The Salesforce app for Zendesk enables agents to see
Salesforce user information in a Support ticket. User information might include
subscription level, whether a particular account has an open opportunity, or additional
customer notes.
This article contains the following sections:
- Installing and enabling the Salesforce app in Zendesk
- Connecting Zendesk Support to Salesforce
- Configuring the Salesforce app
- Viewing Salesforce information from a Zendesk Support ticket
Related articles:
Installing and enabling the Salesforce app in Zendesk
The Salesforce app can be downloaded and installed from the 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
Salesforceto 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. The Salesforce app is installed, but not enabled, on your Zendesk Support account.
- Select Apps > Manage, and click the Salesforce app.
- Use the toggle switch to enable the Salesforce app.
Connecting Zendesk Support to Salesforce
After installing the Salesforce app, you need to connect Zendesk to Salesforce. You must have administrator credentials in Salesforce to perform this task.
- 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, go to the next step.
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations >
Integrations.
- In Salesforce, click Configure.
- Click the Support app side tab, and Enable Salesforce data
caching.
- 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. These settings are applied when viewing Salesforce information from a ticket and are configured as part of a single process.
A Zendesk administrator can configure these settings from the configuration link in the app by opening up a ticket in Support, finding the Salesforce app in the sidebar, then clicking the Configuration link. The ticket must have a requester to access the Salesforce app.
Adding Salesforce objects to the app
This process allows you to define which Salesforce objects appear in the app in Support.
Only users with Zendesk administrator privileges or in custom roles with Manage extensions and channels privileges can configure the app. You can access configuration settings by clicking the Configure Settings link in the app.
To add Salesforce objects to the Salesforce app
- Open an existing ticket in the Support ticket view. In the Apps sidebar, locate the Salesforce app.
- Click Configuration Settings, then click the Add object
button.
- In the Select Salesforce object to display section, use the
drop-down to select a Salesforce object (or record type) that you want
to appear in your app:
The Select Salesforce fields to display section displays all fields available on the Salesforce object you selected.
- In the Salesforce fields window, click Add (+) beside each
field you want to display in the Salesforce app for that object. One of
the fields you select must contain data that matches a field in
Zendesk.
- Scroll down the list of Salesforce fields and expand one of the related
objects to see its fields, then add fields from the expanded
object.
You can drag and drop fields within each object you have selected to change their order. The order represented in the configuration will determine order of fields displayed in the Salesforce app.
- In the Map fields to enable record lookup section, use the
Selected Salesforce Fields drop-down to select a Salesforce
field, then use the Zendesk field drop-down to map fields to
enable record lookup.
For any Zendesk ticket, Zendesk attempts to find a record in Salesforce whose data in the selected Object and field exactly matches the data contained in the specified Zendesk field. In the case of a drop-down field, this uses the field tag value instead of the title.
Note: You can't map a Salesforce field to a custom user field or a custom organization field for record lookup. Additionally, mapping numeric fields is not supported.It's possible to add a lookup record that returns no records. This is where the Record ID in Salesforce is returned instead of the actual value of the field. For more information, see Salesforce Syncing lookup field information to Zendesk Support.
- Click Add object again to add another object to your Salesforce app.
- Click the Finish button to close the configuration window. When the window is closed, CRM data on the current ticket will be retrieved using the new configuration. It might take a while (depending on the number of active CRM data) for the rest of the ticket’s CRM data to be retrieved using the new configuration.
The following is an example of how a contact's information appears in the ticket after configuring the Salesforce app.
Configuring the Salesforce data caching setting
When you open a Zendesk ticket, the app fetches and displays Salesforce data you selected in the procedure Adding Salesforce objects to the app. By default, data is refreshed every 60 minutes.
The data refresh setting allows you to define how long Salesforce data is cached in the Zendesk database — 60 minutes, 45 minutes, 30 minutes, or 15 minutes.
- 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.
You can request permission to access the data refresh setting by contacting Zendesk Customer Support. Permission is granted on a per-account basis.
To configure the Salesforce app data refresh setting
- In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Integrations >
Integrations.
- In Salesforce, click Configure.
- Click the Support app side tab, and under Enable Salesforce data
caching, select the data refresh setting from the drop-down list.
- Click Save.
Filtering the returned objects
You can filter the returned objects in the app.
The option to filter these objects is only available for objects with a one-to-many relationship. In the example below, the Contact object does not have a one-to-many relationship, but the Account object does.
To filter returned objects
- In the object list, click Filter next to the object you want to work with.
- In the Filter Records dialog, select the number of returned
objects (up to five), and set conditions to filter the results. For
example, if you're filtering Opportunities, you could set Closed is
false, then only open Opportunities would display. Or you could
show Opportunities that have been closed and were won by setting Won
is true.
- Click Save.
Viewing Salesforce information from a Zendesk Support ticket
After you have installed the Zendesk for Salesforce app you can easily view Salesforce information from a ticket in Zendesk.
To view Salesforce information from a Zendesk ticket
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.
28 Comments
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
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)
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:
Cheers, I'll go do that, thanks so much Dwight!
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.
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?
@... - 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.
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.
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.
heyO Chad Susa
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....
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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:
{"errors":[{"status":"400","code":"1301","detail":" : oauth2: cannot fetch token: 400 Bad Request\nResponse: {\"error\":\"invalid_grant\",\"error_description\":\"ip restricted\"}"}]}Please advise if this is something on my end or not.
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.
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
HeyO Dan - happy to speak to those questions as best I can here:
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.
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.
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.
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)
Hi there, tried to sync up to SF but get this error message, any ideas what could be the issue?
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