What is External ID?

– Flag on any custom field of type Text, Number or Email
– Available on all objects that support custom fields
– Why is it important?
• Increases Report and API SOQL performance
• Allows customers to use the record ID from an external system like the salesforce ID in Import and the API (new “Upsert” call)
– Import supports External ID field that can be used to load and/or synchronize data sourced in external systems
– Customer System of Record master exists in SAP with an SAP customer number. The External ID field may be used to maintain the SAP number
– Migrating large amounts of data, the External ID field may be used to track migration data and run data validation tests before going live

Example of an External Id flow where the update or insert is determined based on an import flow from a
system of record such as Oracle.
• The value proposition here is that we can de-duplicate not only based on our IDs (which are unknown to an external system), but that we can flag an external id (of type text, email, or number) custom field for the purposes of helping to de-duplicate (ie. Update/Insert = Upsert) during the import process; especially when trying to keep multiple systems synchronized

External ID
– Case INSENSITIVE
– Three ID fields per object
– Custom fields only