Salesforce is known for its dynamic, flexible, and scalable approach to customer relationship management. Among its various offerings, platform events represent a sophisticated mechanism for enabling real-time communication across different systems and users. They empower developers and administrators to design event-driven architectures that respond instantly to system changes, actions, and interactions.
Platform events introduce a messaging layer to the Salesforce ecosystem. Rather than relying solely on traditional request-response models, these events allow for loosely coupled systems where producers and consumers of data operate independently, yet remain connected through structured event flows.
Concept and Nature of Platform Events
A platform event is a specialized component within Salesforce, resembling a custom object in design but differing in behavior. While a custom object stores data in a persistent format and can be manipulated through CRUD operations, a platform event is transient. Its main purpose is to transmit information as an event message.
These messages are published to an event bus and are picked up by subscribed components. The consumption of these messages is done through various means such as Apex triggers, flows, or external systems using CometD clients. Once published, an event cannot be updated or deleted, nor can it be viewed in standard page layouts.
This event-driven approach enhances system efficiency. It enables actions to be initiated by events rather than scheduled processes or manual triggers, fostering responsive and intelligent applications.
Key Features and Behaviors
Several unique properties define how platform events work and differentiate them from other Salesforce elements:
- Platform events support custom fields, allowing data to be structured according to specific use cases.
- Messages are delivered asynchronously and do not require acknowledgment by consumers.
- Event records are not visible in the user interface.
- There is no traditional layout or edit functionality.
- Platform events are immutable after being published.
- They integrate seamlessly with Apex and Salesforce APIs such as REST and SOAP.
- Declarative tools like Process Builder and Flow can also publish and subscribe to events.
This blend of programmatic and declarative support ensures platform events are versatile and accessible to both developers and administrators.
Practical Scenario: Order Lifecycle Example
Consider an order processing system within an organization. When a new order is placed, the order management system publishes an event titled “Order_Created.” Subscribed systems like inventory, billing, and shipping listen for this event and initiate their respective actions. The inventory system reserves stock, the billing system generates an invoice, and the shipping system prepares the delivery.
Each of these systems may in turn publish events such as “Inventory_Reserved” or “Invoice_Created,” cascading the flow of processes without tightly binding the systems together. This is the core advantage of event-driven design: modular, responsive interactions that do not rely on synchronous communication.
Terminology in Event-Driven Architecture
Understanding the following core terms is essential to working with platform events:
- Event: Represents a change or action of significance within the system, such as the creation of an account or the return of a product.
- Event Message: The structured data payload describing the event.
- Producer: The source system or process that generates and publishes the event.
- Channel: The virtual pipeline through which events are transmitted.
- Consumer: The receiving system or process that acts upon the event message.
This terminology applies consistently across both Salesforce and external systems integrated with Salesforce using platform events.
Differences Between Platform Events and Streaming API
Although they share some similarities, platform events and the Streaming API are fundamentally different. Both rely on publish-subscribe models and support durable messaging using replay IDs. However, key distinctions include:
- Platform events are defined and managed within Salesforce and support custom fields.
- They can be published and subscribed to using both declarative and programmatic tools.
- Platform events are natively integrated into Salesforce’s event bus and trigger system.
- The Streaming API is limited to changes on existing Salesforce records and lacks the customizability of platform events.
Platform events provide a broader scope and are ideal for custom message-based interactions that go beyond record updates.
Use Cases of Platform Events in Business Workflows
Platform events can revolutionize how an organization handles communication across departments and systems. Here are several practical applications:
Sending Targeted Notifications
Organizations often need to send alerts to users based on specific activities. Platform events can be used to send tailored messages such as low inventory warnings, customer inquiries, or service disruptions. These messages are routed instantly and can trigger automated follow-ups or interface prompts.
Monitoring Real-Time Activity
Salesforce offers real-time monitoring objects for various platform events. For example, login events, file downloads, or record updates can be tracked using platform event data. This helps security teams and administrators maintain oversight over user behavior and system activity.
Enhancing Security through Encryption
For environments requiring strict data protection, platform event messages can be encrypted while stored in the event bus. This is especially useful for organizations using Shield Encryption, ensuring that even transient messages meet compliance standards.
