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Heroku Connect Logging and Maintenance Operations

Last updated 27 November 2019

Application logging

Heroku Connect emits log messages to Logplex making them available to your application via the CLI or using logging add-ons.

Log entries follow the standard log format with a source of app, a dyno of herokuconnect and a message that contains structured data including standard fields such as event and level.

An example of the Logplex entries for a reload of the Contact mapping is shown below:

$ heroku logs -d herokuconnect
2018-11-08T20:05:56 app[herokuconnect]: event="RELOAD TABLE contact" addon_id=82b1c244-592d-4165-99e7-89a270459752 object_type=mapping object_id=7a63b0c9-7145-4717-8193-72881b55c434 state=RELOAD_TABLE level=info
2018-11-08T20:05:56 app[herokuconnect]: event="Cleared table contact for load" addon_id=82b1c244-592d-4165-99e7-89a270459752 object_type=mapping object_id=7a63b0c9-7145-4717-8193-72881b55c434 state=RELOAD_TABLE level=info
2018-11-08T20:05:56 app[herokuconnect]: event="Loading table contact via SOAP" addon_id=82b1c244-592d-4165-99e7-89a270459752 object_type=mapping object_id=7a63b0c9-7145-4717-8193-72881b55c434 state=RELOAD_TABLE level=info
2018-11-08T20:05:57 app[herokuconnect]: event="Contact QUERY ↷SALESFORCE 500 rows (0.77 secs)" addon_id=82b1c244-592d-4165-99e7-89a270459752 object_type=sync object_id=82b1c244-592d-4165-99e7-89a270459752 state=IDLE level=info
2018-11-08T20:06:04 app[herokuconnect]: event="Contact INSERT ↓DATABASE 500 rows (0.02 secs)" addon_id=82b1c244-592d-4165-99e7-89a270459752 object_type=sync object_id=82b1c244-592d-4165-99e7-89a270459752 state=IDLE level=debug
2018-11-08T20:06:05 app[herokuconnect]: event="RELOAD COMPLETE" addon_id=82b1c244-592d-4165-99e7-89a270459752 object_type=mapping object_id=7a63b0c9-7145-4717-8193-72881b55c434 state=RELOAD_TABLE level=info

For information about specific log messages, please refer to our Log Messages article.

Upgrading your database

Heroku Connect operates continuously on a single database, which requires a few steps in order to upgrade that database and allow sync operations to continue as expected. The upgrade itself is done using a follower database, and these instructions illustrate how Heroku Connect fits into that process.

1. Create your follower database and allow it to get mostly caught up with your lead database. This will minimize the amount of downtime required for the upgrade.

2. Pause your connection for the same reason that you put your application into maintenance mode, to prevent Heroku Connect from trying to write to your database during the upgrade.

3. Wait for your follower to catch up. Now that Heroku Connect and your application have both stopped writing to your database, the follower can get completely caught up. You can check its status using heroku pg:info.

4. You now need to promote the follower database to become the new lead database. The steps you need to take depend on whether your Heroku Connect is using a standard database URL (DATABASE_URL) or a custom database URL (e.g. HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_ROSE_URL).

   • If you’re using a standard database URL, Promote the follower to become the new lead database. This will make it accessible as DATABASE_URL.
   • If you’re using a custom database URL, you will need to update the Heroku Connect Database Settings with the new custom database URL for the promoted follower.

5. Resume Heroku Connect using the same process used to pause it in step 2, and bring your application out of maintenance mode. Heroku Connect will automatically pick up the new DATABASE_URL for your application ( or customer database URL, if you have that configured ) and resume synchronization using the new database.

Pausing synchronization

When performing certain tasks, such as upgrading your database, you may want to pause synchronization activity in Heroku Connect. To do this navigate to the Settings tab, Manage Connection and click the Pause button.

Heroku Connect will complete any pending operations before entering the paused state. When your connection is paused then changes to data in the database will continue to be added to the trigger log and changes made in Salesforce will not be polled. Push Topic notifications from for mappings using the streaming mode will also be ignored.

To resume synchronization return to the Settings tab, Manage Connection and click the Recover button. Heroku Connect will enter a recovery state: entries in the trigger log will be processed and pushed to Salesforce and changes made in Salesforce will be retrieved using polling (including those mappings that would normally use the Streaming API).

Recreating a connection

If you’ve reloaded a sandbox organization or you need to upgrade from a hobby database to a professional one, you’ll need to delete your existing connection and create a new one.

The following settings are manually configured:

• Collaborators and their notifications settings
• Beta features
• The Write Algorithm
• The Salesforce API version

The rest of the recreation can be automated as follows:

1. Export your configuration from the Connect Dashboard. Click Settings, then click Import/Export Configuration, then click the Export Configuration button.
2. If you have any read/write mappings, make sure you aren’t writing any new data to those tables, and make sure all the mappings are in DATA_SYNCED to ensure all your data is present in Salesforce. You may need to click Settings, Manage Connection and click the Pause button to stop activity on the connection.
3. Destroy the Connection from the heroku CLI heroku addons:destroy -a appname herokuconnect-resource-name
4. Create a new connection from https://elements.heroku.com or heroku addons:create herokuconnect from the command line.
5. Authenticate your new connection, and import the config you exported from step 1.

Review apps

Heroku Connect does not currently support review apps. It is, however, possible to manually provision Heroku Connect once the review app has been created.

Changing Field Definitions in Salesforce

Heroku Connect does not automatically change the table schema in PostgreSQL after you’ve changed the corresponding field definition in Salesforce. This is because attempting to change the field may result in data loss or corruption.

After changing a field in Salesforce, users must edit the object mapping in Heroku Connect to trigger an update to the PostgreSQL table schema by Heroku Connect. In simpler cases, all users need to do is click Edit for the mapping and then click Save. In more complex cases, users will need to deselect the field, save the mapping, edit the mapping again, and then re-add the field. This will cause Connect to drop the column, re-add it, and load the data back into the column.

Simpler cases include extending or shortening the length of a field. More complex cases include changing the types of fields.