The attributes you map between Intercom and Salesforce are synced when they change in either system. When the change occurs in Intercom, the sync to Salesforce is triggered immediately, while Salesforce is checked every 5 minutes to determine if there are changes to sync to Intercom. See the tables below for details on how data is updated in different situations.

The following triggers in Intercom will cause data to be updated in Salesforce. The behaviour in each of these cases is different depending on whether there’s an existing match between a person (lead/user) in Intercom and a person (lead/contact) in Salesforce. This match is called an “identity mapping”.

Intercom checks Salesforce for any changes (new or updated leads & contacts) every 5 minutes and when found, updates information in Intercom.

As the Salesforce app depends on the standard out-of-the-box setup that Salesforce offers, there may be times when the integration fails to install or work as expected. If you experience an error, this troubleshooting guide should help you identify and fix the problem.

The following actions occur:

We do not retain any historical data or logs on past settings or mapped attributes that have previously been setup within the Salesforce App.

If it is necessary to uninstall and reinstall the App we strongly encourage you to take screenshots or a clear record of your settings prior to actioning any 'uninstall' process so they can be easily replicated after reinstalling. Settings will not be retained or recovered after reinstalling the App.

The “Sync Errors” tab in the Salesforce app settings will show you any errors that occur when syncing data between Intercom and Salesforce. We display when the error occurred and what caused it. Hover over a row and click the “Details” button to learn more about these issues.

Sync Errors will only show errors from Intercom to Salesforce data syncing.

You can also retry the sync. If Intercom is successful in the sync, the error will be removed from the list:

To learn more about when attributes are synced, read this article.

The "FIELD_FILTER_VALIDATION_EXCEPTION: this field must contain a value" error is commonly shown if Salesforce requires a specific field for cases that is not showing in the case-creator sidebar in Intercom.

To resolve this, please follow the steps outlined outlined below:

1. Go into Salesforce and check your settings for Cases. All fields in the Case object that are required need to be added to the case-creator in Intercom.

2. Once you've found any missing fields, head over to Intercom's App Store.

3. Navigate all the way through to the Case setting by going Intercom App Store > Salesforce >Settings >Set up Cases, then click the "Add Fields" button.

4. You'll receive a menu with different fields to choose from.

5. Click on the required field to add it to the sidebar and repeat this process until you've added all the fields you need.

If Intercom fails to connect to your Salesforce account, you'll see this banner in your app settings:

This can happen for a couple of reasons:

You should check if you're experiencing these issues. Once resolved, you should be able to successfully re-authenticate the app.

If you uninstall the Salesforce app, your mappings will be cleared, so it would be a good idea to take a screenshot of the mappings for your leads and contacts before uninstalling.

No data will be affected on either the Intercom or Salesforce side when you uninstall the app. When the app is reinstalled, another sync will be triggered.

If something fails while creating a lead or a task, you can diagnose the issue yourself. Just visit the app store and click the Salesforce app. You'll see a list of errors there, along with the issues that are causing them.

The integration sends data from Intercom to specific fields in Salesforce. These are standard fields in Salesforce, but if they have been modified, hidden or removed the integration may not work. You’ll need to edit your Salesforce settings to ensure these fields are available. 

Salesforce fields required: 

Lead object

Contact object

Account object

Task object

Every Salesforce account has a set rate limit, which is dependent on the plan you’re on. Intercom will use up some of this limit. If you’ve hit your Salesforce API limit, all of your Salesforce integrations will stop working, including Intercom. 

If you’ve matched an Intercom lead to one in Salesforce - but then update the email in Intercom so it matches a different Salesforce lead - it can take up to 10 minutes for custom attributes displaying Salesforce data to update.

You can map Intercom attributes with fields in Salesforce so that they stay in sync in your integration settings. You'll see the fields that are compatible, (e.g. text can match text, integers can match integers, etc).

For lists, we match each option. If there's an option in Salesforce that isn't matched in Intercom, we will add it for you in the list of options. However, we can only add options if the Salesforce picklist is NOT set to restricted.

When you try to create a Salesforce task in Intercom, you might receive the error: 'Intercom requires these fields in the Salesforce Task object: Type':
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The 'Type' field for the Task object is a standard field in Salesforce for most users, but if you have the Salesforce Professional edition, it will be set to 'hidden' by default. 

Our integration needs it to be visible to create tasks. You can amend this in Salesforce by going to Object Manager > Task > Fields & Relationships > Type > Set Field-Level Security and setting it to 'visible'.

We have rolled out a new Salesforce health check for all workspaces that have the Salesforce app installed. This check ensures that:

We are running this health check every hour. Affected workspaces will move into the new unhealthy state gradually in the first 24 hours after enabling this check.

We will email either the teammate who installed the integration or in cases where this teammate is not a member of the workspace anymore, the first active human teammate who has been a part of the workspace for the longest period of time. This check will take place at 7 am UTC.

Head over to your Salesforce app settings and you will see some errors flagged in the UI.

The potential messages shown here are:

This will happen if the teammate who most recently installed the Salesforce App has been removed as a teammate from your workspace. Evidence of this being the issue can be seen if there is no teammate name next to the "Installed by ..." button:

If this has occurred you'll need to uninstall and reinstall the Salesforce app while logged into Salesforce with an account with full admin level permissions. Intercom is able to sync changes to Salesforce using the Salesforce account of the person installing the app, which is why it requires full admin permissions.

Currently, our Salesforce App doesn't support syncing granular subscription data from Intercom to Salesforce. You can only sync the "Unsubscribed from emails" attribute, which applies to all emails, but not specific email lists.

However, as a workaround, you could create a custom integration which uses our Subscription Webhook topics and an API request to update Salesforce whenever someone unsubscribes from an email list in Intercom, as an example. The granular.unsubscribe webhook topic could be used to notify you whenever someone unsubscribed from a message subscription type in Intercom. After receiving the webhook, you could then make an API request to Salesforce to update the relevant person.

The attributes you map between Intercom and Salesforce are synced when they change in either system (see trigger detailed explanation in the sections above). When the change occurs in Intercom, the sync to Salesforce is triggered immediately, while Salesforce is checked on 5 minute intervals to determine if there are changes to sync back to Intercom.

For now, you can sync Salesforce fields from Leads and Contacts to Intercom’s people objects (you do not need to define whether it is an Intercom Lead or User object).

You can sync most attributes. Some exceptions are read-only attributes, attributes in Intercom that change very frequently (e.g. last_seen) or formula fields (see next question).

Formula fields are more complex and the syncing behaviour can depend on the Salesforce setup. In general formula fields can be mapped and synced to Intercom. However because this field is calculated, changes to this field will not initiate a trigger meaning that this field will only be synced when something else triggers the sync.

Sure thing! You can test this new version using a test workspace with a Salesforce sandbox account.

If you’re still experiencing trouble with your Salesforce integration, please get in touch with our Support team via the Messenger 😄