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OData / External Object Retirement

What's being done?

GRAX is ending support for Salesforce Connect. This feature allows customers to leverage Salesforce external objects to visualize GRAX data as a Salesforce related list.

Why is GRAX retiring support for this feature?

In short, there are better workarounds that we believe accomplish many of the same goals our customers have but without some of the Salesforce-imposed limitations, as well as limitations of the OData Adapters that GRAX relies on, or the Salesforce external object reporting limits. In addition to needing an add-on license from Salesforce to leverage this feature, we believe there are better alternatives that GRAX can offer for accessing GRAX data within Salesforce.

How does this impact me?

We encourage customers currently using external objects for GRAX data to reach out and understand alternatives. We would love to show some of the great progress we've made on allowing efficient access to GRAX data to your Salesforce admins, end users, and downstream data teams.

What's the recommended workaround?

Depending on your specific use cases, there are a variety of more robust alternatives to explore.

The GRAX lightning related list component is a purpose-built tool that is designed to work natively with GRAX data. We are always looking to enhance this feature and would love to get feedback from our customers.

History Stream allows you to access ALL versions of your GRAX data downstream. For example, you can enable history stream and drive consumption of this GRAX data through custom-built apps against your own database/warehouse. This feature opens up several possibilities when it comes to advanced analysis and visualization of your GRAX data.

Salesforce and AWS have some newer offerings that allow you to integrate AWS data into Salesforce as synchronized data without writing any code. Leveraging GRAX's History Stream feature to make all your Salesforce data accessible downstream in AWS, and then surfacing that data back into Salesforce with this private bidirectional Salesforce-AWS connection could be a powerful modern approach for your team to look into. You can see a demo of this AWS integration here, and also learn more about some of the Salesforce-AWS tools that work better with GRAX here.

Reach out to us to inquire about other workarounds and potential pilot programs.

Timing

GRAX support for this feature ends in the Spring of 2022. This may be accelerated if changes are needed to protect the integrity of the GRAX service, or if third parties retire a piece of their service which makes the feature unavailable.

How do I get more information?

If you have questions or need more information, please open a support ticket.