External Integration
Platform events are designed to support external systems. Whether it’s a warehouse management app, a third-party CRM, or a legacy software solution, platform events provide a simple way to establish real-time communication. These systems can subscribe to event channels using CometD and act upon incoming messages, achieving seamless interoperability.
Handling Returns and Feedback
A common use case involves merchandise returns. An external application detects a return and publishes an event message. Salesforce receives it, updates the relevant record, and initiates follow-up actions such as issuing a refund or notifying customer service.
Publishing Platform Events in Salesforce
There are multiple ways to publish platform events, each suited to different contexts:
Flows and Automations
Flows allow for event publishing during a user interaction or automated process. For instance, when a support case is escalated, a flow can publish a “Case_Escalated” event to notify relevant departments.
Process Builder
Process Builder offers another declarative method for publishing events. Triggers within business processes—such as stage changes in opportunities or updates to contact records—can initiate event messages, keeping various systems in sync.
Apex
For more complex requirements, Apex provides direct control over platform event publishing. Developers can use EventBus.publish() to send customized messages based on logic defined in classes and triggers.
Salesforce APIs
External applications can publish platform events using Salesforce APIs, including REST, SOAP, and Bulk APIs. These messages are queued asynchronously, and responses indicate whether publishing was successful or encountered errors.
Subscribing to Platform Events
Once events are published, they can be consumed by:
- Apex Triggers: Respond to incoming messages with defined logic.
- Flows: Perform declarative responses based on message content.
- CometD Clients: External systems listening to event channels via Bayeux protocol.
- Processes: Use declarative rules to handle messages and take business actions.
This flexibility makes platform events suitable for a wide range of use cases—from internal automation to complex, multi-system integrations.
Testing and Monitoring Platform Events
Testing is essential before deploying platform event logic. Apex test methods should include test events to verify that triggers or flows respond correctly. This ensures sufficient code coverage and functional reliability.
Salesforce also provides mechanisms for monitoring the performance and usage of platform events. The PlatformEventUsageMetric object stores metrics about publishing and delivery, helping administrators analyze traffic and diagnose bottlenecks.
Metrics include:
- Daily and hourly publish counts
- Delivery success and failure rates
- Usage across specific APIs or clients
This information is crucial for maintaining system health in high-throughput environments.
Limits and Considerations
As with any feature, platform events have limitations that need to be considered:
- The maximum message size is 1 MB. Extensive use of long text fields or large field counts may exceed this limit.
- Event messages cannot be updated or deleted.
- Event records are not queryable or viewable through the standard UI.
- The retention window for replaying events is typically 24 hours, which means consumers must act within that timeframe.
Developers should design systems to accommodate these constraints and ensure event messages remain concise and actionable.
Creating and Configuring a Platform Event
Setting up a platform event involves the following steps:
- Navigate to Setup and enter “Platform Events” in the Quick Find box.
- Click on “New Platform Event.”
- Define the event by providing a label, plural label, object name, and a description.
- Save the definition to create the event.
Once the event exists, you can add custom fields that carry specific data. These fields might include text messages, user IDs, status flags, or any other relevant information. Each field should be clearly labeled and described to ensure proper use by publishers and consumers alike.
Managing Custom Fields
Adding a new field to a platform event is similar to adding a field to a custom object:
- Choose a field type such as Text, Number, or Date.
- Define the field label and name.
- Set any constraints, such as requiring values or limiting length.
- Save the field to make it available in event messages.
Platform event fields must be planned carefully. Unlike object fields, they cannot be edited after publishing, so early design decisions have lasting impact.
Platform events represent a transformative way to connect processes and systems in Salesforce. They offer an elegant solution to the challenges of real-time integration, delivering a flexible and powerful messaging structure that supports both declarative and programmatic use.
From managing workflows and automating responses to connecting with external applications, platform events allow organizations to streamline operations, reduce complexity, and respond more swiftly to dynamic business needs. Proper understanding and implementation of platform events can significantly improve responsiveness, reduce manual intervention, and promote a modern, event-driven architecture.
