Work with Extensibility Features

Extensibility features include External Activity and External Actions. These tools help streamline workflows and automate tasks by connecting third-party apps to Account Engagement. External Activity feeds prospect activity data into Account Engagement where it can be used in automations. External Actions can be used in Engagement Studio programs to execute an action in an third-party app.

Before you get started, visit Trailhead for an overview of these features or learn more in Salesforce Help.

Each third-party app you work with must be represented by a marketing app extension in Marketing Setup. For each extension, add external activities and actions as needed. External activities and actions are represented by activity type and action type objects, respectively. Each extension must be associated with a business unit.

The steps to configure an external activity and an external action are different, but some preliminary steps are the same for both types.

To set up marketing app extensions and related activity type and action type records via the API, set up Salesforce OAuth and authenticate to Tooling API. Learn more about authentication.

See the External Activity and External Actions sections of this guide for the authentication methods needed to work with each feature.

Marketing app extensions and action types for External Actions can be packaged. A managed package lets admins install an external action from the AppExchange with the click of a button. If you’re a third-party service and building a generalized integration, consider creating a managed package with the connected app. Make sure the marketing app extensions you create have unique and identifiable names. Use Salesforce's Tooling API to systematically set up the extension and activity types metadata. In this guide, we use the REST Tooling APIs.

To minimize risk around data access, consider allowing the customer's Salesforce Admin to run the setup without persistent authentication and name a different user for execution. Don’t create a business unit assignment for packaged extensions. The end user of your integration must create the business unit assignment. We also recommend leaving all packaged components deactivated for automations.

Keep these considerations in mind when working with marketing app extensions and related extensibility objects.

• Before you work with extensibility features, review the considerations in Salesforce Help.
• To use Tooling API, you must be a Salesforce Admin. You can also set up a Marketing Admin with access to Tooling API.
• You can create marketing app extensions, activity types, and action types via Tooling API or in Marketing Setup in Salesforce.
• External activities aren’t available for packaging, but they can be configured via Tooling API.
• To use external activities and external actions in automations, these conditions must be met:
  • The marketing app extension and activity or action type are marked active for automations.
  • The marketing app extension is assigned to the correct business unit.