Introduction

Salesforce offers a couple of tools that make it effortless to work with event log files. Yes, we can access the event log files via the developer console and filter the events using specific criteria. Still, since we’re accessing the data via the API, the tools available to work with them are limited.

Download Event Log Files

Downloading the event log files helps us keep better track of them and makes it much easier when working with them. We can download the event log files in several ways, including:

• Salesforce Event Log File (ELF) Browser
• cURL script
• Python script

Let’s get to know each of these methods.

ELF Browser Application

1. Click on this link to access the ELF Browser App.
2. Click Production Login.
3. Enter your Salesforce credentials to log in.
4. Enter a date range, interval, and event type.
5. Click Apply.

Now, let’s download the event log file.

6. Click the download button ( ) to download a comma-separated values (.csv) file. Each file contains a specific event type that occurred in your organization within the past 24 hours.

7. Download an event log file of your choice. Open it in a spreadsheet app.

That’s it! We downloaded an event log file using the direct method via the ELF Browser App.

cURL Script

cURL stands for client URL. Developers use this command-line tool to transfer data to and from a server. icURL is best suited for Mac and Linux users.

You may have noticed that each file type has a ( ) button next to it. This button downloads a cURL script that we can run in the computer’s command line. This script also downloads a .csv file, just like before. It’s a bit more complicated than the direct- method we used before.

So why use this?

• Automation – We can use this tool to schedule when to run the script rather than manually downloading it.
• Flexibility – We can also transform this data to the format of our choice.

Python Script

We have another programmatic way to download the event log files → Python script. The significant advantage of this method is that it can run on multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

Why Python?

• It’s easier to understand and learn.
• Incredible library support.
• Supports multiple platforms.

Visualize Event Log Files

Now that we’ve learned how to download the event log files from Salesforce, it’s time to learn how to visualize them in a way that makes sense to everyone.

We can use a couple of tools to visualize the event log files:

A. Event Monitoring Analytics App

This App is available in your Salesforce org. This App directly loads data from Salesforce and provides the most recent visualization of the events in our org. The App also includes a compilation of Dashboards that use pre-integrated event data.

B. Splunk App for Salesforce

This App provides in-depth insight into three categories:

• Application Management
• Adoption and Usage Analytics
• Security

This add-on allows the Splunk software admin to gather different types of data from Salesforce using REST APIs.

C. FairWarning

FairWarning for Salesforce is explicitly built to monitor and protect against internal and external data theft. This App provides real-time alerts on abnormal behavior. It is available to download on the AppExchange.

D. New Relic Insight

This App provides a way to harness the total value and potential of the data in our org. You can check out their website here.

This App provides a picture of:

• User Journey
• Critical APIs
• Salesforce Event Log Monitoring
• Detailed Dashboards and Alerting
• Mobile UX Monitoring
• We/Browser UX Monitoring