The Salesforce app for Zendesk allows agents to see customer information from Salesforce directly in the sidebar of an existing Zendesk Support ticket. Zendesk administrators can customize the app by adding, filtering, and rearranging the Salesforce data to ensure it is relevant and easily accessible for agents.
This article contains the following topics:
About the Salesforce app for Zendesk Support
The Zendesk for Salesforce app allows agents to view Salesforce information from a ticket in Zendesk. For agents to see the app in the sidebar, you need to install the app, connect your Zendesk account to Salesforce, and then turn on the app. See Installing and connecting the Salesforce app.
- The new app is available to new installations and existing customers who have switched to the new app.
- The legacy app is available to existing customers who have not yet switched to the new app.
If you’re using the legacy app, we recommend switching to the new app at your earliest convenience. All accounts will be migrated to the new version of the app on February 15, 2025.
With a ticket open in Zendesk, click the Apps button on the upper-right side of the ticket page. The Salesforce app is displayed in the right sidebar. The app is visible only on existing tickets.
Switching to the new Salesforce app
A new version of the Salesforce app was released on October 15, 2024. You can switch to the new app now if you have a previous version. This makes the new app immediately visible to agents.
If you don’t switch, you’ll be automatically upgraded to the new version on February 15, 2025.
- A record last fetched timestamp
- Informative error messages to enhance troubleshooting
- Improved navigation from primary objects to related objects
- Increased display of related object records from 5 to 10 for better visibility
- The ability to refresh cached data manually without having to wait for the cache to clear
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations > Integrations.
- Click the Salesforce link.
- Click the Support app tab.
- Select Switch to new and improved app.
This option is only visible to customers who have the legacy app installed but have not yet switched.
- Click Save.
The new app is now visible to agents in the sidebar of existing tickets.
Installing, connecting, and turning on the Salesforce app
Follow the procedures in this section if you’re installing the Salesforce app in Zendesk for the first time or re-installing the app.
Installing the app
Install the app from Zendesk Marketplace.
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Apps > Zendesk Support apps.
- Click Marketplace, and in the search box, enter Salesforce to locate the Salesforce app.
- Click the Salesforce app, then click Install.
- Use the drop-down menu to select the account where you want to install Salesforce, then click Install.
You are directed to the app installation settings page in Admin Center.
- If required, select and configure role restrictions and group restrictions.
- To restrict access to the app by role, select Enable role restrictions, then select the roles that should have access.
- To restrict access to the app by group, select Enable group restrictions, then select the groups that should have access.
- Click Install.
The app is installed but not yet turned on. To change the settings shown above, disable the app, or uninstall the app, click the drop-down menu on the app to access these options.
Connecting your Zendesk Support instance to Salesforce
After installing the Salesforce app, you need to connect Zendesk to Salesforce. You must have appropriate Salesforce credentials to perform this task.
To connect the Salesforce app to Zendesk
- Follow the steps in Setting up your Zendesk for Salesforce Integration to create a connected app and authenticate to Salesforce. If you have already set up the integration, continue to the next step.
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations > Integrations.
- Click the Salesforce link.
The Salesforce integration setup page displays.
- Select whether you are setting up the integration in your Salesforce Production or Salesforce Sandbox instance.
- After reading the terms of use, select the By connecting to this integration you agree to the Built by Zendesk Terms of Use checkbox.
- Click Connect.
- Log in to Salesforce with your username and password.
- Click Allow to allow the Salesforce Integration for Zendesk to access your Salesforce account.
You are directed back to the Integrations > Salesforce page in Admin Center.
Turning on the Salesforce app
Turning on the Salesforce app makes it visible to agents in existing tickets. If you still have yet to configure the app, return to this step when you're ready. You can also turn off the app if you need to hide it temporarily.
To turn on the Salesforce app
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations > Integrations.
- Click the Salesforce link.
- Click the Support app tab.
- Select Turn on Salesforce app for Zendesk Support to make the app visible to agents. Deselect this option to hide the app.
- Click Save.
Configuring the Salesforce app
You can customize the data displayed in the Salesforce app and how often the data is refreshed by configuring the app settings discussed in this section. Only Zendesk admins and team members in a custom role with permission can configure the app.
