Integrating a third party application with Salesforce

Question

I am working on integrating a third-party application with Salesforce and am exploring options for OAuth flow without the use of pre-existing or "master" Connected Apps. Our goal is to create a seamless user experience where Salesforce users can authorize our third-party application without manual steps. Here’s the outline of our ideal flow: The user logs into our third-party app. They initiate the integration with Salesforce within our app. They are redirected to Salesforce to authenticate and grant permissions. Post-authentication, a Connected App is dynamically created in their Salesforce org, which is not the typical process. Our third-party app receives the Consumer Key and Secret from Salesforce automatically. We complete the OAuth flow to access Salesforce on the user's behalf. We understand that typically, a Connected App must pre-exist or be manually created for such an integration. However, we are looking for a method to streamline this process and minimize user steps.

Is it possible to facilitate this process through Salesforce’s APIs or any other method, without requiring a user to manually create a Connected App or having a master Connected App to handle dynamic creation?

I am open to innovative approaches or learning about any features that may be in development which could support such a use case. Any guidance, advice, or direction on how to achieve this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

Connected Apps don't need to be manually configured in each org. Typically, the first time a user uses a Connected App in an org, the settings are automatically configured. Admins can then choose to allow or block the Connected App. For example, consider the Data Loader. In a typical org, this is already configured. Users can log in and use the app normally. Admins can go in to Setup to block access to the app if they desire. In other words, you really don't need to do anything; your production org's Connected App works for all orgs by default.

Answer 2

You can create a Connected app in a Developer org and that can be used to authorize multiple Salesforce orgs.

By default when the a user of an org authorizes your third party app, the connected app is created in the org. This is how it works. There is no need to create a connected app in every salesforce org that you want to authorize and change your consumer keys and secret.

For example, take a look at the App like Postman, the app author maintains one Connected app but it is able to authorize to any Salesforce org.