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I may be firing in the dark but I want to know some insights into how the Chatter Desktop and Chatter mobile apps (such as iOS & Android) work. Do these tools use Chatter Connect API? I ask this because I know of an org (public) where Chatter Connect API is disabled but these apps still work perfectly.

Since the Chatter Connect API is disabled, my third-party Chatter app does not work on this org. Since the standard Chatter Desktop and Chatter Mobile apps do work (despite Chatter Connect API being disabled), I'm starting to believe that these tools use another mechanism.

I'll appreciate if any Chatter experts can throw some light on this.

Update - Thank you for all the answers, this is now well explained in the Chatter Connect documentation

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  • Interesting question @Gaurav, waiting for a good answer.
    – Abhinav Gupta
    Commented Sep 5, 2012 at 16:01
  • how is the connect API disabled?
    – superfell
    Commented Sep 6, 2012 at 16:53
  • @superfell That's a great question Simon! The only way I could disable Chatter Connect API is to disable Chatter altogether. In fact, that's what makes it even more intriguing for me as to how certain orgs can use Chatter Desktop & Chatter Mobile even though they return 'Chatter Connect API disabled' if I call these APIs on them. Any guidance would be much appreciated.
    – Gaurav Kheterpal
    Commented Sep 7, 2012 at 9:01

2 Answers 2

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@Gaurav

The following is from Mo, a QE on the Chatter Connect team at Salesforce (he'll have an account shortly):

  • regarding the native salesforce mobile chatter clients: some of these clients used internal older api's (not public) , most of the new clients use connect (the public chatter rest api)

  • you can disable the access for these mobile chatter clients from the org admin page Mobile Administration -> Chatter Mobile -> Settings -> Enable Chatter Mobile

https://xxxxxsalesforce.com/mobile/mobileadmin/mobileChatterSettings.apexp?setupid=MobileChatterSettings&retURL=%2Fui%2Fsetup%2FSetup%3Fsetupid%3DMobileChatter

  • you can turn off chatter rest api for the org by disabling this perm "Enable Chatter REST API". only a salesforce admin can turn this perm on and off.

do you mind sharing what are you trying to do exactly?

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Do these tools use Chatter Connect API?

I used the BURP proxy to intercept the calls being made by the Chatter Desktop app. Alternatively you could use fiddler or another tool designed to intercept traffic and allow you to inspect it.

In my case Chatter was enabled, you might want to repeat the experiment on one of the disabled orgs.

There were GET calls to:

  • /services/oauth2/token
  • /mobile/direct/23.0/user_info.json
  • /services/data/v25.0/connect/organization.json
  • /mobile/direct/23.0/settings.json
  • /setup/chatterdesktop/ChatterDesktopSettings.xml
  • /mobile/direct/23.0/005700000000000/following.json
  • /services/data/v25.0/chatter/feeds/news/me/feed-items.json
  • /chatternow/resources
  • /setup/chatterdesktop/update_final.xml
  • /api/presence/v25.0/roster
  • /api/presence/v25.0/favorites
  • /api/channel/v25.0/receivemessages

There were POST calls to:

  • /api/presence/v25.0/login
  • /api/channel/v25.0/create
  • /api/presence/v25.0/setpresencestatus

A number of those calls look fairly standard, such as the oauth2 authentication and rest calls to pull back organization data via JSON. Others look like some form of online settings storage that is specific to the desktop client.

You might be better placed to recognize which of these is the standard chatter api and if there are any non-standard calls.

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