What: The BlueConic Salesforce connection allows you to synchronize customer profile data between BlueConic and the Salesforce Platform (back and forth). The connection supports batch import and export.
About BlueConic: The BlueConic customer data platform harnesses the data required to power the recognition of an individual at each interaction, and then synchronizes their intent across the marketing ecosystem.
Why: Integrating your CRM data into the BlueConic customer data platform provides prime material for segmentation and personalization. BlueConic features a unique data collection engine that captures data at the customer level for known and anonymous users. For known users, or once a user becomes known, having this data in your CRM will arm your call center and other communication platforms with relevant details about your customers' explicit and implicit intents.
Creating a BlueConic Salesforce connection
To get started, create a new Salesforce Connection in BlueConic:
- In the BlueConic navigation bar, select Connections.
- Click the Add connection button.
- Select "Salesforce Connection" to create a new Salesforce connection.
The Salesforce Connection page opens. You can expand or collapse metadata fields (favorite, labels, and description) by clicking the gray chevron at the top of the page. - In the metadata section you can choose whether to get email notifications when the connection runs or fails to run.
- Enter a title for the connection, e.g. "Salesforce" and Save your settings.
Once you have created a Salesforce connection in BlueConic, you can start to configure it.
Note: You can have only four separate BlueConic connections to the same Salesforce instance at one time. Creating additional connections to the same Salesforce instance will invalidate the authentication of one of the existing connections.
Salesforce permissions required
There are several Salesforce permissions you need in order to set up and run this connection.
- To be able to send information from BlueConic to Salesforce, BlueConic needs to be authorized or allowed to access Salesforce. We recommend that you not use your own user but instead use a separate user for authorizing BlueConic. This way your Salesforce reports will not be affected. Using a separate user may require you to adjust assignment rules or other Salesforce settings.
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You need the following Salesforce permissions:
- API Enabled
- Manage Data Integrations
- View Setup and Configuration
Authorizing your connection to Salesforce
To set up your connection between BlueConic and Salesforce, start by following these steps:
- Log out of Salesforce.
- Select whether to use a Salesforce sandbox environment instance for the connection. The instance URL or path to your Salesforce instance is shown.
- Click the button Connect with Salesforce.
- A pop-up window opens where you can log in to Salesforce. Log in with the separate user (recommended), or with your own user. After you log in, Salesforce will ask for permissions.
- Click "Allow Access."
- Save your connection settings at the top of the page.
Your connection should not show an error, which means that BlueConic can now send updates to Salesforce.
At the bottom of the Setup and run page, the Run history section shows any completed runs of the Salesforce connection. See Running the Salesforce connection below for details.
Using the Salesforce connection
Now that you have a working connection between BlueConic and Salesforce, it is time to define exactly what will be synchronized between the two systems. You can determine:
- What data to collect from Salesforce
- What data to deliver to Salesforce
- When to create a new Lead in Salesforce
- How to match profiles in BlueConic to Leads, Contacts, or Persons in Salesforce
The following sections describe how to configure data imports and exports for synchronizing BlueConic and Salesforce.
Importing data from Salesforce into BlueConic
To configure a data import, you start by creating an "import goal" by clicking Add goal > Import goal and following these steps.
Tip: If you want to import multiple Salesforce objects (leads and contacts, for example), we recommend that you create separate import goals for each object type.
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Select the Salesforce object type to import data from, and select a profile property to store the Salesforce data.
Choose whether you're importing data from Salesforce leads, contacts, or persons. You also need to select a BlueConic profile property to store the object type. You can select the default profile property, Salesforce Objecttype or use a different one.
Note that the Salesforce person objects will only appear in BlueConic if the person object is available in your Salesforce environment. -
Match identifiers between Salesforce and BlueConic.
Select a value from Salesforce in the left-hand column and match it to a unique identifier in BlueConic in the right-hand column. Use the checkbox to select whether to allow BlueConic to create a new profile if the matching identifier is not found in BlueConic. -
Map Salesforce data to BlueConic profile properties.
