Using the multiple organizations feature in the Salesforce integration

Zendesk and Salesforce have fundamental differences in the way they store users. In Zendesk, each user must have a unique email address. This is not required for Salesforce contacts or leads.

In order for multiple Salesforce contacts that share an email address to sync to Zendesk, the integration uses a Support feature called multiple organizations. This feature is enabled in Support and is available on the Professional plan and above. For more information, see Enabling multiple organizations for users.

This article explains the syncing behaviour for the Saleforce integration when multiple organizations is enabled.

This article contains the following sections:

• Understanding the multiple organization syncing process
• Syncing behavior when multiple organizations is enabled or disabled

Related information:

• Enabling multiple organizations for users
• Salesforce integration resources

Understanding the multiple organization syncing process

When the multiple organizations feature is enabled, multiple Salesforce contacts with the same email address which belong to different Salesforce accounts can be connected in Zendesk Support to a user belonging to multiple organizations. The linking of a user to an organization in Zendesk is known as an organization membership.

In Salesforce, when multiple contacts  share an email address, the first contact linked to an account is considered the syncing record. The syncing record is the main Salesforce record and is identified by a user account during syncing.

The syncing record updates its corresponding user entry in Zendesk during a sync when changes have been made to the user fields in Salesforce.

The syncing behavior between Salesforce and Zendesk is governed by the following rules:

• If an organization doesn’t exist in Zendesk, organization memberships won’t be created

• The integration’s Account to Organization sync and the multiple organizations feature in Support need to be enabled for the sync to use multiple organization behaviour

• Organization memberships are only added, not deleted

• Mapped fields are synced if the Salesforce primary account-contact relationship matches the user’s default organization in Zendesk

• An organization membership in Zendesk is only created if a Salesforce contact is linked to a Salesforce account

• Secondary relationships between a Salesforce account and contact are not synced since new organizations would need to be created in Zendesk for all other accounts

• The integration respects existing default memberships which are manually assigned

Sync behavior when multiple organizations is enabled or disabled

To understand what happens during syncing, the following table describes some scenarios and the actions and results when the multiple organizations feature in Support is enabled and disabled.

Scenario flow	Multiple organization feature	Action
		Sets the user’s organization in Zendesk	Creates an organization membership	Syncs the contact’s mapped fields
Scenario 1 Salesforce Contact without a linked account is synced to Zendesk Salesforce contact is matched with an existing user in Zendesk	Disabled	No	N/A	Yes
	Enabled	No	No	Yes
Scenario 2 Salesforce contact without a linked account is synced to Zendesk Salesforce contact is not matched with an existing user in Zendesk.	Disabled	No	N/A	Yes (new user is created)
	Enabled	No	No	Yes (new user is created)
Scenario 3 Salesforce contact with a linked account is synced to Zendesk The contact is matched to an existing user in Zendesk The account is linked to an existing organization in Zendesk The organization is the matched user’s default organization	Disabled	Yes	N/A	Yes
	Enabled	No	Yes	Yes
Scenario 4 Salesforce contact with a linked account is synced to Zendesk The contact is matched to an existing user in Zendesk The account is linked to an existing organization The organization is not the matched user’s default organization	Disabled	Yes	N/A	Yes
	Enabled	No	Yes	No
Scenario 5 Salesforce contact with a linked account is synced to Zendesk The contact is matched with an existing user in Zendesk The account is not linked to any organization	Disabled	No	N/A	Yes
	Enabled	No	No	Yes
Scenario 6 Salesforce contact with a linked account is synced to Zendesk The contact is not matched with any user The account is linked to an existing organization in Zendesk	Disabled	Yes	N/A	Yes (new user is created)
	Enabled	Yes	No	Yes (new user is created)
Scenario 7 Salesforce contact with a linked account is synced to Zendesk The contact is not matched with any user in Zendesk The account is not linked to any organization	Disabled	No	N/A	Yes (new user is created)
	Enabled	No	No	Yes (new user is created)