Connect Cognism to Salesforce to export Leads, Contacts, and Accounts directly into your CRM. Once configured by a Cognism Admin, users can connect their own Salesforce accounts and begin exporting records.

Before you begin

Before setting up the Salesforce integration, ensure that:

• You are a Cognism Admin.
• You are using Salesforce Professional Edition or above.
• Salesforce API access is enabled.
  • For Professional Edition, Salesforce API access must be enabled by Salesforce.
• You have a supported Salesforce environment:
  • Production

  • Sandbox (ONLY Cognism Admins can connect to Sandbox environment)

    Note: Salesforce Essentials is not supported.

Required Salesforce permissions

The Cognism Admin performing the initial integration must have the following Salesforce permissions.

Required permissions

• Read, Create and Edit Leads
• Read, Create and Edit Contacts
• Read, Create and Edit Accounts
• Marketing User
• View Setup and Configuration

If you plan to use Data Import (CRM sync), the Admin also requires:

• View All Users
• Modify Metadata

• Customize Application

  Note: Following Salesforce security updates for Connected Apps, some custom administrator profiles may require additional permissions to install the Cognism connected application.

Connect Salesforce

1. Go to Settings > Integrations.
2. Select Salesforce.
3. Click Connect Integration.
4. Choose either:
   • Production
   • Sandbox
5. Sign in to Salesforce.
6. Authorise Cognism to access your Salesforce organisation.

Once connected, you can configure export settings and field mappings.

User authentication

After the integration has been configured, every Cognism user must authenticate with their own Salesforce account before exporting records.

Users can connect from:

• The Cognism web application
• The Cognism Chrome Extension

Exports are performed using the permissions of the authenticated Salesforce user.

Production and Sandbox environments

Salesforce can be connected to either a Production or Sandbox environment.

When using a Sandbox:

• The integration is configured for the entire Cognism account.
• Other users can still connect to a Production environment.

To avoid configuration issues, we recommend:

• Using a dedicated Cognism account for testing, or
• Completing Sandbox testing before allowing other users to connect.

Important

If your Cognism account has multiple Admins, every Admin should connect to the same Salesforce environment.

Do not mix Production and Sandbox connections.

Using different Salesforce organisations may cause:

• Incorrect field mappings
• Export failures
• Unexpected integration behaviour

Switching to a different Salesforce organisation

To connect a different Salesforce organisation:

1. Disconnect the current integration.
2. Ensure all Cognism Admins will use the same Salesforce organisation.
3. Connect the new organisation.
4. Review your field mappings before exporting data.

Supported Salesforce field types

Cognism supports mapping the following Salesforce field types:

• Boolean
• Date
• DateTime
• Double
• Integer
• Long Integer
• Text
• Text Area
• Picklist
• Phone
• URL
• Currency
• Email

Unsupported Salesforce field types, such as Formula, Geolocation, Encrypted, or Auto Number fields, are not available when configuring field mappings.