Get started with Coveo for Salesforce

This is for:

Developer System Administrator

Coveo for Salesforce lets you optimize your users efficiency by combining easy-to-use Lightning components, Coveo Usage Analytics (Coveo UA), Coveo Machine Learning (Coveo ML), and simple connectivity via the Coveo Administration Console.

Your Salesforce administrator needs to perform the following steps to install, set up, and deploy Coveo for Salesforce.

Step 1: Install Coveo for Salesforce

Download and install the Coveo for Salesforce application in your Salesforce organization (see Install the Coveo for Salesforce application).

Tip
Leading practice

To try Coveo for Salesforce, you should create a Salesforce Developer or Sandbox organization.

Step 2: Configure Coveo for Salesforce

Now that the application is installed, you have to configure it by creating a new Coveo organization or linking it to an existing one. This lets you index content from your Salesforce organization and other external sources in your Coveo organization (see Configure the Coveo for Salesforce application).

You can create a 30-day Pro trial organization for development and testing purposes, or to familiarize yourself with Coveo.

Tip
Leading practice

Remember to create a dedicated Salesforce crawling user to crawl your Salesforce content and index it in a Coveo index.

Step 3: Insert Coveo components in your Salesforce organization

Now that the application is installed and configured, you can add Coveo components to your Salesforce Lightning Console or Community (see Insert Coveo components in Salesforce).

Tip
Leading practice

  • Always try your components in your Developer or Sandbox organization.

  • Duplicate the Coveo components instead of using the default ones.

Step 4: Navigate in the Coveo Administration Console

The Coveo Administration Console offers many options that you can use to interact with your Coveo organization (see Familiarize yourself with the Administration Console).

Coveo for Salesforce Pro and Enterprise editions also allow you to index content from applications outside of Salesforce. This content can then be searched from within your Salesforce organization.

Tip
Leading practice

You should follow the optimization list for your configuration (see Advanced configuration of a Salesforce source).

Step 5: Develop and customize your components in Coveo for Salesforce

You can continue exploring your Coveo for Salesforce organization, start working with your components, and discover how you can develop with Coveo for Salesforce.

Tip
Leading practice

You should start with the basic setup (see Basic setup before you can start to develop).

You can consider enabling some of the most common customizations with Coveo for Salesforce.

Tip
Leading practice

You should also explore the content about search optimization or the objects and fields that you can use.

Step 6: Go live in production

When you’re ready to go live in production with Coveo for Salesforce, you should follow the leading practices to migrate your development environment to a production environment (see Go to production with Coveo for Salesforce).

If you initially installed the application only for administrators, you need to make it accessible to appropriate Salesforce users (see Grant users access to your Coveo Lightning components or Grant users access to your Coveo Classic components).

Tip
Leading practice

You can have many components to which you need to give access: Lightning components or Visualforce components (see Reference).

Step 7: Post-production: Understand usage analytics, Coveo Machine Learning, and search optimization

Make the most of your integration: Coveo Usage Analytics (Coveo UA), Coveo Machine Learning (Coveo ML), and Search optimization.

  • Coveo UA lets you understand how your users interact with your Coveo components, can point out trends or content gaps, and describes the customer journey. It can be consulted directly from the Coveo Administration Console.

  • While Coveo ML is enabled by default in your organization, you might want to tweak it in different ways.

  • Search optimization lets you use pipelines to maximize the way your results are returned to your users.

You might also want to invite colleagues to your Coveo organization so they can, for example, review your Coveo Analytics dashboards (see Manage members).