Salesforce Subscription to Google Pub/Sub Topic using Google Cloud Functions, Secret Manager, and Python

5 min readJun 13, 2020

Introduction

What if Salesforce could subscribe to events occurring within GCP? What if that subscription could generate data in Salesforce seamlessly? It’s not as hard as you think. Please follow along …

In this lesson, our challenge will be to:

Create a Google Pub/Sub Topic
Enable Message Published to Topic to Trigger Google Cloud Function
Store the Salesforce credentials in GCP using Secret Manager
Use the Cloud Function to authenticate with Salesforce, and Create Salesforce Service Cloud Case

Note (10/22/2020): Curious about this same pattern on AWS? I’ve got you covered. Click Here!

Prerequisites

Architecture

Step 1: Google Cloud Platform: Enable Secret Manager

Accessing Salesforce through the REST API requires three (3) parts; Username, Password, and Security Token. The most secure option for storing this type of information within GCP is through Secret Manager. This option allows the storing and version control for these credentials for secure usage. Here’s how to set this up.

Steps:

From the Console, select the Google Cloud Platform menu
On the menu, select Security
On Security select Secret Manager

Step 2: Google Cloud Platform: Create Secret for Salesforce Credentials

Steps:

On the Secret Manager, select Create Secret

On the Create Secret page, provide the following
Name = SF_USER_PROD
Secret Value = salesforce@username.com
Complete using the Create Secret button
Repeat these same steps for SF_PASS_PROD and SF_TOKEN_PROD

Step 3: Google Cloud Platform: Create Pub/Sub Topic

Using Pub/Sub in an enterprise data flow design introduces a myriad of integration options and distributed capabilities. In this example, we’ll simply create a Topic for Case messages to be stored and subscribed too using Salesforce.

Steps:

On the menu, Select Pub/Sub > Topics

On the Topics page, select Create Topic

On the Create Topic page, enter the name of the topic, provide the following
Name = pub-salesforce-cases

When done, select Create Topic
Once the topic has been created, select Trigger Cloud Function

Step 4: Google Cloud Platform: Trigger Cloud Function from Pub/Sub Topic (Python)

Now that credentials have been safely stored, and the Pub/Sub topic has been created, we want to make sure that any message published to this topic will trigger the Cloud Function. This Cloud Function will need to Parse the Pub/Sub message, Authenticate to Salesforce and Send a New Case to Salesforce using a third-party REST API client for Python called Simple Salesforce. This allows us to authenticate, create, update, and query Salesforce data through the REST API using simplified methods.

Steps:

From the pub-salesforce-cases Topic, select Trigger Cloud Function

On the Create Function page, provide the following
Name = pubsub-salesforce-cases
Trigger =Cloud Pub/Sub
Select a Cloud Pub/Sub topic = projects/[project name]/topics/pub-salesforce-cases
Memory Allocated = 128 MiB
Source Code > Inline editor (selected)
Source Code > Runtime = Python 3.7
Place the following in Main.py editor. This is the code where we capture the Pub/Sub message, authenticate to Salesforce and take the message to submit to Salesforce as a new Case

Place the following in Requirements.txt editor. This adds dependencies for Python to reference Requests, Simple Salesforce, and Google Secret Manager

Function to execute = main
Select Environment Variables, Networking, Timeouts and More
Environment > Environment Variables select Add Variable

Add Name = sftype_object, Value = Case
Add Name = gcp_project_id, Value = Your Project ID for GCP. This is stored on Secret Manager > Secret > Secret Details

Select Create to Complete the Function, and proceed with Deployment

Step 5: Testing Using Salesforce (Case)

Now that this Cloud Function has been created, we can now proceed to publish a new Pub/Sub message that translates into a Salesforce case.

Steps:

On the pubsub-salesforce-cases Cloud Function
Select the Trigger tab
On the Trigger tab, select the topic

On the topic page, select Publish Message

On the Publish message page, in the Message body enter the following JSON

{
"Subject":"Google Cloud Works!",
"Description":"This Works Perfectly!",
"Status":"New"
}

Once entered, select Publish

What’s Next?

Having Google Pub/Sub as part of your distributed messaging design is essential to scalability and reducing dependencies between disparate systems. Challenge yourself to create multiple subscriptions to the same topic or trigger additional Cloud Functions to take full advantage of an ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) architecture. Remember, if you’re interested in how to do this in AWS, proceed to my AWS/Salesforce article for more details.

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Salesforce Subscription to Google Pub/Sub Topic using Google Cloud Functions, Secret Manager, and Python

Written by Emilio Taylor