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.

Important: Because data is only synced when there are changes (or new records) in Salesforce or Intercom, historical data is not always in sync. If there hasn’t been a change to trigger an update, data shown in the Salesforce inbox app may be out of date. There is no bulk update of existing historical data when using the Salesforce app.

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”.

Note: “Mapped attributes” are any attributes that you have set up to sync between Intercom and Salesforce in your settings.

A new identity mapping is only created for existing records in Salesforce.

New leads in Salesforce are created from Intercom in the following ways:

The following actions occur:

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

Note: “Person” in this table refers to a lead or contact in Salesforce.

Important: The relationship between Lead/User and Company in Intercom, and the relationship between Leads/Contact and Accounts in Salesforce does not sync. This relationship needs to be managed on the respective platforms separately.

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 “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:

Note: The tab will inform you if it evaluates that you might not have attribute sync configured correctly like so. This help banner is for Account Sync only.

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

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.

Note: If you re-authenticate the Salesforce app, it will resume syncing your data as normal. It won't need to re-import your data. 

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. 

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.

Note: If the option isn't appearing, make sure it isn't set to Read-Only.

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':

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'.

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