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.
Viewing and editing your connections
Use the Integrations page in Admin Center to view and edit your Salesforce connections with Zendesk. You can also rename your connections to help identify them.
To view or edit your Salesforce connections
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations >
Integrations.
- On the Integrations page, click Salesforce.
The connections appear in a list. Each connection displays which features are active: Ticket view in Salesforce, Data sync, or the Support app in Zendesk.
- To edit the connection name or view details, click the options menu icon () for that connection, then click Edit.
- View the connection details, or type a new name for the connection in the
Organization name field.
- Click Save.
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
Dwight Bussman
I know that our integration does a "LIKE" match for the Ticket View (it's really performing a search based on the matching criteria), so tickets belonging to all 3 of these Zendesk organizations would appear under an
ITaccount's ticket view if matching based on name:- Ithica College
- IT Support, Inc.
- It's A Great Company
because each has a name that begins with the stringitIn terms of the Data Sync, I believe that uses an exact match based on matching criteria for the initial sync, but subsequent syncs rely on a "sync relationship" - basically if an account has ever synced to an organization, and both still exist, it is presumed to be linked to that organization. This behavior allows for a change to the account's name syncing over to update a linked organization's name (when matching based on name). For more details about these "sync relationships" please see https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4935435219098-Salesforce-data-sync-error-Name-or-Email-has-already-been-taken which outlines some of the errors that can occur as a result of those.
Finally - I completely agree that it'd be great to have matching based on External ID. I raised this need a few years back, but can definitely revisit that with the team. I recommend posting that feature request in our Product Feedback Forum for Apps & Integrations so that other folks can vote in support of that. This allows our developers to prioritize work on things for which there's the greatest need.
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Yoram
Hi Dwight,
Thanks for the comment.
I will update the thread once I have the support's feedback.
I have shared with support a video capture of the issue.
I guess you have access to the support tickets, so if you want to take a look, it is documented in ticket #1577614
Have a great day
Yoram
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Yoram
OK.. I got an answer from Dwight after he investigated the issue.
I am passing his analysis, here for your knowledge.
Thanks Dwight!!!
The matching criteria defined in Admin Center are used for the first sync of an account to Zendesk.
Once an account has synced successfully, Zendesk stores a "sync relationship" between the account ID and the zendesk organization ID to which it was matched for that sync. When an account goes to sync a second time, the integration sees that this "sync relationship" exists, confirms that the organization in question hasn't been deleted, and then updates the organization based on ID. This update occurs even if the organization no longer matches based on the matching criteria.
So here's what the see happening in my instance:
Back in March of 2022, an organization was created called "
Conpany A"(using a fake name due to privecy concenrs).While the name set thusly, the account
0011v00002eumEySSAwith the matching name of "Conpany A"synced and matched to that organization as expected.On 2023-03-25, we changed the name of that Zendesk organization to be "
Conpany A(Child)".After that time, the account
0012400000Y3uyCDDFsynced from SFDC, and its name matched to the current name of the organization.At this point, a sync relationship exists for each of those two accounts pointing at the same organization which is why you're seeing both of them sync there.
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Ashoka Poojari
Can someone provide some documentation or steps to send Salesforce Lead Data to Zendesk through integration ?
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Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi Ashoka Poojari welcome to our Community!
You may check this link to our doc on configuring data from Salesforce to Zendesk :) Thanks!
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Alexander.S
Does this connector make use of existing Zendesk API caps or limits, and if so, which limits?
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Alexander.S
Several features of our SFDC integration make API requests to Zendesk endpoints, all of which are counted against our REST API Rate Limits:
- Create Organization
- Update Organization
- Create User
- Update User
- Create Organization Membership
- Add tags (either to Organization or User)
The Sidebar App and Ticket Sync features do not hit Zendesk APIs, but instead hit SFDC APIs and would be subject to their rate-limits.
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Shane Weber
Hello, I am now working with a ZD instance that I did not setup, and am doing some reviews of user access. I see our SFDC admin also has ZD admin access, and they say it was from the initial integration. Is there any impact to removing their admin access to ZD, will it break the integration? Is there a way to tell?
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Shane Weber
If the user who connected the integration has their role downgraded (on either side - Zendesk or Salesforce), it will mean that some portions of the integration will no longer function properly
That's why we have this caveat within the article above:
Fortunately the "fix" for this is to disconnect & reconnect the integration within Admin Center. You could even do that proactively (prior to downgrading the current user) within an incognito window just to be certain you're aware of the user who actually performed that connection. We're working to make it easier to find details about the connecting user IDs within the product, but for the time being that'd be the fastest way to do so.
