Install Packages in Trailhead Playgrounds without Password Resets

The Credentials Conundrum

A number of Trailhead modules require you to install a package into a playground. This can present a challenge, as the package link provided is the generic version that starts with login.salesforce.com, requiring you to login with the org credentials. Org credentials which as a rule you don’t know, as you just open a playground by clicking on a link in the module itself:

 

The upshot is you need to reset your password to get something you can login with - this crops up so often that it has it’s own module.

The Package Link

Picking a Trailhead module that requires a package at random, Quick Start: Salesforce Connect, right clicking the link and copying the address gives us:

 

https://login.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04tE00000001aqG

As mentioned earlier, this points to login.salesforce.com, but it doesn’t have to. The part of the URL that drives the installation of the package is :

/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04tE00000001aqG

where packaging/installPackage.apexp is the setup page for installing a package, and p0=04tE00000001aqG identifies the package to be installed, in this case  04tE00000001aqG.

Applying the Package Link to the Playground

Once you have the package link, this can be applied to any org that you are logged into. Continuing the example from above, here’s a Trailhead playground that I prepared earlier:

From the URL bar, I can see tyhe domain name for the org is: playful-shark-vh3q5k-dev-ed.lightning.force.com. Replacing login.salesforce.com from the package link determined above gives me:

https://playful-shark-vh3q5k-dev-ed.lightning.force.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04tE00000001aqG

Changing the URL in the browser takes me to the installation page and I can install the package without knowing anything about the org password.

A CLI Tangent

It wouldn’t be a Bob Buzzard Blog post without pimping the CLI. Not particularly applicable to this scenario as you need to authenticate the org using the CLI so you’d have gone through the password reset already, but never any harm in learning about the power of the command line :)

If you have the package id, you can install directly from the command line using the following command:

sfdx force:package:install -r -p 04tE00000001aqG -w 10

The -r switch says not to ask for confirmation (useful when scripting an installation to run unattended as part of a CI setup) and -w 10 says to wait for up to 10 minutes for the package to install. 

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