Whether you are an administrator designing efficient workflows or a developer building advanced integrations, mastering platform events equips you with a valuable toolset to elevate your Salesforce expertise and achieve scalable, intelligent systems
Deep Dive into Use Cases of Platform Events
Platform events are not just tools for sending alerts. They are foundational building blocks in constructing real-time, responsive applications within the Salesforce ecosystem. Businesses today require seamless synchronization between departments, cloud systems, and third-party applications, and platform events enable just that. Whether the goal is to notify an internal team about system updates or send information to an external vendor, platform events provide the structure and logic needed for these operations to flow without delay or bottlenecks.
Let’s explore practical use cases that demonstrate the versatility of platform events.
Custom Notification Systems
Consider an organization where employees need real-time updates about critical system events, such as order failures, inventory shortages, or customer complaints. Relying solely on emails or reports may result in delays or missed actions. By using platform events, notifications can be sent instantly to the relevant personnel or systems.
For instance, when a sales representative closes a major deal, a platform event named “High_Value_Deal__e” can be fired, triggering automated Slack notifications, dashboard updates, and credit scoring calculations in connected systems. All of these actions can occur without human intervention, creating a faster feedback loop.
Business Process Orchestration
Many organizations manage complex workflows involving multiple systems. A healthcare company might need to coordinate between patient registration, lab testing, billing, and reporting. Using platform events, each step in the workflow can publish an event that kicks off the next phase.
For example:
- A patient is registered in the system.
- The system publishes “Patient_Registered__e”.
- Lab services subscribe to this event and begin test scheduling.
- After tests are completed, a “Test_Completed__e” event is published.
- Billing picks up the event and generates an invoice.
This modular, event-driven approach avoids monolithic processes and improves traceability, scalability, and error handling.
Integration with External Applications
Businesses often operate in hybrid environments where Salesforce needs to communicate with external services such as payment gateways, logistics platforms, or enterprise databases. Platform events provide a robust solution for this communication.
Imagine an e-commerce platform that uses Salesforce for CRM and a separate cloud system for order delivery. When an order status changes in Salesforce, a platform event named “Order_Status_Changed__e” is published. An external logistics platform listens for this event using CometD and updates the delivery pipeline accordingly.
This type of asynchronous interaction reduces the need for polling, improves data freshness, and decouples the systems.
Real-Time Error Tracking and Auditing
Maintaining system integrity and debugging issues become much easier with platform events. Developers can build event-driven logging mechanisms that react instantly when a process fails. Instead of waiting for scheduled reports, error-handling services receive failure events the moment they occur.
A typical implementation might look like:
- A user tries to submit a form with invalid data.
- The validation fails and triggers an event called “Data_Validation_Error__e”.
- The event includes error messages and the user ID.
- An auditing service logs this information and alerts support staff.
This helps teams identify issues, monitor usage patterns, and ensure data quality across the enterprise.
Workflow Triggers from Platform Events
Platform events can be used to initiate or complement existing workflows in Salesforce. These events allow processes, flows, or Apex triggers to act without depending on changes to standard records.
For instance, a platform event named “Credit_Score_Checked__e” can trigger a follow-up process that updates a lead’s status or creates a task for the sales team. This decouples the business logic from record changes, making the architecture cleaner and more flexible.
Publishing Events through Different Methods
Platform events are versatile in how they can be published. Depending on the business need and the system’s architecture, Salesforce provides multiple mechanisms for event publication.
Declarative Tools: Flows and Process Builder
Flows are visual, declarative tools that allow administrators to automate complex business logic. Within a flow, event messages can be published based on various triggers, such as field updates or user actions. For example, when a customer satisfaction score drops below a threshold, a flow can publish a “Customer_At_Risk__e” event to notify customer success managers.
Process Builder, while being phased out in favor of Flow Builder, still allows administrators to define when an event should be published. It’s particularly useful in simpler automation scenarios, like sending an event when an opportunity is marked as closed-lost.
Apex: Programmatic Event Publishing
Developers can use Apex to publish platform events as part of custom logic. This approach offers the highest degree of flexibility and is ideal when event conditions are complex or require querying multiple objects.
Using Apex, an event is instantiated like a custom object and published using the EventBus.publish() method. For example:
- A new lead is created and matched against a blacklist.
- If the lead matches a flagged record, a “Potential_Fraud__e” event is published.
- This event is consumed by an internal security team application for further analysis.
