We show you exactly how to connect Totara to Salesforce to unlock better data sharing.
You know that integrating your CRM with your LMS is a necessity.
But how do you go about it?
Connecting Totara and Salesforce creates a powerful feedback loop between training, performance, and revenue.
Keep reading to learn:
- Why you need to integrate Totara and Salesforce
- How to connect Totara and Salesforce
- What data you will get with your integration
Let’s get started.
⏰ TL;DR
You can connect Totara and Salesforce via a middleware like Workato, using Totara’s GraphQL API or by building a bespoke API with a Totara partner. BuildEmpire is a development-led team with lots of experience creating custom webhooks and APIs so we think we’re the best choice for integrations like this.
Why integrate Totara and Salesforce?
Integrating your Totara LMS with a CRM is business-critical.
Why? Well, this integration bridges two critical business systems:
- Totara: where your learning happens
- Salesforce: where customer, employee and revenue data lives
By connecting the two, you can better automate onboarding and training, track learning against business outcomes, reduce manual admin work and deliver more personalised learning.
Creating this integration enables real-time data synchronisation which is an incredibly powerful tool to achieve more from your platforms.
How to connect Totara and Salesforce
If you’re ready to get your Totara LMS and Salesforce CRM talking to one another, there are three main ways to set up the integration; depending on your technical maturity and requirements:
- A middleware platform
- The Totara GraphQL API
- Bespoke webhooks and API
Let’s look at each in a little more detail.
1. Middleware
Middleware is the most common option as it’s usually a preset integration that doesn’t take too much effort to set up.
Workato, a middleware software, offers an integration between Totara and Salesforce, so could be fairly easy to implement.
It’s worth noting that Totara customers commonly use Workato as a middle ground for data integrations so it’s safe and reliable.
The issue with mwiddleware integration is that you’re limited with data sharing as it has preset formats.
Learn more about Workato’s Salesforce integration.
2. The Totara GraphQL API
The GraphQL API is a modern and flexible approach for integrating Totara with Salesforce.
With GraphQL, you can enable Salesforce access to the specific learner, course, or completion data it needs.
This helps to reduce unnecessary data transfer and improves performance compared to traditional REST-based integrations.
This is a good option for organisations that need real-time synchronisation or custom reporting. It’s more complex than middleware options as you can get a bit more bespoke with the data that you push and pull.
3. Custom-built APIs
Some Totara partners are able to create custom-build APIs and webhooks.
We’ve done this a lot with our customers, including webhook work with edt to push and pull data from their LMS to the Department of Education’s data sources.
With a custom API, you can create exactly what you need, and be sure that the process is running in the background and feeding the right data to the right place.
BuildEmpire is a development-led Totara partner which means we’re well equipped when it comes to building custom functionality. Just check out the Edition (our version of Totara).
💡 Pro Tip
Want to see what else we can offer when it comes to custom builds? Book a demo to see examples of existing modifications and plugins.
What data do you get from a Totara and Salesforce integration?
Bear in mind that the data you can share between Totara and Salesforce is entirely dependent on the method you choose to connect the two.
However, here are some common choices:
👤 User & contact data
User and contact data is the obvious data sharing that you’ll get between LMS and CRM.
From Salesforce → Totara:
- Name, email, job role
- Department, organisation
- Customer or partner status
From Totara → Salesforce:
- Learner profiles
- Role-based training assignments
This is an easy way to ensure that your user records stay aligned across both systems.
📚 Learning & training data
One key issue that learning and development teams have is allowing for training visibility in their CRM.
The reasons you might need this could be that:
- You have global, or spread out teams
- Your staff leave and return (e.g. in the NHS, where staff may move to other Trusts)
- Your HR teams need visibility of training records for progression or leadership initiatives
So when it comes to data, you’ll need to push the following from Totara → Salesforce:
- Course enrolments
- Completion status
- Completion dates
- Scores and grades
🎓 Compliance & certification data
To go one step further to the above, you may also want to push more detail into your CRM when considering strict compliance tracking obligations in certain industries like healthcare.
As such, you may want to consider pushing the following data:
- Certifications achieved
- Expiry dates
- Renewal requirements
Totara and Salesforce integration – in action
Not sure when this Totara LMS and Salesforce integration would come in handy?
We can think of 4 key times:
- Onboarding
- Sales enablement
- Customer education
- Dynamic audience management
Let’s look at each in more detail.
1. Automated onboarding
When you have a new starter join your organisation, there’s a bit of manual work to do sometimes.
But, with a Totara and Salesforce integration, those new starters can be:
- Automatically added to Totara
- Instantly enrolled in onboarding courses
- Automatically be added to relevant course related to their job title, team or area
This reduces manual setup and ensures consistency which gives your new starters a much better running start.
2. Sales enablement
With a Totara and Salesforce integration, you can perform better in sales, as you’ll have more data at your fingertips.
For example, you’ll be able to track which sales reps:
- Completed product training
- Achieved certifications
Then correlate that data with:
- Pipeline performance
- Closed deals
Not only will you be able to prove learning ROI, but you’ll also be able to give tangible evidence to those who haven’t engaged in the right learning courses.
3. Customer education
When it comes to customer, or partner education, it can be hard to get any kind of visibility on engagement and also, impact.
But with this integration you can:
- Sync customers from Salesforce into Totara
- Track course completion and engagement
This is especially useful for SaaS onboarding and partner training.
4. Dynamic audience management
When Salesforce data changes (e.g. role, region, account type), users can:
- Be automatically added to new learning audiences
- Be removed from irrelevant training
This keeps learning personalised and up to date and allows L&D teams to spend more time on what really matters instead of getting bogged down in admin.
Why BuildEmpire is the smart choice
While it’s possible to build this integration yourself, the reality is that it can quickly become complex; especially when dealing with APIs, data models, and ongoing maintenance.
If it breaks, who’s going to be left to fix it?
When you’re choosing your Totara partner, you want to be sure you’re getting a partner that will look after your platform and properly maintain it.
That’s where BuildEmpire stands out.
Instead of spending months designing, building, and troubleshooting your integration, BuildEmpire can handle the entire setup for you.
We’ll deal with everything from architecture and data mapping to deployment and optimisation.
You get a seamless, scalable connection between Totara and Salesforce without the technical overhead, ensuring your systems work together from day one.
Sound good? Book a demo or see why customers choose BuildEmpire.