Frequently Asked Questions

What is ESSA?

ESSA is an enterprise desktop application built for Salesforce sandbox administration. It is used by Salesforce Professionals, Administrators, and Release Managers who need to maintain and deploy data and metadata between various Salesforce sandboxes. It is designed to work with all of your Salesforce Environments (sandboxes and production) in one central location. ESSA fills the gaps of many tasks that the Salesforce web application isn't designed to do like easily querying, comparing, and deploying between Salesforce environments.

What does ESSA stand for?

Enterprise Suite for Sandbox Administration

In the era of web and cloud based solutions, why is ESSA a desktop application?

The simple answer is for performance, a better user experience, and security.

1. Performance.

   A web based solution would be very chatty and slow. Some operations like downloading or uploading Metadata between Salesforce environments may take a few minutes to accomplish depending on the size of the data going over the wire.

2. Better User Experience.

   A desktop application provides a better user experience. Tasks can run in the background and progress can be reported in real-time giving control the user.

3. Security.

   Security is extremely important. The founders of ESSA have worked in many different industries from healthcare to banking and understand that value having control over sensitive information. ESSA does not store any information regarding your Salesforce environments. ESSA uses two layers of encryption of storing your local settings and settings cannot be transferred between users.

What operating systems does ESSA run on?

Currently, ESSA runs on Windows 7, 8.1, and 10. We do have future plans for it to run on Mac and Linux, but we are first focusing on running the application on Windows. In the meantime, Mac users can use a virtual desktop environment (i.e. Parallels, VM, etc) to run the application.

Are there any prerequisites for the software to be installed?

ESSA requires the .NET Framework version 4.6.2 (or greater) to be installed. It can be downloaded here. If you keep your Windows operating system relatively up-to-date, an install of the .NET Framework isn't needed.

How much does ESSA cost?

ESSA Desktop - Professional Edition - is free and can be downloaded here! The pricing for consulting services and ESSA Service can be found on the Pricing page. Our pricing for consulting services are competitive in the market. We provide exceptional value compared to our competitors and other consultants in the market. We also provide discount pricing for nonprofit organizations.

How is ESSA Secured?

1. Digital Certificate

   The ESSA executable (ESSA.exe) is digitally signed with the highest trusted level for code signing certificates. An Extended Validation (EV) Certificate is a type of TLS/SSL certificate that verifies that the certificate holder has undergone the most extensive level of vetting and identity background checks to certify that their website is authentic and legitimate. EV certificates are often required for high-profile brands, banks and other Fortune 500 companies. Extended validation means the certificate recipient and their website have completed a 16-point check to verify details such as: website domain, website owner, and the applicant’s legal, physical, and operational existence and identity.

2. Credential Encryption

   All Salesforce credentials are encrypted locally within the Settings.essa file in the same directory as the ESSA.exe. No credentials are used outside of authenticating directly with the secure Salesforce API.