Apex allows developers to include sophisticated conditional logic and integrate with other parts of the platform.
APIs: External Publication
Events can also be published by external systems via Salesforce APIs such as REST, SOAP, or Bulk API. This allows systems outside of Salesforce to initiate communication, enhancing cross-platform integration.
For instance, a warehouse management system identifies low inventory for a high-demand product and sends a REST API call to Salesforce. This publishes a “Low_Inventory_Alert__e” platform event that triggers purchasing or production workflows inside Salesforce.
Subscribing to Events Internally and Externally
Once events are published, subscribers can consume them in different ways, depending on the architecture.
Internal Subscriptions: Apex Triggers, Flows, and Processes
Apex triggers allow fine-grained control over how Salesforce reacts to an incoming platform event. These triggers are asynchronous and should be optimized to handle batch processing efficiently. Triggers can call future methods, enqueue jobs, or create records based on the event content.
Flows and processes also act as subscribers. When a specific platform event is received, these tools can initiate a series of declarative steps such as sending emails, updating records, or creating tasks.
External Subscriptions: CometD Clients
External applications often use CometD—a scalable web messaging protocol built on the Bayeux specification—to subscribe to platform events. The clients authenticate with Salesforce, subscribe to a channel like /event/Inventory_Update__e, and process events in real time.
This model is highly efficient for real-time data synchronization and is widely used in integrations with middleware platforms, analytics tools, and ERP systems.
Platform Event Usage Limits and Design Guidelines
Salesforce imposes certain usage limits to ensure the stability of its multi-tenant architecture. These limits can influence design decisions and should be factored into planning.
Message Size Limits
Each event message has a size cap of 1 MB. This limit includes metadata and field data. If a message exceeds this limit, publishing will fail. Developers should avoid using long text fields and binary data in platform events.
Publishing Limits
Organizations are allowed a certain number of event publications per hour, which varies by edition and licensing. Exceeding this limit results in errors and delayed processing.
Strategies to avoid hitting limits include:
- Publishing only necessary events.
- Using batch processing.
- Aggregating data when possible.
- Monitoring metrics regularly.
Field Limitations
Platform events support a limited number of fields (typically around 100). It’s crucial to design events with essential data only. Redundant or verbose fields should be avoided to maintain efficiency and avoid bloating event size.
Monitoring and Testing Platform Events
Monitoring platform event usage is essential for performance and debugging. Salesforce provides built-in tools and objects for these purposes.
PlatformEventUsageMetric
This object allows administrators to query data about platform event publishing and delivery. It includes:
- Number of published events.
- Number of successfully delivered events.
- Hourly and daily summaries.
This information is useful for detecting anomalies and planning capacity scaling.
Testing in Apex
Before deploying Apex triggers that subscribe to platform events, thorough testing is required. Test classes should simulate the publishing of platform events and validate that the triggers respond as expected. This ensures code coverage and minimizes risk during deployment.
Debug Logs and Failure Diagnosis
Debug logs can capture the behavior of platform event triggers. If an event is not processed as expected, logs help identify:
- Validation rule failures.
- Data type mismatches.
- Trigger logic errors.
- Resource limits being breached.
Regular monitoring ensures system integrity and helps maintain a responsive architecture.
Advanced Tips for Platform Events
As teams become more familiar with platform events, they can adopt advanced patterns for even greater control.
Event Versioning
Instead of changing the structure of an existing platform event, it is best practice to create a new version. For example, moving from Order_Confirmed__e to Order_Confirmed_v2__e ensures that old consumers are not broken by structural changes.
Event Aggregation
In cases where multiple related events occur, developers can create aggregation services. These services listen to several events, correlate the data, and publish a summary event. This is useful for analytics and reporting.
Decoupled Design
Events should be designed to minimize dependencies between systems. Instead of assuming that a consumer will act in a certain way, events should carry enough context for any subscriber to interpret and process them independently.
Platform events are continuously evolving. With the introduction of tools like Pub/Sub API, advanced filtering options, and stronger observability, the event-driven model is set to become a cornerstone of Salesforce development.
By designing systems around events, organizations gain agility, faster decision-making, and greater automation. These benefits extend across industries—from healthcare to manufacturing to financial services—transforming how businesses operate and interact with data in real time.
