How to Use Salesforce Workbench to Query, Update, Delete, and Export Data

What is Workbench Salesforce?

In this section, you are going to learn about the amazing tool called Workbench Salesforce. It is basically a web-based tool designed for Salesforce Administrators and Developers which allows them to interact with Salesforce organization or Force APIs to update, delete, insert, and export data.

Check out the topics discussed in this tutorial section:

• Workbench Features
• How to use Workbench Salesforce?
• How to log in to the Workbench Salesforce?
• Advantages of Workbench Salesforce
• Do Things in an Easier Way with Workbench
• Conclusion

Watch this complete tutorial on Salesforce:

Salesforce Workbench is a highly adaptable and cloud-hosted toolkit provided to Salesforce Administrators and Developers to administer Salesforce organization using Force APIs. Using the Salesforce Workbench tool, they can easily perform Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL) and Salesforce Object Search Language (SOSL), view their organization’s data, perform data loading and testing, deploy and troubleshoot their applications, and modify session settings.

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• Data Management Capabilities – Workbench gives you quite a few options to manage your data:
  • Edit – You can click and edit single records.
  • ZIP File – You can upload a ZIP file that contains binary files and a CSV file, directly to insert, upsert, delete or update binary files.
  • Smart Lookup – You can find relevant Salesforce IDs through the Smart Lookup feature.
  • Delete and Purge – You can delete records if you don’t need them. They can be retrieved from the recycle bin. If you want to permanently delete records, you can use the Purge feature.
• Data Security – Workbench provides features that help protect your data:
  • CSRF Protection – You can protect your data from hackers by using CSRF Protection. It is an integrated feature in Salesforce and is dependent on the code in Workbench. You can change this code if required.
  • SSL – Salesforces uses SSL to connect to Workbench by default.

In order to access Workbench Salesforce, go to:

https://workbench.developerforce.com/login.php

Now, follow these steps to access your account:

Step 1: Log in to Salesforce Workbox with the account credentials given by salesforce.com and select the desired environment and API versions. Tick off the terms and conditions checkbox and hit the button Login with Salesforce

Step 2: After logging in, you would see a Jump to menu wherein you can switch between different options as given below:

• Apex Class
• Apex Page
• Workflow
• Approval
• SOSL Query
• SOQL Query
• Insert
• Update
• Delete
• Undo
• Upsert

Choose the task you wish to perform from the list

Step 3 (a): On the top menu bar, you would see five drop-down items

First, select info. There are three sections in it:

• Standard & Custom Objects: You can choose an object here, and the related information regarding the object will be displayed on the screen

• Metadata Types & Components: In this, you can choose any metadata component from the below:
  • Apex Class
  • Approval
  • Workflow
  • Apex Page

• Session Information: This will display the current user session details. If you are a System Administrator, you can end or cancel any other session present in Salesforce Workbench. Also, details such as the connection and accessibility mode, session seconds valid, profile ID, and user information, like email, role ID, full name, etc. of the current user, will be displayed by selecting the session information tab

Step 3 (b): Let’s now go back to Step 2 and select Queries. There are two queries:

• SOSL Query
• SOQL Query

Note: In this Query section, you can select various objects and fields and apply a condition to build a SOQL query. You can view the records as a list or in a matrix form. Later, you can download it in a CSV format.

SOSL queries can also be written in a similar way.

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Step 3 (c): Now explore the data option. Using this option, you can select a particular object and perform the following operations:

• Insert
• Update
• Delete
• Undo
• Upsert

You can also upload records from ZIP or CSV files. You can see the records by simply clicking on View present in the Salesforce button. This will redirect you to your org.

Step 3 (d): Now, explore migration. Using this, the package can be retrieved. You can use package.xml and directly deploy it in the Salesforce organization

Step 3 (e): Let’s now move to utilities. This menu has a list containing:

• REST Explorer
• Apex Execute
• Password Management

Let’s talk about them one by one.

• REST Explorer: Using this option, you can choose the HTTP method to perform the Rest API service

• Apex Execute: You can create, delete, and update a record using this. New objects can be created from SOQL queries. All the newly created objects containing null values for the fields need to be set once the creation is complete

• Password Management: Passwords can be set and reset by the Salesforce org using this method

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Data management

• Salesforce Workbench allows you to edit records by just clicking on the unique ID provided in the query.
• It also allows you to upload a zip file in which you can insert, upsert, update, or delete binary files. To make this process work, you need to prepare a zip file where all the binary files are present.
• You can use the Smart Lookup tool when you’re inserting, updating, or deleting which will provide you with foreign or standard ID lookup fields to find the relevant Salesforce ID.

Easy data extraction

• Removing information, which has been identified with users, such as roles and profiles, and the permission sets is very simple.

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By now, you know the various aspects of Workbench. I hope this tutorial section was useful! With the Salesforce ecosystem, you can do anything you want in a simpler way, and you will always be able to work through it easily.

In this session, you learned about Salesforce Workbench. Workbench in Salesforce is a powerful and secure data management tool that is of great help to developers. It makes both data management and extraction much easier. In the next session of this tutorial, you will be learning about Batch Apex.