Note: This extension is not an official Salesforce solution, therefore development and support is not the responsibility of Salesforce.

During Salesforce development and maintenance, developers often need to perform a range of tasks, such as importing data, running SOQL queries, navigating through multiple pages, or running API requests. Those daily tasks generally require specific tools, which means extra configuration and, most importantly, frequent context switching while jumping between browser tabs that contain the org and the tools. So, to help simplify things, here comes Salesforce Inspector Reloaded to the rescue!

Salesforce Inspector Reloaded (SIR) is an open-source Chrome extension that’s maintained by an active development team not officially supported by Salesforce. It gives you quick access to data import/export, API requests, setup shortcuts, and metadata search and download — all from the comfort of your browser. Yes, you read that right: with SIR, you won’t need to switch to any other external tool.

If you don’t know the extension, this post is for you. And if you already know it, this is ALSO for you! We’ll share a sample implementation use case that highlights the benefits of the tool, and some tips on how to enhance security in your org.

What is Salesforce Inspector Reloaded?

Salesforce Inspector Reloaded is based on the original version, Salesforce Inspector, that was developed by Søren Krabbe a decade ago (2013).

For years, I had been using the original version and noticed some bugs and potential improvements. One day, I decided to take a look at the source code and created some pull requests. I then found out that the repo was stale and I kept using my fork as a local version for two years.

In March 2023, after several bug fixes and improvements, I saw the opportunity to create a new version and release it on the Chrome web store.

One year later, Salesforce Inspector Reloaded hit a phenomenal milestone: over 50,000 users in 126 countries, seven releases, and 20+ contributors!

Step-by-step implementation with Salesforce Inspector Reloaded

Let’s delve into a detailed use case where Salesforce Inspector Reloaded is used to enhance the development and configuration process.

In this example, Awesome Bank, a fictional financial institution, is looking to enhance its consent process. The goal is to let sales representatives know if they can call VIP contacts to present them with new products. Maria, the Salesforce consultant at Awesome Bank, is tasked with providing the consent status on the Contact page.

Maria will implement this request by creating a screen flow that’s accessible to users with a new custom permission: DisplayConsentStatus.

Step 1: Access Contact detail page

From the Object tab, Maria can access multiple quick links related to the current SObject. In this case, she’s using Object List.

Step 2: Create the custom permission

From the Shortcuts tab, Maria can create metadata like Custom Permission that she’ll need for her implementation.

Now that the custom permission is created, she will next update the permission set.

Step 3: Search metadata

Maria searches for the Sales Representative permission set and adds the DisplayConsentStatus custom permission.

Step 4: Create the screen flow

Maria can also create a flow from the Shortcuts tab.

Maria creates and configures the flow. During this process, she figures out that something is no longer working in her latest flow version. She wants to check on the previous version some filter on the ContactPointTypeConsent object.

Step 5: Navigate to flow versions

When Maria is working on a flow, she can directly navigate to other versions thanks to the dedicated button in the SIR popup.

Now that Maria has finished building her flow, she adds it to the Contact page. 

Step 6: Navigate to the recently viewed records

Maria uses the Recently Viewed Records list from the extension to access the previous contact she visited, and jumps to the Lightning App Builder.

Maria adds a filter to the component to make sure it is displayed only for users with DisplayConsentStatus custom permission and for VIP contacts (isVIP__c field set to true).

Next, she wants to test to see if the information is displayed correctly for sales representative users.

Step 7: Log in as another user in Incognito window

Maria searches for the user “John SalesDoe” and uses the LoginAs Incognito mode to connect as a sales representative in a new window without entering his login and password.

Note: This functionality is currently available on the beta version and should be part of the main version in August 2024.

Step 8: Check for permissions

Maria can’t see the information, but she wants to make sure that John SalesDoe has the right permission set.

She sees that the permission set is assigned to John, so she can check for the other display condition:  isVIP__c field.

Step 9: Check for record information not displayed on the layout

Now that Maria is sure that the user she was connected with has the right permissions, she wants to check that the current contact is a VIP user, however this field is not on the layout. She uses Show all data to check for this field.

From this page, she can search for the hidden field and edit its value.

The isVIP__c field was set to false, so Maria updates it for the purpose of the test. She uses the LoginAs feature to check if John SalesDoe sees the contact’s consent status, and yes, job done!

At this point, Maria thinks about the deployment of her flow. She created it using the latest API version available on a pre-release dev sandbox.

Since her production org is currently in a previous version, she needs to make sure that her production org will be in the same version when her flow is deployed to production in three weeks.

She connects to the production org, opens the popup, and checks the maintenance value in the Org tab.

That’s okay, the next release will be deployed two weeks, which is before she deploys her flow. 

How did Salesforce Inspector Reloaded help?

When using Salesforce Inspector Reloaded, Maria feels that she accomplished her tasks much faster. She does a comparison of the time she needed to perform different tasks with and without the extension, and she finds out that it was 2.6 times faster with Salesforce Inspector Reloaded! Without the tool, she would have had to navigate between tens of different pages to achieve the same results.

Use Salesforce Inspector Reloaded with an extra layer of security

This extension relies on API calls to Salesforce for many of its features. Using it consumes API calls, so be mindful of limits.

The Salesforce ecosystem is rich with browser extensions designed to enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and provide additional functionalities. However, not all browser extensions are created equal, and there are several factors to consider when choosing which ones to use.

The extension requires certain permissions to function correctly. Understanding these permissions is crucial as they have significant implications for data access, security, and privacy.

By default, any Salesforce user with the appropriate tool can run API queries. For obvious security reasons, you may want to restrict those API access rights to specific personas, but also to limit access to particular tools. To reinforce your org security, it is considered a good practice to enable API Access Control by reaching out to Salesforce Customer Support.

Note: Depending on your configuration, activating this setting may result in regressions, so enable it first in a sandbox to limit impact while testing.

For a step-by-step tutorial on how to secure access with SIR, please see the related documentation.

Conclusion

Salesforce Inspector Reloaded is open source and free to use, but it is not an official Salesforce product, which means that it has not been officially tested or documented. Source code and support requests for the extension should be directed to the project repository and contributions are welcome. The extension is actively maintained by the community, so don’t forget to take a look at the release notes when a new version is deployed!

Resources

• GitHub repository
• How To documentation
• SalesforceBen article
• Apex Hours article
• Salesforce Inspector Reloaded extension
• Beta version 

About the author

Thomas Prouvot serves as a Senior Technical Consultant at Salesforce. He assists clients in tailoring Salesforce solutions to their specific requirements. Explore his GitHub projects @tprouvot.