AppLink
- Engineering
- Last Updated: September 10, 2025
- David Baliles
Salesforce customers often leverage third-party or custom services to extend their orgs, and they do so with two common options: Connected Apps and External Services. Connected Apps let third-party vendors or custom code call Salesforce APIs using long-lived OAuth tokens, while External Services call vendor APIs through declarative configurations with vendor-managed hosting, scaling, and endpoint security. While both approaches deliver functionality, the dynamic security threat landscape challenges us to continuously improve the risk and governance of our applications.
Heroku AppLink improves your security model and provides a managed bridge between Salesforce and Heroku, so developers or vendors can deploy services in any language and expose them as native Salesforce actions. Heroku AppLink automatically handles authentication, service discovery, and request validation while its service mesh and short-lived credentials mean that your integrations no longer depend on stored credentials or exposed endpoints. Development teams can reuse existing code and libraries instead of rewriting in Apex, admins get centralized visibility into connections and authorizations, and security teams gain tighter trust boundaries across both Connected App and External Service scenarios.
- Engineering
- Last Updated: July 31, 2025
- Ken W. Alger
This blog series has taken you on a journey through the world of AppLink, from its foundational concepts and core components in Heroku AppLink: Extend Salesforce with Any Programming Language , to a deep dive into its key integration patterns in AppLink Fundamentals I: AppLink Integration Patterns – Connecting Salesforce to Heroku Applications , and then we explored advanced integrations with Data Cloud, automation, and AI in AppLink Fundamentals II: Advanced AppLink Integrations – Automation & AI . Now, in this final installment, we turn our attention to the practical aspects of building with AppLink, focusing on the development workflow,…
- Engineering
- Last Updated: July 30, 2025
- Ken W. Alger
In our previous posts, we introduced Heroku AppLink and explored its foundational integration patterns for connecting Heroku applications with Salesforce. Now, we’ll delve into how AppLink truly expands Salesforce capabilities, focusing on advanced integrations with Data Cloud, Flow, Apex, and Agentforce. This blog will highlight how AppLink empowers you to infuse your Salesforce orgs with powerful external logic, real-time data processing, and intelligent automation.
- Engineering
- Last Updated: July 29, 2025
- Ken W. Alger
In our previous post , we introduced AppLink as a powerful new way to extend Salesforce with any programming language at any scale, detailing its core components and overarching benefits. Now, we’ll dive deeper into the practical application of AppLink by exploring its primary integration patterns. Understanding these patterns is key to leveraging AppLink effectively, as they dictate how your Heroku applications interact with and enhance your Salesforce orgs.
- Engineering
- Last Updated: July 17, 2025
- Vivek Viswanathan, Kim Harrison
The Salesforce platform offers a powerful array of tools for customization and building customer-centric experiences, from no-code automation with Flow, Prompt Builder, and Agent Builder, to robust Apex and Lightning Web Components. The art lies in choosing the right blend of these tools to achieve agility, optimize skill sets, and quickly adapt to business demands. Today, we’re introducing a new ingredient to this powerful mix: Heroku + AppLink.
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