We are planning to move our pilot to Agentforce and want to utilize Hosted MCP Servers to connect to our external SAP data. What exactly is required on the Salesforce side to get this running? Do I need a specific license or a certain version of the Salesforce CLI to start configuring the mcp.json files for our developer environment?
3 answers
To get started with Salesforce Hosted MCP Servers, you first need to be on an Enterprise or Unlimited edition org. Since it is currently in a pilot/beta phase for many, you might need to have the "Model Context Protocol" feature enabled by your Account Executive. Technically, you'll need to create an "External Client App" in Salesforce to handle the OAuth connection. For the local dev side, you should have Node.js installed and the latest Salesforce CLI. The beauty of the hosted version is that Salesforce manages the infrastructure, so you don't need to host the server on Heroku or AWS yourself.
Regarding the SAP integration you mentioned, are you planning on using a pre-built MCP connector or are you writing a custom Apex-based MCP tool to bridge that data? I've heard that mapping complex SAP schemas to MCP resources can be a bit tricky if the metadata isn't cleaned up first.
You definitely need to ensure your "API Enabled" permission is checked for the integration user profile. Without that, the External Client App won't be able to communicate with the MCP host.
Good point, Laura. Also, Robert, make sure you look into the "Prompt Builder" as well. Hosted MCP servers and Prompt Builder work hand-in-hand to ground the AI in your specific business data.
Christopher, for SAP, most are using the MuleSoft integration as a middle layer which then exposes the data to the MCP server. You can define "Prompts" in your MCP configuration that tell the AI how to interpret the SAP fields. It’s better than direct Apex because you can use the MCP "Resources" type to let the AI browse the data structure dynamically, which makes the agent much more flexible.