Platform Event Bus
The Salesforce event streaming infrastructure that delivers platform events and Change Data Capture events to subscribers in near real-time, using a publish-subscribe model based on CometD/gRPC protocols.
Definition
The Salesforce event streaming infrastructure that delivers platform events and Change Data Capture events to subscribers in near real-time, using a publish-subscribe model based on CometD/gRPC protocols.
In plain English
“The Platform Event Bus is the Salesforce event streaming infrastructure. It delivers Platform Events and Change Data Capture events to subscribers in near real-time using a publish-subscribe model. It's how systems get notified when something happens in Salesforce.”
Worked example
A developer at Crestway Software builds a downstream system that needs to know every time an Opportunity changes Stage. She enables Change Data Capture on Opportunity and subscribes to the /data/OpportunityChangeEvent channel via the Platform Event Bus. When a rep advances an Opp from Proposal to Negotiation, the Platform Event Bus publishes an OpportunityChangeEvent within seconds; her Pub/Sub API-based subscriber receives it and kicks off downstream workflow in the external system. No polling, no API throttling - the Event Bus delivers state changes in near real time.
Why Platform Event Bus matters
The Platform Event Bus is the Salesforce event streaming infrastructure that delivers platform events and Change Data Capture events to subscribers in near real-time, using a publish-subscribe model based on CometD/gRPC protocols. Publishers (Salesforce records, Apex code, or external systems) emit events, and subscribers (Apex triggers, processes, flows, or external systems) receive them. The bus handles delivery, retention, and replay.
The Platform Event Bus is foundational to event-driven architecture in Salesforce. Compared to traditional polling integrations (where external systems repeatedly check Salesforce for changes), event-based integration is more efficient and faster. Mature integration architectures use Platform Events and CDC for change notifications, with the Platform Event Bus as the underlying delivery mechanism. The bus supports replay (reading past events), making it possible to recover after subscriber outages.
How organizations use Platform Event Bus
Built event-driven integrations using Platform Events and CDC, with the Platform Event Bus as the delivery mechanism.
Uses event replay to recover from subscriber outages, ensuring no events are lost.
Treats the Platform Event Bus as foundational to modern Salesforce integration architecture.
Trust & references
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Platform Event Bus.
- Pub/Sub APISalesforce Developers
Test your knowledge
Q1. What is the Platform Event Bus?
Q2. What protocols does it support?
Q3. What's a key feature?
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