Advanced usage of platform events involves managing large volumes of data, ensuring message reliability, handling failures gracefully, and maintaining clarity in the system’s architecture. This part outlines those advanced capabilities and provides guidance for building high-performance, event-driven applications in Salesforce.
Understanding High-Volume Platform Events
Salesforce supports two primary types of platform events: standard and high-volume. While standard events are suitable for small to moderate message volumes, high-volume platform events are designed for scale and optimized to handle thousands of messages per second.
High-volume platform events offer:
- Greater throughput with reduced latency
- Higher publish and delivery limits
- Optimized storage and delivery using an internal event bus architecture
- A mechanism for monitoring publish success using publish status events
When building systems with significant traffic—like high-frequency stock trading alerts, logistics tracking, or real-time transaction reporting—high-volume events are the right choice. These events must be flagged as high-volume during definition and cannot be modified afterward.
Publish Status Tracking and Retry Mechanisms
High-volume events are published asynchronously, meaning that once they are sent to the event bus, they are queued for delivery. However, it’s important to know whether the messages are successfully published and received.
To monitor publish status, Salesforce provides:
- PublishResult responses in Apex
- Error and success flags in REST and SOAP API responses
- Optional status event generation for publish success or failure
Implementing a retry mechanism involves capturing failure notifications and queuing the message for a second attempt. This can be done using retry jobs in Apex or external message brokers that manage retries based on acknowledgment from Salesforce.
Event Replay and Durability Management
Event consumers—whether internal Apex triggers or external clients—sometimes miss events due to connectivity issues or processing failures. Salesforce supports a replay mechanism using replay IDs, which are unique identifiers assigned to each event.
Clients can subscribe using:
- -1 to get only new events
- -2 to retrieve the last received event
- A specific replay ID to resume from a known point
The replay window for platform events is 24 hours. During this period, clients can retrieve missed events by storing and referencing replay IDs. For longer durations, an external event archival or streaming infrastructure should be implemented.
Combining Platform Events with Queueable Apex
Salesforce enforces limits on synchronous processing and outbound callouts within triggers. To overcome these limits and manage complex tasks, developers can offload processing using Queueable Apex classes.
A typical pattern looks like this:
- A platform event trigger receives a new message.
- The trigger validates data and enqueues a Queueable Apex job.
- The Queueable class handles processing, including callouts or DML operations.
This pattern ensures that triggers remain lightweight and responsive while enabling advanced logic to execute without breaching governor limits.
Using Flow Subscriptions for Declarative Processing
For administrators and power users, Salesforce Flow provides a no-code interface to subscribe to platform events. Event-triggered flows activate when a specific platform event is received and can execute a series of actions, such as updating records, sending notifications, or initiating approval processes.
Flows offer:
- Conditional logic
- Lookup and update functionality
- Support for scheduled and batch operations
- Error handling through fault paths
Using flows is ideal when business logic is straightforward and doesn’t require custom Apex code.
Building Event-Driven Integrations
Platform events are not confined to Salesforce. They are designed for distributed systems and allow Salesforce to communicate with external services, legacy applications, and third-party APIs.
External consumers can subscribe using:
- CometD (via the Bayeux protocol)
- Pub/Sub API for advanced messaging
- Middleware platforms like MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, or Apache Kafka bridges
An integration example:
- An external payment gateway detects a failed transaction.
- It publishes a REST API call to Salesforce that creates a Payment_Failure__e platform event.
- Salesforce flows or triggers listen to this event and notify the finance team, update the case record, and send an email to the customer.
This kind of architecture allows Salesforce to act as both a producer and consumer in a broader event ecosystem.
Monitoring Platform Event Activity
To maintain performance and identify issues, it’s essential to monitor platform event activity. Salesforce offers built-in objects and dashboards for this purpose.
PlatformEventUsageMetric
This object provides metrics such as:
- Number of events published
- Number of events delivered
- Volume per channel
- Daily and hourly summaries
These metrics can be visualized in dashboards or monitored through external tools connected via API.
Debug Logs and Developer Console
For Apex-based subscriptions, debug logs reveal insights into trigger execution, governor limit consumption, and error details. Developers can set debug logs for specific users or trigger context to isolate problems.