After changing the ticket or app configuration, it can take up to 60 minutes for recently viewed tickets to appear updated in the Salesforce app. For information on changing this rate, see Configuring the Salesforce data cache refresh rate.
Configuring the Salesforce data cache refresh rate
When you open a Zendesk ticket, the app fetches and displays Salesforce data you selected in the procedure Adding Salesforce objects to the app. The app uses the Salesforce API to pull records. To reduce the API load, data is refreshed every 60 minutes by default.
The data refresh setting allows you to define how long Salesforce data is cached in the Zendesk database. During the caching window, changes in Salesforce will not be reflected in the app. After the caching period, the data will be fetched the next time an agent visits the ticket.
- A shorter refresh rate means data is collected from Salesforce more often and is more likely to be up to date. However, this can impact the Salesforce API limits.
- A longer refresh rate means data is collected less often but reduces the risk of reaching the Salesforce API limits.
To configure the Salesforce app data refresh setting
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations > Integrations.
- Click the Salesforce link.
- Click the Support app tab.
- Under Set data caching duration, select the data refresh setting from the drop-down list.
- Click Save.
Allowing agents to refresh the cache manually
You can allow agents to refresh the cache manually so they can instantly fetch updated customer details from Salesforce to Zendesk Support.
To allow agents to refresh cached data from Salesforce
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations > Integrations.
- Click the Salesforce link.
- Click the Support app tab.
- Select Manually update the cached data from Salesforce as needed.
- Click Save.
Adding Salesforce objects to the app
Initially, the Salesforce app displays no data. Zendesk admins must configure the app to show the Salesforce data agents want to see when working on tickets. This process entails adding the Salesforce data objects to the app and filtering and arranging them so they display how they'd like.
To add Salesforce objects to the app
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations > Integrations.
- Click the Salesforce link.
- Click the Support app tab.
- In the Manage data section, click Add Salesforce object.
- In the Select object field, select the name of the object (or record type) you'd like to add from the drop-down list, then click Next.
- In the Map fields section, select the Zendesk and Salesforce fields the app should use to find matching records, then click Next. See Matching fields.
- In the Select fields to display section, select the Salesforce fields you’d like to display in the app. Begin typing to display available fields, and select them from the drop-down list as they appear. You can reorder them later. When you’re done adding fields, click Next.
Note: Adding more than five fields may slow data retrieval and cause timeouts or errors.
- In the Apply filters step, select the fields for each object you’d like to filter results for, then click Next. See Filtering the returned objects.
- Click Add.
Matching fields
The purpose of the Match fields section is to specify the Zendesk and Salesforce fields that the app should use to find matching records. Select fields that make sense for your use case.
For any Zendesk ticket, Zendesk attempts to find a record in Salesforce with data in the selected object and field that exactly matches the data in the specified Zendesk field. In the case of a drop-down field, the field tag value is used instead of the title.
When you’re finished mapping fields, click Save (if you’re editing the Salesforce object) or Next (if you’re adding a new Salesforce object).
Filtering the related objects
You can filter the related objects in the app by date and value. Filters can be helpful if you'd like to narrow results by specific values and provide agents with better visibility into the correct records. For example, if a customer has purchased 100 products, applying a filter for products valued over $1000 and purchased after a specific date will narrow the results, allowing the agent to find the most relevant information.
To filter related objects
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations > Integrations.
- Click the Salesforce link.
- Click the Support app tab.
- Click the options menu icon (
) next to the object you want to filter, then click Edit.
- In the Apply filters step, expand the related object you want to filter, then set the filtering conditions. For example, if you filter opportunities, you could show opportunities won by setting Won is true.
- Click Save.
Reordering, editing, or removing objects
You can reorder, edit, and remove objects within the app configuration. Make sure you click Save after making changes.
- Click the grabber icon (
) to drag and drop objects and fields within objects to reorder them. The order represented in the configuration will determine the order of fields displayed in the Salesforce app.
- To delete an object from the app, click Delete from the drop-down menu, then click Delete object to confirm.
- To edit an object, click Edit. The name of the object will be read only, but all other fields can be modified, including field matching and filters.
34 comments
Justin Federico
I was informed by Zendesk support that the app is EOL and there will not be any ongoing development.
