Question 1

Do I need an External ID field to match records?

Accepted Answer

No, and this is the most common misconception. Identity can be any Salesforce field that is filterable and otherwise eligible, so an existing account number, domain, or email column can serve as the key without creating a dedicated External ID field first. Exact equality is the standard behaviour, and string identities additionally support substring, domain and hostname matching, plus matching against a list of values.

Question 2

How are lookups and relationships set?

Accepted Answer

Either by writing the reference identifier directly, or through generated find by fields that resolve the related record for you. That means you can point a contact at its account using the account's own identifier or an External ID style lookup, rather than having to carry Salesforce record identifiers through your data warehouse. When a reference does not resolve, you choose the behaviour: fail the row, omit just the relationship, or skip the record.

Question 3

Will a large sync exhaust our Salesforce API limits?

Accepted Answer

It is guarded against. The connector selects between the REST and Bulk APIs automatically based on volume, so large loads go through Bulk rather than burning per record calls, and operations pause at 80 percent of your daily API allowance by default. Two settings are worth knowing: only updating records when values differ costs extra reads, and orgs prone to row locking usually want a smaller Bulk batch size with serial processing.

Question 4

What write modes are available?

Accepted Answer

Create, update, update and create, and delete, subject to what each object permits in your org. Which objects and fields are writable comes from Salesforce metadata and the connected user's permissions, so the sync can only do what that user could do by hand. After the first backfill, model syncs are differential, meaning subsequent runs move only what changed rather than reprocessing the whole model each time.

Connect Snowflake with Salesforce

Connect Snowflake and Salesforce with Polytomic

Match on any filterable field

Standard and custom objects

API quota protected

Trusted by businesses worldwide

Step-by-step integration guide

Connect Snowflake in Polytomic

Connect Salesforce in Polytomic

Create a sync between Snowflake and Salesforce

Map fields and enable the sync

Frequently asked questions

The sync and ETL platform that does it all

Powerful data sync

Advanced analytics

Enterprise security

Easy setup

Ready to connect Snowflake with Salesforce?