If you didn't want to do that disconnect/reconnect, here's a way to find out which users are in use:
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Shane Weber
Thanks Dwight Bussman, we are a professional plan and don't think we have audit logs in that plan after reviewing the link.
How can I reach out to the Advocacy team.
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Shane Weber - oops! Sorry. I meant to include that in my earlier response. Here's a link to the process for contacting support. I'll keep an eye out for that ticket as I think I can collect that pretty info pretty quickly.
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Chris Gregory
Note: You can only connect one Salesforce account to one Zendesk account. So if you test the integration on a sandbox account, you need to disconnect the integration and reconnect to your production account.
Can we get some clarification on this. Can we connect prod to prod AND a Sandbox to a sandbox at the same time? Or do we get a single connector link in our entire account?
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Dwight Bussman
Prod-to-Prod & Sandbox-to-Sandbox can be connected simultaneously (as they are separate accounts from an API perspective).
The Note you mentioned was to help avoid the confusion we'd seen where folks would connect their Production SFDC to a Zendesk Sandbox and then also attempt to set up a connection to that same SFDC instance in their Zendesk Production.
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Sam Illingworth
Hi,
I'm unable to add the "products" within a salesforce "order" to my salesforce app in Zendesk. I can show orders, and direct fields of orders, but order products are a related object, and I don't see any way to show them. Is this possible?
This is quite an important missing feature - I need my support team to be able to see what products a customer is entitled to use before they set up those products for them.
Thanks
Sam
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Dwight Bussman
heyO Sam Illingworth
Our Salesforce sidebar app should be able to display objects directly related to the current object. For example, if looking up the Account object, the app could show Contacts or Cases (or custom objects) that are directly related to the Account object.
In your instance, are you looking up the Order objects directly or might you be viewing Orders that are related to some other object that's how they're found? The reason I ask is that our integration can only view those objects DIRECTLY related to the "base object" - so while I can look up an Account and see its related Contacts or Cases, I couldn't see the cases linked to those related contacts. (Hopefully I'm explaining that sufficiently well!)
If this is for an object directly related to the primary object, I recommend raising a ticket with our Support team so we can look into this further, as that sounds like a misbehavior.
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Sam Illingworth
Thanks Dwight Bussman. Yeah, order products would be one layer removed from the account - products are related to an order, which is related to an account, and it's the account that we're initially looking up.
Is there any way to get this indirect relationship to work in the integration? Is it on your developer's roadmap do you know? And is there any sort of workaround you're aware of in the meantime?
The reason it's valuable is so our support team can see what product/services the customer they're helping has purchased.
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Dwight Bussman
Ah - that makes sense. While I don't know if that's on our developer's roadmap at this time, you can help them to be aware of the need for such a feature by posting it on our Integrations Product Feedback page.
The only "workarounds" I can think of for this all involve having a separate way to look up the object that IS directly related (in this case the
Orderobject). From that object it should be possible to pull all relatedProducts.0
Hector
After going through the installation instructions, I am seeing two versions of the app installed on Salesforce:
Salesforce Integration for Zendesk
Salesforce Integration for Zendesk V2
Do I uninstall one ?
1
Hiedi Kysther
Hi Hector,
We are currently using Salesforce Integration for Zendesk V2. You may uninstall the Salesforce Integration for Zendesk.
Hope this helps!
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Hector
I get this error when I try to uninstall:
The component you are attempting to delete is part of a managed package, and cannot be deleted.
Sounds like both are needed ? v2 needs the regular version too ?
I will go ahead and just configure v2 and see how that goes.
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Indhu Ravuthasamy
I have connected one of my Salesforce Sandbox environment with Zendesk and performed the above steps. The data is synced up in Zendesk but I can only see 5 records in Zendesk although I have more than 5 records in Salesforce. Could someone please help on it.
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Dwight Bussman
heyO Indhu Ravuthasamy - as documented in https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408834679066-Installing-and-configuring-the-Salesforce-app-for-Zendesk-Support - there is currently a limit of 5 records for that sidebar app.
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Indhu Ravuthasamy
Dwight Bussman - Do we have an alternative option for displaying all the records? Also, is there an option to upgrade this feature like do you have any specific plan that provides us with this option.
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Dwight Bussman
Indhu Ravuthasamy - I've just been informed by our developers that they're currently working on increasing this number. In the initial phase they're looking to allow for 10 records, but the hope is to have as many as 20 by the end of the year. This roll-out is not plan-specific - it should be available to you at no cost.
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