Design Patterns and Best Practices
Adopting platform events effectively requires a strategic approach. Here are some recommended patterns and practices:
Use Event Naming Conventions
Maintain a consistent naming pattern for events. For instance:
- Order_Confirmed__e
- Invoice_Generated__e
- Shipment_Dispatched__e
Clear naming ensures readability and quick identification of the event’s purpose.
Minimize Event Payload Size
Keep event messages compact. Include only the necessary fields required by subscribers. Excessive field use can lead to message size issues and increased processing time.
Separate Concerns with Specialized Events
Instead of creating a general-purpose event, use specialized events tailored to specific processes. This reduces complexity for consumers and allows targeted processing.
Ensure Idempotency
Event consumers should be designed to handle duplicate messages gracefully. For instance, if a system receives the same event twice, it should recognize that the action has already been completed and ignore the duplicate.
Version Events for Structural Changes
When changing the structure of an event (such as adding mandatory fields), create a new version rather than modifying the existing event. This prevents breaking changes for existing subscribers.
Document Event Contracts
Treat platform events as contracts between publishers and subscribers. Maintain clear documentation of field definitions, expected formats, publishing rules, and retry logic.
Error Handling and Recovery
In high-availability systems, error handling cannot be an afterthought. Some common strategies include:
- Using fallback flows for failed subscriptions
- Logging failed events into a custom object for review
- Setting up alerts or notifications for publish failures
- Implementing monitoring tools that detect and report subscription delays
Recovery plans should also include mechanisms to replay missed events or reprocess error scenarios from audit logs.
Event Governance and Security
Security is vital when events may carry sensitive business information. Salesforce allows for strict control over who can publish or subscribe to events.
Strategies include:
- Assigning permissions through profiles and permission sets
- Controlling API access with named credentials and OAuth scopes
- Encrypting event data in the event bus using Shield Platform Encryption
- Implementing field-level security for sensitive fields in the payload
Audit trails should also be enabled to log publishing and subscribing activity for compliance purposes.
Salesforce Limitations and Quotas
Despite its capabilities, platform events are bound by Salesforce platform limits. These include:
- Event publication limits per hour per org
- Maximum event size (1 MB)
- Number of fields per event
- Maximum concurrent CometD clients
- 24-hour replay window
These limits vary depending on the Salesforce edition and licenses in use. Regular monitoring, testing, and optimization are necessary to stay within safe thresholds.
Case Study: Platform Events in a Global Retail Chain
A global retail chain uses Salesforce to manage customer support, inventory, and order fulfillment. The systems are distributed across different geographies with localized databases and logistics partners.
Their platform event architecture includes:
- Order_Placed__e: Triggered when an order is placed online.
- Inventory_Allocated__e: Sent by the warehouse system to indicate stock reservation.
- Shipment_Created__e: Triggered once the order is shipped.
- Delivery_Confirmed__e: Fired after customer confirmation via mobile app.
Each event initiates actions in at least three different systems. The system maintains replay IDs to track delivery, and uses high-volume events to manage Black Friday spikes.
This real-world example highlights how platform events bring cohesion to a fragmented digital landscape.
Future Trends in Event-Driven Salesforce Architectures
As businesses embrace microservices and real-time data processing, platform events will become more critical. Future enhancements in Salesforce are likely to include:
- Extended retention of event logs
- Native event filtering capabilities
- Enhanced monitoring dashboards
- Tighter integration with open-source stream processing tools
- Expanded limits for high-volume event usage
Adopting platform events today prepares businesses for the agile, interconnected ecosystems of tomorrow.
Final Thoughts
Platform events are not just a feature—they are an architectural approach that transforms how systems interact. By decoupling components, enabling real-time updates, and supporting asynchronous processing, platform events elevate Salesforce from a CRM platform to a central nervous system for digital transformation.
Teams that embrace this model can build more flexible, scalable, and intelligent solutions. From internal automation to cross-cloud orchestration and enterprise integration, platform events unlock possibilities that extend far beyond the Salesforce interface.
By understanding their strengths, planning carefully, and adopting best practices, platform events can become a foundational pillar in any modern enterprise architecture.