Select the Salesforce fields to import, map them to BlueConic profile properties, and use the drop-down menu to choose how data should be added or merged.
The merge rule setting determines how a value collected from Salesforce will be stored into the BlueConic property. These are the options:- Set: Copy the value from Salesforce exactly to the profile property, overwriting the previous value.
- Set if empty: Copy the value from Salesforce exactly to the profile property but only if it is empty. If the profile property already has a value, do nothing.
- Add: Add the value from Salesforce to the list of values already in the profile property if it hasn't been added yet, omitting duplicates.
- Sum: Numerically add the value from Salesforce to the value in the profile property. If the profile property was empty, it will be regarded as value 0. This only works for profile properties and values that contain integer numbers.
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Optional: Import Salesforce case data into BlueConic Timeline events.
You can import data from Salesforce case data events to enrich BlueConic Timeline events. Map your Salesforce Service Cloud data to the corresponding BlueConic Timeline event properties. -
Save your settings, turn the connection On, and run the connection.
See instructions for running the connection below. The first time the connection runs, it retrieves all the data you request. On subsequent runs, it imports only the changed profile data.
Exporting data from BlueConic to Salesforce
To export BlueConic profile data to Salesforce, you start by creating an "export goal" by clicking Add goal > Export goal and following these steps.
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Select the BlueConic segment whose profile data you want to export.
Profiles in this segment with matching identifiers in Salesforce will be exported. -
Select the Salesforce object type to export data to.
Choose whether you are exporting data to leads, persons, or contacts in Salesforce. You can choose whether to create a new object in Salesforce (a new lead or contact) if no match is found. Note: You cannot create a new person in Salesforce with this connection. -
Match the BlueConic identifier to the Salesforce identifier.
Select matching identifiers. If you are allowing Salesforce to create new objects (in the previous step), you can match by email instead of IDs. -
Map BlueConic data to Salesforce.
Select the BlueConic data you're exporting in the left-hand column and match it to Salesforce fields in the right-hand column.
Click the BlueConic icon to open a drop-down menu where you can choose among the types of information you want to export:
- Profile property: The value of a specific profile property.
- BlueConic profile identifier: The unique identifier for a profile.
- Associated segments: All segments, or a selection of one or more specific segments that the profile is associated with.
- Associated lifecycles: All lifecycles this profile is associated with. Learn more about Lifecycles.
- All viewed interactions: The names of all viewed BlueConic interactions (for the current page view) as the value, and names will be pipe-separated.
- Permission level: The permission level set in the profile.
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Text value: Enter any static text.
- Save your settings, turn the connection On, and run the connection.
Synchronizing data between the two systems
As soon as you activate and save the Salesforce connection in BlueConic, scheduled runs can start to synchronize the two systems regularly.
Running the Salesforce connection
Open the Setup and run page of your Salesforce connection to run the connection or set up a schedule to run it. See Scheduling connections for detailed instructions.
Data exchange
In the Data exchange section, you can see the number of unique profiles that have been exported via the connection. Note that these are unique profiles -- for example, if the same profile is exported multiple times, it is counted only once.
Usage notes
These notes describe when the connection runs and how data is matched between BlueConic and Salesforce:
- The BlueConic connection to Salesforce is bidirectional but initiated and controlled from BlueConic.
- The profile property that has been selected under "'Match BlueConic profiles to Salesforce leads or subscribers'" is used to match Leads, Contacts, or Persons in Salesforce. Optionally, new Leads are created in Salesforce when no match is found. (You can enable this option using the "Allow creating new leads/contacts/persons…" checkbox.)
Log file
If there was a problem during synchronization it will be mentioned under "Details." When you hover over a run, a "Download log" icon appears on the right. Click the icon to download the log for that run.
Privacy management
Connections can be added to Objectives, allowing for privacy and consent management of the information that is being picked up. A connection will only process the profiles of customers or visitors who have consented to at least one of the objectives that the connection is linked to.