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Connector Improvement: Ingest field descriptions and help text from Salesforce object

Planned
Sonali Dhome User

The Data engineering team has a requirement to sync Salesforce metadata (descriptions or help text for fields). 

It will be helpful if Fivetran support ingesting field descriptions and help text from Salesforce objects.

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Comments

6 comments

Date Votes
  • Official comment
    Sadie Martin Fivetranner
    • Edited

    Hi all,

    We are working on adding EntityDefinition and FieldDefinition tables to the connector. I'll keep you posted here.

    Best,

    Sadie

  • Sadie Martin Fivetranner
    • Edited

    Hi Sonali,

    Thanks for submitting this request. We don't have this in the roadmap right now, but I'm very interested in hearing more about your needs.

    1. What will these descriptions and help text be used for?

    2. Can you provide examples of objects where this would be particularly useful?

    3. Do you have any thoughts on how you'd like them to appear in your destination - e.g. in a separate metadata table?

    Best,

    Sadie

  • Sonali Dhome User

    1. What will these descriptions and help text be used for?
      The description/helptext will be used by Users (Analyst , Engineer etc.) to understand the kind of data stored within the column. Having the description populated for the column enable Users to make wise decision on using correct column while building the Data Products.

    2. Can you provide examples of objects where this would be particularly useful?
      We have list of Common Objects (eg. Account, Contact , Opportunity, Agreement etc that are sourced from source system. Similarly objects will get sourced from other sources ,having description attached would help to understand the context of the field.

    3. Do you have any thoughts on how you’d like them to appear in your destination - e.g. in a separate metadata table? (edited)
     We would like to see them on the description of the physical assets in column description

  • Sonali Dhome User

    Hi Sadie,

    Any updates?

  • Tyler Wood User

    Seconding this request. I see in the Salesforce schema there's a 'fielddefinition' object with limitations from Salesforce. I would find useful a destination table 'fields' that includes an object relationship, the field name, help text, and any other relevant/available metadata at the field level.

  • Chris Johnson User

    I see in the January 2025 release notes (https://fivetran.com/docs/connectors/applications/salesforce/changelog) that EntityDefinition and FieldDefinition have been added to the Salesforce schema, which is great. (Though, it seems that FieldDefinition isn't actually functional yet).

    In my opinion, access to EntityParticle would be more beneficial than FieldDefinition, as it breaks down the compound fields (such as BillingAddress) into the specific fields (e.g. BillingStreet, BillingCity). That would allow us to tie EntityDefinition and EntityParticle to the FiveTran_Log tables of SOURCE_TABLE_METADATA and SOURCE_COLUMN_METADATA.