Creating Agentforce Custom Actions with Heroku - Java

💡 Heroku Integration Pilot:
These steps utilize generally availble features in Heroku and Salesforce. If you have joined the Heroku Integration pilot program please refer to these alternative instructions.

This tutorial explains how to deploy a Heroku application written in Java that can be used to build an Agentforce custom action, extending the capabilities of any Agentforce agent with the power of Heroku's fully managed, elastic compute services.

IN A HURRY? This application has already been deployed publicly and is available at https://agentforce-tutorial-java-fd05948b2c0a.herokuapp.com/swagger-ui/index.html. This allows you to skip straight to configuring Heroku-based actions in your Salesforce organization to try it out through Agentforce first.

App Authentication

Regardless of how you access this app, you will need to complete or configure basic authentication. We have included this as a reminder that best practice is to always consider authentication for APIs, especially those involved in AI interactions like this. For APIs in general, it is typical to use JWT-based authentication. For the basic authentication setup here, the default username is heroku, and the password is agent.

WARNING: Carefully review your app authentication needs and requirements before deploying to production.

Deploying to Heroku

You can deploy this application to your Heroku account using the button below or manually via the CLI.

To proceed with a CLI deployment, install the Heroku CLI and log in with your Heroku account (or sign up). Then, execute the following CLI commands:

git clone https://github.com/heroku-examples/heroku-agentforce-tutorial-java
cd heroku-agentforce-tutorial-java
heroku create myagentaction
git push heroku main

Once this has been deployed, take note of the web URL and then refer to the instructions in configuring Heroku-based actions in your Salesforce organization.

Running and Testing Locally

Although you cannot integrate this app with Agentforce until you deploy it, you can still develop and test your action’s inputs and outputs locally, using the built-in Swagger UI. Once you are satisfied with your changes, refer to the deployment and configuration steps above.

git clone https://github.com/heroku-examples/heroku-agentforce-tutorial-java
cd heroku-agentforce-tutorial-java
mvn clean install
mvn spring-boot:run

Once the application is running, navigate to the URL below, complete the basic authentication as covered above, and click the Try it Out button.

http://localhost:8080/swagger-ui/index.html