Tips and Tricks from the Composer Team
Tip 2: What you need to know before creating a Connection
Before we get started, what is a Connector? A Connector is software provided by MuleSoft Composer that establishes communications with software systems. For example, MuleSoft currently supports numerous connectors for systems including Salesforce, Slack, Tableau, NetSuite, Workday, Google Sheets, and more.
Before you create a connection: The first step when selecting and using a Connector, you must authenticate as a user to that system. When performing this step, each Connector for a software system has its own required authentication parameters. It is required that you understand and collect the required parameters for the system(s) you will be connecting.
Example 1: Let’s start with the Salesforce (SF) connector. This connector requires you to have the URL of your SF org you will be connecting to and your username and password.
- If you are creating a connection to the SF environment with Composer configured in it, you will be prompted to enter your username and password, as shown below:
2. If you are creating a connection to another Salesforce Org, select Use Custom Domain (Pictured below) and enter your Salesforce Org’s URL that you would like to connect to, you will then be prompted to enter your username and password for that Salesforce Org, as noted in step 1 above.
Example 2: Next, let’s look at the authentication parameters for Stripe’s connector. Stripe is a payment processing software provider. Before connecting to Stripe, you must already have an account, username and password. You can create a Test account on Stripe, as I have done. In addition to having an account created on Stripe, you will need to provide your API Key when establishing a Stripe connection with MuleSoft Composer. The API key is located on your Home dashboard when you log into Stripe. It is the Secret Key in the lower right of the dashboard, under the For Developers heading. See the picture below as a reference:
Where to learn more about other Connectors and their authentication parameters? It’s important to understand, and collect, the required authentication parameters for each connector you will be using in your flow. You can do that by selecting and reviewing each connector’s authentication parameters in Composer, as well as, by taking a Composer training course on Trailhead that includes the connectors you will be using.
