The Zendesk for Salesforce integration provides a seamless connection between your Salesforce organization and your Zendesk instance, allowing your sales and support teams to access tickets and customer data within their respective applications.
The integration provides a comprehensive view of customer accounts, eliminating the need to switch systems or reconcile data. For example, sales representatives can access real-time support tickets in Salesforce, enhancing their outreach strategies. Similarly, support agents can view essential customer data from Salesforce while managing tickets in Zendesk, ensuring a thorough understanding of customer needs.
To use the integration, first connect your Salesforce organization to Zendesk, as described in this article. Then, configure the integration based on how you want to use it.
Related topics:
Understanding the different ways to use the integration
After you’ve connected your Salesforce organization to Zendesk, the integration will require additional configuration, depending on how you plan to use it.
Share Zendesk data with sales teams in Salesforce
Providing sales representatives with access to Zendesk data can significantly enhance customer interactions. Consider setting up the following features:
- Create a ticket view in Salesforce to give sales representatives real-time ticket access from Salesforce account, contact, and lead pages. See Setting up ticket view in Salesforce.
- Sync Zendesk ticket data to Salesforce case fields, allowing for comprehensive reporting and custom workflows within Salesforce. See Setting up ticket sync from Zendesk to Salesforce.
Equip support teams with CRM data
Enable customer service agents to access essential CRM data while handling tickets in Zendesk. Consider setting up the following features:
- Sync Salesforce data to Zendesk Support. Automatically update Zendesk users and organizations with relevant Salesforce data, allowing for triggers and actions based on this data. See Configuring data sync from Salesforce to Zendesk.
- Turn on and configure the Salesforce app for Zendesk Support. The app allows agents to see customer information from Salesforce directly in the sidebar of an existing Zendesk Support ticket.
Considerations
- To set up your integration, you must be a Zendesk Support administrator and Salesforce administrator. You can't use an API-only Salesforce user to connect the integration.
- The Zendesk for Salesforce integration is available if you use any of these Salesforce editions: Performance, Unlimited, Enterprise, or Developer Edition (or other editions with Salesforce API rights, such as Professional with the API add-on).
- The integration will work in both Salesforce Lightning and Classic. However, this article only provides instructions for Lightning, the newer interface that Salesforce recommends.
- If the Zendesk admin who connected the integration has their role downgraded, the integration will cease to function. It will require the integration to be disconnected, then reconnected in Admin Center by another Zendesk admin.
Connecting your Salesforce organization
Connecting a Salesforce organization to Zendesk is a two-step process:
Checking your Salesforce session settings
The integration requires your Salesforce session settings not to be locked to an IP address. If your session settings remain locked, your integration will be disconnected once a session expires.
To unlock Salesforce sessions from an IP address
- Log in to your Salesforce organization.
- Click the cog icon (
) in the upper right pane, then click
Setup. - In the left navigation pane under SETTINGS > Security, select Session Settings.
- Deselect the Lock sessions to the IP address from which they
originated checkbox.
Connecting Salesforce to Zendesk
Set up and configure your integration in Admin Center. You should test the integration with your Zendesk and Salesforce sandbox environments first.
If you plan to use the Salesforce app for Zendesk Support, connecting multiple Salesforce organizations to a Zendesk instance allows agents to see Salesforce data for all your organizations in the sidebar of a ticket. In this case, repeat these steps for each organization you’d like to connect to Zendesk. Multiple connections are only supported for the sidebar app and not for other integration use cases.
To connect Salesforce to Zendesk
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations >
Integrations. - On the Integrations page, click Salesforce.
- If you already have connections set up, they display in the connections list. To add another connection, click Add connection.
- Select the Salesforce instance to set up the integration:
Production or Sandbox.
- Select the checkbox to agree to the Built by Zendesk Terms of
Use, then click Connect Salesforce.
You are directed to a Salesforce sign-in page.
- Sign in to Salesforce using admin credentials.
You are directed back to Admin Center. The new connection displays in the Salesforce connections list, but all features will remain inactive.
