the Salesforce documentation Manage CSP Trusted Sites for more information.
Squirro Admin#
Once the app installation has completed, use the App Launcher to access the “Squirro Admin” app.
Connect with Squirro#
In the Squirro Admin screen, use “Connect with Squirro” to start the setup process.
You can now either create a completely new Squirro project or set up a connection to an existing one.
New Project#
Follow this process to set up a new project. This can be done either on an existing Squirro server or creating a new one. This process leverages the Squirro Self-Service environment, in which Squirro hosts the resulting instances completely on Squirro’s infrastructure.
Other deployment models, such as private clouds or on-premises, are available. Contact Squirro Support if you require one of those.
Select the desired application by clicking on it. For a typical Salesforce integration, Squirro recommends you choose the “Sales Insights” app.
On the next screen, review the app description and then press “Install App”.
You are now prompted to select or create an instance. If you do not have any Squirro installations registered yet, you are on the “Setting up your instance” screen and can enter a desired domain name for your instance. Once done, confirm by pressing “Create Instance”.
On the final screen review the setup and confirm by pressing “Start Installation”.
Wait on the resulting screen until you are redirected back to Salesforce. From there, follow the process for “Finish Connection” below.
This launches a dedicated server for your installation, thus ensuring your data is completely separated from other installations. The process takes about 5–10 minutes. Please leave the screen open for the duration, so that the Salesforce setup can complete.
If you inadvertently close the window, the Squirro installation process will still continue. But you will have to restart the process using the “Existing Project” flow in order to finish the linking of the Squirro instance to Salesforce.
Existing Project#
If you want to connect to an existing project, then follow this process.
By default this will enable users from your Salesforce instance to access all data indexed in this Squirro instance.
Click on “Existing Project” in the top navigation.
In the drop-down the first instance, to which you have admin access, is selected. Click on the drop-down and select a different instance if needed.
In the tiles select the project which you want to connect to your Salesforce instance.
Review the selected project, and then press “Connect this project”.
Finish Connection#
Whether you followed the “New Project” or the “Existing Project” flow, you will eventually be redirected back to the Squirro Admin screen in Salesforce. There is a red message informing you of the required setup step to execute.
As the message indicates, Salesforce has to be configured so it can access the configured Squirro instance. This is required because the Squirro for Salesforce app accesses the configured instance using REST web services to handle authentication against the instance.
To set this up, access Setup (in Salesforce). There locate the “Remote Site Settings” using the search, and use the “New Remote Site” button to create a new remote site setting.
The Remote Site Name can be freely chosen. For the Remote Site URL enter the URL which was output in the message on the Squirro Admin Configuration.
See the following screenshot for an example.
Once filled out, press “Save”. Then go back to the browser window in which the Squirro Admin Configuration is shown and press “Test Connection”.
You should now be presented with a message saying the connection was done successfully.
Configuring Squirro Dashboards#
To add a Squirro Dashboard to any Salesforce object, follow this process.
If you are adding a new Squirro dashboard, you may need to first refresh the dashboard list in Salesforce. To do so, navigate to Squirro Admin, select “Dashboard Settings” and press “Refresh Dashboard Details”.
Navigate to the object where Squirro should be embedded. In the cogwheel menu select “Edit Page”.
This opens the Lightning App Builder, in which the layout can be changed. How and where you add the Squirro dashboard is completely flexible. A common option is this:
Click on the tabs (“Related, Details, News” in the example screenshot). The Page > Tabs editor opens on the right side.
Press “Add Tab” to create a new tab.
Still on the right side, click on the new tab. Select “Custom” in the Tab Label drop-down, and enter a Custom Label, such as “Squirro”.
Now click on the new tab in the main content area. This opens an empty area to add components.
From the Components selection on the left side drag the “Squirro Dashboard” component into the main area. When dropping at the desired location, the Page > Squirro Dashboard editor opens on the right side.
Select a Dashboard to embed in the corresponding drop-down, for example the “Sales Insights” one.
- By default the mapping of the Salesforce object to a Squirro search result is done using the object’s ID and a corresponding facet filter such as “account_id” on Squirro. Often it’s easier to change this to use the Name instead. In that case enter:”account_name” (or similar depending on the object name) into the Custom Facet Name and “Name” into the Field to use for facet value.
Once happy with the result, press “Save” on the top right screen. You may have to activate the page layout for some or all users before it becomes active.