Salesforce SCIM Connector

Owned by
Phillip Hanegan
Feb 07, 2023
4 min read

EmpowerID Salesforce connector is a bi-directional connector that communicates with the Salesforce SCIM microservice for inventory and write-back functionality of users, groups, group membership, and user licenses between EmpowerID and Salesforce via REST API calls to Salesforce. The Salesforce SCIM microservice is an EmpowerID microservice that you deploy to an Azure app service. The app service uses a system-assigned managed identity linked to an application you create in Azure AD for EmpowerID. The managed identity allows the microservice to access Azure AD-protected services without needing to supply credentials for authentication. The entire process uses secure client certificate authentication. The connector authenticates to the microservice using Azure Authentication. The request and response of the microservice are SCIM compliant.

 

Salesforce Connector Architecture

 

Inventory Objects and their corresponding components in EmpowerID

The Salesforce connector supports both full and incremental inventory. The connector uses Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL) to retrieve data from Salesforce. When inventory is first enabled, the connector performs a full inventory to sync all the accounts, groups, group membership and user licenses. On subsequent runs, the inventory job looks for modified objects only.

Object in Salesforce

Component in EmpowerID

Object in Salesforce

Component in EmpowerID

User

Account

Profile

Group (Group Type ID = 15)

User Role

Group (Group Type ID = 16)

Permission Set

Group (Group Type ID = 25)

Public Groups

Group (Group Type ID = 9)

Permission Set License

Group (Group Type ID = 41)

User License

Group License

Permission Set Assignment

Group Account

 

Users in Salesforce are inventoried as accounts in EmpowerID and added as records to the Account table of the EmpowerID Identity and Resource Warehouse. The connector supports both full and incremental inventory for accounts. Each time full inventory runs, the connector syncs all the accounts from the external system to EmpowerID. Full Inventory uses a query to get all the accounts from Salesforce. The query contains a comma separated list of user attributes to be inventoried and is configurable by editing the UserQueryMessage parameter on the Salesforce SCIM resource system. The below code depicts what the default query looks like.

Select ID,LastModifiedDate,Username,LastName,FirstName,Name,CompanyName,Department,Title,Street,City,State,PostalCode,Country, Address,Email,Phone,Alias,CommunityNickname,IsActive,TimeZoneSidKey,LocaleSidKey,EmailEncodingKey,ProfileId,UserRoleId,LanguageLocaleKey, ManagerId,LastLoginDate,LastPasswordChangeDate,CreatedDate,UserPermissionsMarketingUser,UserPermissionsOfflineUser,UserPermissionsCallCenterAutoLogin, DefaultGroupNotificationFrequency,UserPermissionsKnowledgeUser,UserPermissionsLiveAgentUser,UserPermissionsSupportUser from User

Incremental inventory uses the LastModifiedDate attribute to bring only the accounts modified after the last inventory run. Any updates made to the user on the external system will be synced to EmpowerID account.

The id attribute of the external system is used as the primary key and is synced to the systemIdentifier column in the Account table.

Inventoried Account Attributes

The below table contains a list of account attributes inventoried by the out-of-the-box connector.

Attributes in Salesforce

SCIM Attributes

Attributes in EmpowerID

Attributes in Salesforce

SCIM Attributes

Attributes in EmpowerID

Country

country

Country

PostalCode

addresses[?(@.type=='work')].postalCode

ZipCode

Street

addresses[?(@.type=='work')].streetAddress

StreetAddress

Email

emails[?(@.type=='work')].value

Email

FirstName LastName

displayName

FriendlyName

Alias

Alias

Alias

City

city

City

State

state

State

LastName

name.familyName

LastName

FirstName

name.givenName

FirstName

Phone

phoneNumbers[?(@.type=='Phone')].value

Telephone

Department

urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User.department

Department

Username

userName

LogonName

ManagerId

['urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User'].['manager'].['value']