Salesforce and Zendesk are now connected. Next, click the options menu icon
(
) next to the salesforce organization and click
Configure to configure the integration, depending on how you plan to
use it. See Understanding the
different ways to use the integration.
Disconnecting your Salesforce organization
Your Salesforce organization can be disconnected in Admin Center. Once disconnected, your configuration settings are still retained if you decide to connect to the same organization.
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations >
Integrations.
- On the Integrations page, click Salesforce.
- Click the options menu icon () next to the Salesforce organization you want
to disconnect, then click Disconnect.
84 comments
Dan Greaves
I'm investigating an automated way of taking Posts data from the Gather platform and pushing it into Salesforce and associating it with contact/account records. Is that something that sounds possible using the Help Center API?
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Dwight Bussman
Dan -
If you're willing to have those posts create tickets within Zendesk, you could leverage the native Ticket Sync feature - Setting up Ticket Sync from Zendesk to Salesforce - to pass that over to SFDC. We have some built-in logic to associate the cases this feature creates with SFDC Accounts/Contacts based on the organization/requester of the ticket.
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Dan Greaves
Ok, that's a good call and definitely something we can explore. If we decided that we didn't want to automatically have a Zendesk ticket created for all community posts, would the Help Center API provide endpoints for us to programmatically grab community posts data and pull it into Salesforce? Understanding, of course, that we would need to do some custom dev work on our side in SFDC.
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Nick Sauvé
Hey all! If I set this up while logged into my account in our company Zendesk instance, and I leave the company and my account in Zendesk is deactivated, will that break the oauth connection between Salesforce and Zendesk?
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Nick -
Yes: if your Zendesk user was the one who connected the integration, downgrading them will break the connection. Here's the passage in the above article that addresses this:
One of the admins who's not leaving can preemptively disconnect & reconnect the integration within admin center. All of the settings will be preserved, but the various features (ticket view, data sync, ticket sync) will have to be re-enabled following that re-connection.
1
Nick Sauvé
Gah, thanks Dwight! Can't believe I overlooked that but I appreciate the quick response!
1
Hoa Chiang
Hi, a lot of the Salesforce integration documentation revolves around ticket creation and support. We'd like to use it for Help Center (Guide) authentication. We'd like to limit our help center to only our clients being able to access the content. Is this possible and is there any documentation specific to this? Or is it implied that setting up the integration also inherently controls Help Center access? Thanks!
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Dwight Bussman
Hoa-
The only point of overlap that I see between the Salesforce Integration and Help Center access would be the Account/Contact Sync being able to sync users into organizations or add tags. Once that information has been synced over, it would be possible to control access to specific Help Center content through the User Segments feature.
Similarly, it's possible to write custom-code that would restrict various portions of the Help Center such as ticket-submission based on a user's organization membership. This is documented in the following article: Hide ticket forms based on user's organization
Hopefully these help to answer your question. If not, please feel free to contact our support team for more assistance.
0
Jen Ma
Is it possible to map Zendesk tickets to custom objects in Salesforce using the Zendesk Saleforce native app?
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Jen -
The Salesforce sidebar app (which is one part of this integration) can pull information about custom objects assuming one of the following is true:
or
1
Jen Ma
Thank you Dwight! Thank you for the quick response! I reviewed the article and also the syncing data from Zendesk to Saleforce. I noticed that the article only talks about how to sync Zendesk data to Case Custom objects. Is there a way to sync it to Saleforce custom objects? Our other vendor doesn't use Case Saleforce custom objects.
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Dwight Bussman
Our sync from ZD > SFDC goes into Cases alone. That said, it should be possible to make a custom workflow within Salesforce to take that Case information and carry it over to a custom object. This sort of custom coding isn't done natively by our integration, but I've definitely seen customers who're doing similar things in the past.
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The Original DKNY
Has Bi-Directional Sync for Users and Orgs created in Zendesk to be created in Salesforce been delivered yet? This feature is still absent as far as I am aware.
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Dwight Bussman
The ability to sync user/org changes from Zendesk to update existing SFDC contacts/accounts has not yet been delivered.
