Skip to content
Contact support
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

Technical Overview of Ren Alerts in Salesforce

A technical overview for Salesforce Administrators and IT teams integrating with the Ren Alerts Salesforce Plugin.

What is Ren's Salesforce Plugin?

Ren Alerts for Salesforce is a managed package that surfaces Ren intelligence alerts directly inside Salesforce. It provides components that can be added to the Home page and to each Contact and Account record page, giving users timely alerts about the people and companies they work with without having to leave Salesforce.

The plugin also includes a built-in OAuth app, so there is no need for your organization to create a Connected App or share OAuth credentials — Ren handles this automatically.

Key Features

  • Home Page Feed; A tabbed feed view showing all alert types configured for your organization. Users can paginate through alerts and switch between feeds.

  • Contact & Account Record Pages; Embedded components showing alerts relevant to a specific Contact or Account. For best results, configure sync queries (see Setup Step 4) to automatically keep your Contacts and Accounts synced with Ren. If a specific entity hasn't been synced yet, users can manually click "Add to Ren" as a fallback.

  • AI-Assisted Reach-Out Emails; From any alert, users can compose an AI-generated email referencing the alert content. The compose modal supports contact search, message preset selection, and sending via Salesforce or the user's email client.

  • Alert Sharing; Users can generate a shareable link for any alert and copy it to their clipboard.

Ways to use this plugin

Two usage patterns depending on your enabled scopes:

  • crm scope — Sync Contacts and Accounts from Salesforce to Ren
  • crm + crm_alerts scopes — Sync Contacts and Accounts and view alerts on Home, Contact, and Account pages

Key capabilities (with crm_alerts enabled):

  • View alerts on Contact and Account records as well as Ren feeds on the Salesforce Home
  • Compose AI-assisted reach-out emails directly from an alert
  • Share alert links with colleagues
  • Sync Contacts and Accounts to Ren via configurable SOQL queries

Note: This package is an API-only architecture. No Ren alert data is stored in Salesforce. All alerts are fetched live from the Ren API and rendered on-demand. The only data the plugin writes locally are optional error logs and optional email activity Task records.

Prerequisites

  • Salesforce Enterprise Edition or higher (Lightning Experience required)
  • A Ren organization account with CRM API keys (provided by Ren)

Authentication & Data Flow

How the Plugin Authenticates

The plugin uses Salesforce Named Credentials and External Credentials to securely communicate with the Ren API.

  • Ren API keys (X-Ren-Access-Key-ID and X-Ren-Secret-Access-Key) are stored in an External Credential in your Salesforce instance— encrypted and platform-managed by Salesforce
  • All API calls go over HTTPS to the configured Named Credential URL
  • Each request is automatically scoped to the logged-in user's email address

How Users Connect

Each end-user must also have a active Salesforce ↔ Ren OAuth connection. This is a one-time setup where the user connects via Ren Settings → Integrations → Connect Salesforce in the Ren web app. This OAuth connection allows Ren to sync Contacts and Accounts from Salesforce.

What Salesforce Data is Accessed?

Data Read from Salesforce

Object Fields Purpose
Contact Id, FirstName, LastName, Email, Phone, Title, Account (Id, Name, Website) Used when adding a Contact to Ren or searching for email recipients
Account Id, Name, Website Used when adding an Account to Ren
User Id, Name, Email Used in the admin query dry-run tool
PermissionSetAssignment Id, AssigneeId, PermissionSetId Used during post-install to assign admin permissions, and in the setup guide to verify user permission set status

All SOQL queries run with WITH USER_MODE, meaning they respect your org's field-level security and sharing rules.

Data Written to Salesforce

Object When Purpose
Task Only when email activity tracking is enabled Logs email outreach as a Task (Subject, Description, Contact link)
Ren_Error_Log__c (custom) Only when error logging is enabled Captures API errors for admin diagnostics

The plugin does NOT:

  • Create or modify Contact or Account records
  • Create custom fields on standard objects
  • Write to any standard object besides Task (and only when opted in)

Data Sent to Ren

  • User email (for scoping requests to the correct user)
  • Contact/Account IDs and names (when syncing entities to Ren or composing reach-out emails)
  • SOQL sync query configuration (admin-defined queries that determine which Contacts/Accounts to sync from Salesforce to Ren)

Permission Model

The package ships with two permission sets:

Permission Set Assigned To Access
Ren Alerts Admin System Administrators (auto-assigned on install) Setup wizard, query configuration, error logs, settings
Ren Alerts User End users (assigned manually or via Flow) View alerts, compose emails, share links

Tip: Use a Salesforce Flow to auto-assign the Ren Alerts User permission set to new users, so you don't have to do it manually each time.

 

For details on how to set up the managed package, see Installation and Setup of Ren Alerts in Salesforce.