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CCS's avatar
CCS
New Member
1 year ago

Lookup Salesforce Parent Object Id using External ID

Hello,

 

In Salesforce, you can use an External ID field to link a child record to a parent record. You can use an External ID in place of a record's ID when associating records.

We try to use pipeline to bulk upsert records  in Salesforce, however, there is no option to lookup (map) to parent object using the parent's external Id. 

In this case, we need to upsert Opportunity which requires Contact ID. We do have the Contact External ID, but not the Contact Salesforce ID. 

Any suggestion how to accomplish this?

 

Thanks

2 Replies

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable

    Hi CCS ,

    Here are my own thoughts about your questions:

     

    1. You need to query Salesforce to get the Contact ID based on the Contact's External ID. You can use the REST API to perform this query. Here's an example of how to do this:

    GET /services/data/vXX.X/sobjects/Contact/External_ID_Field__c/External_ID_Value

    Replace XX.X with your API version, External_ID_Field__c with the API name of your External ID field, and External_ID_Value with the actual External ID value.

     

    2. The response will include the Contact ID, which you can then use in your upsert operation.

     

    3. You have the Contact ID, you can proceed to upsert the Opportunity. Here's an example of how to do this using the REST API:

    PATCH /services/data/vXX.X/sobjects/Opportunity/Opportunity_External_ID_Field__c/Opportunity_External_ID_Value
    Content-Type: application/json
    
    {
        "Name": "Opportunity Name",
        "StageName": "Prospecting",
        "CloseDate": "2025-12-31",
        "ContactId": "Contact_ID_Value"
    }

    Replace Opportunity_External_ID_Field__c with the API name of your Opportunity's External ID field, Opportunity_External_ID_Value with the actual External ID value, and Contact_ID_Value with the Contact ID you retrieved earlier.

     

     

    Best Regards

    Yilong Zhou

    If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

    • CCS's avatar
      CCS
      New Member

      Thanks for the reply Yilong, but this solution doesn't work for bulk upserts. We need to upsert 100K+ records daily (and in a case of data migration much more) and bulk upload is the only way due to the 15K batches in a 24-hour period limit.