0
Ben Harrison
For an integration with Salesforce, is it possible for a ZenDesk support ticket to not only appear on the Contact record associated with the external "requestor", but to aggregate all of the Contact's tickets on an Account. For example: Contact A, Contact B and Contact C all work at Account 1. Contact A has 2 tickets, Contact B has 2 tickets and Contact C has 6 tickets. Is there a way for all 10 ZenDesk support tickets to appear on Account 1?
0
Dave Dyson
Hi Ben,
If Contact A, B, and C, user profiles in Zendesk are all associated with the same Organization, and the Organization's name in Zendesk matches their Account name in Salesforce, then yes, you should be able to set up Ticket View in Salesforce so to that it will show all tickets from those users (and I think that may in fact be the default setting). Take a look at the "Ticket View" video here (forward to about 2:06) and you'll be able to see what the settings for that should look like – under Field Matching, make sure it says "Find account tickets by: Organization name, Using Salesforce field: Account Name": Salesforce integration video guides
Hope that helps!
1
Paul Wickes
Hi,
Is there native support in the sync for the Salesforce 'Asset' object?
0
Dwight Bussman
HeyO Paul Wickes
Our syncing can act on the following objects:
SFDC > ZD
ZD > SFDC
Any interaction between the Asset object and one of the aforementioned 5 objects would require custom logic to be created within SFDC as our native integration does not interact with it directly.
0
Victor Carreon
Will the Zendesk -> Salesforce integration be affected by the shift from targets to webhooks? If so, is there a resource to help us update the auto-generated "Sync tickets to Salesforce" automation?
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Victor Carreon
I have heard that there is a plan to have those targets auto-migrate to Webhooks at some point, so there shouldn't be any need for action on your part.
I'll try to get additional detail and share here if I learn more that's worth sharing.
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Victor Carreon
Hi Dwight Bussman,
Thanks for the prompt reply! I'll keep an eye on this thread for more info.
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Victor - the developers that own this migration process just came online and mentioned that the migration of integration-created Targets to Webhooks is actively being worked on and should be coming quite soon.
They confirmed my belief that you won't need to take any action - it will happen automatically and they are doing lots of work to insure that no integrations are broken by the migration process.
Sorry I can't provide a more specific timeframe, but hopefully that helps to put your mind more at ease on this matter. I recommend following our Announcements page to stay up to speed on the latest releases.
0
Marlise Briedenhann
Hi there,
We have setup Salesforce Zendesk Integration and have added the ticket viewer component to our Account, Contact and Opportunity record pages.
We have a custom object which is a precursor to an Account being created which contains an email address. I was wondering is it possible to configure the ticket viewer for custom objects, specifying the zendesk requester email to match the Salesforce custom object's email field?
Regards,
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Dwight Bussman
Hi Marlise Briedenhann
At the moment, the ticket view can only be embedded on 5 objects:
For more on the configuration options available, please see: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408834115738
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Allen Lai | Head of CX at Otter.ai
In the Salesforce lead, a salesperson will click on the new "Zendesk" tab that will show any Zendesk tickets associated with that lead. But the "New Ticket" button is greyed out for them, but it's available for me. Is this because the salesperson's Salesforce email is not linked to a Zendesk agent license?
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Dwight Bussman
Allen Lai | Head of CX at Otter.ai
That's correct - they'll need to link a Zendesk user as documented here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408828317082-Using-Ticket-View-in-Salesforce#topic_nd4_c1r_pjb
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Hans Lohmann
Hey there,
we're setting up the Salesforce App in Zendesk at the moment. We do the lookup via a custom ticket field which contains the Salesforce Account ID. We're able to display informations from the Account, related Opportunities.
But for example on Contacts, it shows only those who are direct contacts for the specific account. Our expectation would be that all related contacts are shown, regardless if they're direct or not
Besides that we're wondering how to make use of Contact Relationships in a meaningful way, so that for example we can display the Role of the contact in the Account
Thanks
Hans
2
Scott H
In the step
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Dwight Bussman
Hi Scott H
That indicates that your integration has already been connected at some point.
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Scott H
How can I check that? I uninstalled the app in zendesk and re installed. I do not see any instance of it in Salesforce.
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