Overview of External Data

By leveraging the OData protocol, users can now import data from sources outside of Salesforce into their Conga Composer solutions.

Data from multiple instances of Salesforce can also be combined.

With minimal setup and configuration, existing Composer tools can be used to integrate external data with Salesforce data for document creation.

Important

Prior to starting this process, you must have external OData data sources configured and available for use. If you do not have your own data sources, the list of OData connectors and services below will help you get started.

Components of a Composer External Data Solution

Using External Data with Conga Composer requires three components.

1. Conga Composer Solution
   • Setup an OData endpoint in Conga Composer Setup.

   • The Composer Solution must include a Conga Query that retrieves external data (identified with the QueryID parameter) and the xid to identify the external data source.

     

     The xid parameter supports both Conga Keys and standard record IDs.

2. OData Service

   • Customers must build and configure the OData service to act as a data source for Conga Composer.

     

     Conga Composer uses OData version 2.0. You may use a newer version to build your OData service, but some features in newer OData versions may not be available for use.

   • Prior to starting this process, you must have external OData data sources configured and available for use. See the list of resources below for more information about building and configuring the OData service.
     • https://www.odata.org/ecosystem/
     • https://www.odata.org/documentation/
     • https://www.progress.com/odata
     • https://www.cdata.com/odata/
   • The OData service must support the necessary URL components query syntax. For more information, see Sections 2 and 5 in OData's documentation.
3. Data Source
   • The data source is a third-party data source or repository hosting the data queried by Conga Composer.