ManagerDistinguishedName

CompanyName

companyName

Company

CommunityNickname

CommunityNickname

DisplayNamePrintable

LanguageLocaleKey

LanguageLocaleKey

PreferredLanguage

LocaleSidKey

LocaleSidKey

Location

ProfileId

ProfileId

ProfilePath

EmailEncodingKey

EmailEncodingKey

ExtensionAttribute4

TimeZoneSidKey

TimeZoneSidKey

ExtensionAttribute3

DefaultGroupNotificationFrequency

DefaultGroupNotificationFrequency

ExtensionAttribute5

UserPermissionsCallCenterAutoLogin

UserPermissionsCallCenterAutoLogin

ExtensionAttribute21

UserPermissionsMarketingUser

UserPermissionsMarketingUser

ExtensionAttribute19

UserPermissionsOfflineUser

UserPermissionsOfflineUser

ExtensionAttribute20

UserRoleId

UserRoleId

ExtensionAttribute14

Title

Title

JobTitle

AccountId

AccountId

ExtensionAttribute2

UserPermissionsSupportUser

UserPermissionsSupportUser

CustomAttribute17

UserPermissionsLiveAgentUser

UserPermissionsLiveAgentUser

CustomAttribute18

UserPermissionsKnowledgeUser

UserPermissionsKnowledgeUser

CustomAttribute19

IsActive

IsActive

Active

 

Groups in Salesforce are inventoried as groups and added as records to the Group table of the EmpowerID Identity and Resource Warehouse. Group members are added as records to the GroupAccount table. The connector supports both full and incremental inventory for groups, whereas inventory for group memberships is always a complete inventory. Each time full inventory runs, the connector syncs all groups and group memberships from the external system to EmpowerID.

Full inventory uses separate queries to retrieve groups and group memberships from Salesforce. Each query contains a comma separated list of attributes to be inventoried that can be customized by editing the associated query parameter on the Salesforce SCIM resource system.

Profile and UserRole assignments are stored as user attributes in Salesforce and as such are inventoried in EmpowerID during user inventory. The assignments are stored in the Group table.

Query parameters include the following:

Group Type

Query Parameter

Default Query Value

Group Type

Query Parameter

Default Query Value

Profile

ProfileQueryMessage

Select ID, UserLicenseId, Name from Profile

UserRole

UserRoleQueryMessage

Select ID,LastModifiedDate,Name from UserRole

PermissionSet

PermissionSetQueryMessage

PublicGroup

PublicGroupQueryMessage

 

Incremental inventory uses the LastModifiedDate attribute to bring only the groups modified after the last inventory run. Any updates made on the external system will be synced to EmpowerID Group. If a group is disabled on the external system and the CheckForDeletedObjectsEnabled setting for the Salesforce SCIM account store is turned on, EmpowerID marks the group as deleted and sets the deleted date on the group.

The id attribute of the external system is used as the primary key and is synced to the systemIdentifier column in the Group table.

Inventoried Group Attributes

The below table contains a list of group attributes inventoried by the out-of-the-box connector.

Attributes in Salesforce

SCIM Attributes

Attributes in EmpowerID

Attributes in Salesforce

SCIM Attributes

Attributes in EmpowerID

id

id

SystemIdentifier

Name

Name

Name

Name

displayName

FriendlyName

 

User licenses in Salesforce are inventoried and added as records to the GroupLicense table of the EmpowerID Identity and Resource Warehouse. The connector supports both full and incremental inventory for user licenses. Each time full inventory runs, the connector syncs all user licenses from the external system to EmpowerID. Full Inventory uses a query to get all the user licenses from Salesforce. The query contains a comma separated list of user license attributes to be inventoried that can be configured by editing the UserLicenseQueryMessage parameter on the Salesforce SCIM resource system. The below code depicts what the default query looks like.

Incremental inventory uses the LastModifiedDate attribute to bring only the user licenses modified after the last inventory run. Any updates made to the user on the external system will be synced to the EmpowerID Group License.

 

Deploy the Salesforce SCIM Microservice

Connect to Salesforce (SCIM Connector)