That said, are there any plans to replace the app or open the code?
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Dwight Bussman
@... - What you've mentioned would be news to me. I'm thinking there may have been some confusion on the part of the support person to whom you spoke - potentially confusing our sidebar app (which isn't getting a ton of active development at the moment, but isn't EOL that I'm aware of) and the legacy integration app installed within Salesforce.
I've not been able to find a record of that conversation you had with our support team, but I'll reach out to you to discuss this in a ticket to collect some more details and help to get to the bottom of this.
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C E
I've got the app installed in my SFDC sandbox and I am already logged in to my SFDC sandbox but when I try to connect from the Zendesk integrations page I get this error:
Please advise if this is something on my end or not.
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Dwight Bussman
heyO @...
I suspect that the error_description of "ip restricted" may be connected. Do you know if there are any IP restrictions present in your SFDC instance? If this doesn't appear to be the case, I recommend contacting our support team directly so that someone can take a closer look.
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Tomáš Petržilka
please can you add the screens - how the Salesforce right side panel looks like?
I havent been able to find any screenshot - before we start trying to integrate ZD & Salesforce it would be great to have an overview from an AGENT point of view (how the work can look like) - I am mostly interested in the customer data fields (synced from Salesforce) and if there is a possibility to adjust some customer fields (not ticket fields) in Zendesk and have it synced to Salesforce...
I am referring to this statement (the last paragraph in the article)
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Tomáš Petržilka
Good feedback! I will raise a ticket to our documentation team to add some screenshots of how the app actually looks when in use.
In the meantime, I recommend checking out our Salesforce Integration Video Guides which include this video specifically about the sidebar app
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Tomáš Petržilka
Dwight, thnx and please any info about the possibility to edit customer data by agents in Zendesk and have it synced to Salesforce? (from the agent right side panel)
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Dwight Bussman
Bi-directional syncing is something the team has definitely considered. I'll mention it to make sure they know there are still folks interested in that, but to get additional weight of consideration, I recommend posting on our Product Feedback forum so that other folks can vote in support of that idea or potentially provide workarounds for it if they've found any.
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Fabien Diakhate
Can you please add ability for agent to refresh the data presented?
I dont want to keep pinging Salesforce due to API calls limits.
I want 1 initial pull, then if i gathered more info / or updated some key fields, then as an agent i want to manually pull data from Salesforce.
ANy idea when this would / could be done?
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Anika Rani
Fabien Diakhate you can request to have the refresh rate reduced down to 15 minutes (it is 60 minutes by default). For an agent to refresh the data, they can simply refresh Zendesk Support page. What you described can be done, however, we don't currently have any plans to support this.
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Chad Susa (Gravity CX - Zendesk Partner)
Hi
Does the Salesforce for Zendesk app support showing checkboxes? When I configure settings for the app, I can select the checkbox field in the app (to show), but when viewing a end user/SF contact record in Zendesk (they have the checkbox selected), it doesn't show anything in the app in the ticket app sidebar.
See below:
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Dwight Bussman
heyO Chad Susa (Gravity CX - Zendesk Partner)
If a checkbox is in the settings for a given object and is checked within SFDC, I'm seeing a value of "true" in my test account.
is it possible that you'd changed the checkbox in SFDC within the last 60 minutes? If so, you may be running into the caching timeframe. If you're still not seeing the value more than 60 minutes later, please contact support so that we can look into your case more closely....
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Dwight Bussman
One other thing to note is that if the checkbox is FALSE, it doesn't appear to show up. This feels like it's designed to be in alignment with the behavior of fields which lack values - if a field is empty, we don't display it in the sidebar app.
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Joe
Hi, When mapped where should I see the information from Salesforce on Zendesk ?
I note that is says "You can't map a Salesforce field to a custom user field or a custom organization field for record lookup."
However the fields used in the example above I cannot find in fields on Zendesk.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Joe
1
Dwight Bussman
HeyO Joe - I recommend contacting support for help with this, as I'm not certain I follow your question and it'll likely be faster to chat with someone directly. We can circle back here to post our findings/update documentation afterwards.
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Adam Martin
Hi there, tried to sync up to SF but get this error message, any ideas what could be the issue?
