Question
The legacy Salesforce integration included a sync-many function. How can I do something similar using the new Salesforce integration?
Answer
As described in the article Configuring Data Sync from Salesforce to Zendesk:
A data sync is triggered when a mapped field is updated in an existing Salesforce record, or a new record is created. Any unmapped fields that are updated do not trigger the sync.
The legacy integration did not fire when records were created or updated either in batches or using the Salesforce API. This meant that a manual batch-sync was sometimes required to update Zendesk for any records created/updated in this fashion.
The new Salesforce integration does not have this limitation. Batch updates/API updates trigger a sync over to Zendesk, provided one of the mapped fields is changed. The following workflow outlines how to accomplish a batch-sync function by updating many records in SFDC via the API.
For information on how to check your current rate-limit usage, see the article: How can I check my Streaming API limits and usage?.
Although the following example deals specifically with account-syncing, a similar method can sync Contacts or Leads. While this explanation includes the creation of a new custom field within Salesforce, a checkbox field is not required for this method. The only requirement is that a non-formula field is present in SFDC and mapped within Admin Center which can be modified in batches to trigger the streaming API event on which the sync is based.
Here are steps to sync many records quickly using two built-in SFDC tools:
- Create a custom checkbox organization field in Zendesk called Sync with Salesforce.
- Create a checkbox account field in Salesforce called Sync with Zendesk with a default value of False.
- Map the two fields to each other in the Admin Center:
https://SUBDOMAIN.zendesk.com/admin/platform/integrations/salesforce/accounts_organizations - Create a report in SFDC that includes two pieces of information:
- SFDC account ID
- The Sync with Zendesk account-field from step 2
- Export the detail rows of the report from step 4 as a CSV.
- In the spreadsheet editor of your choice, update the Sync with Zendesk column of the CSV file to be the opposite of whatever it was before (if it was false, then set to true, and vice-versa).
- Import the updated CSV back into SFDC (using a tool such as Dataloader) to update all of the accounts.
(be sure you use the BATCH API and not the Bulk API for this Upsert/Update)
- After updating the SFDC records, allow some time to ensure that the background jobs have time to complete. This timeframe varies depending on the number of records to be synced. For a few hundred records, this might only take a few minutes. For tens of thousands of records, it might take thirty minutes to an hour.
- Once all of your records synced, remove the mapping from step 3 and delete the fields created in steps 1 and 2. Alternately, you can leave them in place for later in case you need to manually trigger a sync in the future.
12 Comments
I'm also finding that the bulk sync process is not working. Were you able to resolve this for the customer above @...?
Hi @...,
When we reached out, Jonny had already resolved this issue, saying that they got the sync to work by creating a "sync with salesforce" and "sync with zendesk" flag. I'm not sure whether that means a checkbox field, but it sounds similar to the steps described above.
There are a few different reasons that the bulk-sync process above might fail. As such, I'll look to see if you've already got a ticket open with our Support team and reach out therein if so, or create one if not.
Is this still the best method to perform a bulk sync of organizations to ZD? It seems silly that this would be the case since you all talked about including a bulk sync to match parity of the old installation a few years ago.
Hi @...,
Unfortunately, yes - at this moment there's no native function that would allow you to bulk sync the Salesforce accounts with ZD organizations, so this is considered to be the best workaround. I'd recommend following our release notes page in case if there's any updates regrading SFDC integration functionality.
@... THANK YOU so much for this article! This has saved us so much manual work and wasted time! You are a life saver!
@... - Glad to hear! :) Always nice to hear when these little tip articles are useful.
My organization is experiencing issues with data syncing from SFDC>ZD. What would negatively occur if we did not remove the mapping in Step 3 (as instructed to do in Step 9)? I'm wondering if leaving that mapping in place is causing our issues
heyO Dave Jensen
There shouldn't be any impact to leaving that checkbox field mapped: it's just another way to trigger the sync. If you're having issues, I recommend contacting support to dig into your issues more closely, as I doubt they're related to that field.
The mapping worked for us at the time of setting up the sync, but it has not continued dynamically. I sent in a ticket about a week ago, but I am still waiting to hear back. I hope we can figure out why the updates made in Salesforce going forward are not updating the Organizational fields in ZD.
HeyO Kevin Lewis
Sorry to hear that your syncing isn't working at the moment. I'm going to see about the ticket you've already opened. Someone should be contacting you shortly therein.
Can I sync Zendesk with Salesforce person account?
I believe Person Accounts can be synced into Organizations in Zendesk (similar to standard Accounts), but would recommend testing this to confirm that it works as you'd expect.
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