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Adam Martin - that's often the result of a timeout due to fetching more fields than SFDC can return within our timeout window. For more info please see https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408833572250-I-received-a-Failed-to-synchronize-info-error-message-in-Salesforce
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Dan R.
Are there any options to reduce the caching time for the Support app to below 15 minutes? We have cases where tickets are on the wrong org and after an agent changes the org, they can't pull customer data for 15 minutes, which is an absolute eternity if the customer's on the phone.
Being able to shorten that to either live fetch, or 2 or 5 minutes would be huge!
Or being able to manually trigger a refresh from the agent's side if needed
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Dwight Bussman
Dan R. - the 15-minute caching time is the shortest setting option we allow.
if the user can be matched to a Contact based on their email address and that Contact would belong to the correct account.
One workaround might be to look up the Account information through the Contact record as shown here:
I know that the cache gets reset whenever changes are made to the set of mapped fields. As such, another potential workaround (albeit a bit cumbersome) would be to alter the field-mappings when you know the referenced Account is inaccurate. Adding any field (or removing any) should force a fresh lookup.
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Dan R.
Hey Dwight,
Thanks for the quick reply and suggestions. Unfortunately, I can't give my agents admin access to manage the integration to do that.
If we took the Contact -> Account route though, a few questions:
What happens if the Contact has relations to multiple accounts? What if only some are synced to Zendesk?
What happens if the Contact doesn't exist in SFDC? Is no data displayed at all?
I am unsure either of these would work unfortunately, we really do need to be able to force a refresh agent-side. We understand there's potential API call impacts to our SFDC instance but we can manage those and there's certainly a CSAT impact for support when we can't pull customer data for 15 minutes.
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Dan - happy to speak to those questions as best I can here:
![](/hc/user_images/huBMafpRkounz2MV9i6jfw.png)
What happens if the Contact has relations to multiple accounts?
The relationship that matters is the main account/contact relationship: within the Contact object this is stored within the AccountId field. If there are multiple contacts each related to a different account, the side bar app can display up to 5 records.
What if only some are synced to Zendesk?
Syncing and the sidebar app are independent in this case; whether those accounts are synced over would have no bearing on the ability of the sidebar app to find contacts (and by extension, their related account)
What happens if the Contact doesn't exist in SFDC? Is no data displayed at all?
That's correct.
I recommend posting on our Product Feedback forum if the current functionality doesn't meet your needs. This allows other users to vote in support of your post which helps our Product Managers to prioritize future development in this area.
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Dan R.
Cheers, I'll go do that, thanks so much Dwight!
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Lauren Giblin
I just want to confirm that in order to pull over Opportunity details that the contact must be marked as the "primary" on that opportunity. We just found this out by testing a few out that wouldn't pulling over.
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Lauren Giblin - I suspect that might depend on which field is used to relate those opportunities to Contacts. It's also possible to look up the Opportunity object directly (depending on which fields are available within the ticket). I recommend contacting our support team if you've got questions about the specific configuration within your Zendesk instance.
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Janet Holyoak
Is there any way to request that the related record cap (5) is removed? We are wanting to show what products our customers have purchased and Emergency Contacts. Salesforce is our source of truth for these items. We have more than 5 products and Emergency Contacts on our Accounts.
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Dwight Bussman
HeyO Janet Holyoak
I believe that's a firm limit at the moment. The filters (documented above) can help ensure you see the most relevant 5 records, but I realize that's small comfort if you really need to see more records. I recommend adding that feedback on the need for fetching a larger set of objects within https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/1260801325369 so that others can vote in support of this idea, as I can definitely see a use-case there.
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Dwight Bussman
Sorry for a bit of runaround on this: I see that you reached out to our Support team and they suggested you post herein. I'm going to huddle up with folks to see where the best place for such feedback is to make sure we (Support folks) are all on the same page.
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Dwight Bussman
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John Tieu
Hi, is there any update on removing the 5 related record cap? It was mentioned this was going to be included in the roadmap for 2024.
1
Karan Shah
Hey everyone,
We’ve released the upgraded version of the Salesforce app for Zendesk Support, which includes several enhancements. Here are a few highlights:
For more details on the changes to the integration, please refer to the GA announcement.
Thanks
Karan Shah
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