Integrate Showpad activities in Salesforce

Note: This article is about the new beta Admin App, which is still in development. Changes may occur. Please provide feedback directly in the beta app.

With Showpad's Salesforce integration, users can significantly reduce their administrative tasks by easily logging their Showpad activities in Salesforce. When configured, users will find the ability to log any Showpad email, link shares, Shared Space creation events and participant invites to the corresponding contact, lead, opportunity, or account in Salesforce. In Salesforce, we first allow requests coming from the Showpad domain. Then, we configure the settings in Showpad's Admin App.

You need this to succeed

• Active Admin privileges on both the Showpad and Salesforce platforms
• Showpad Ultimate plan
• Salesforce Enterprise or Unlimited plan
• The users logging their activity to Salesforce need
  • API access
  • Access to the records you wish for them to log to (such as Account, Opportunity, Lead, and Contact)
  • Create, edit, and view permission for Tasks
• Before following these steps, please ensure your Salesforce instance is connected in Showpad’s Admin App. Read how to do so here.

See how it works

The quick way to awesomeness

1. Configure CORS
2. Filter contacts and configure object logging
3. Ensure proper task type
4. Enable logging by default
5. Basic troubleshooting

Do this step by step

Configure CORS 

The first step in configuring the Salesforce integration is to allow requests coming from the Showpad domain. Salesforce allows its customers to control which websites can use the Salesforce API. This helps keep your Salesforce instance secure by only allowing requests from known sites and denying all others. 

This setting is called CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing), and configuration is required for Showpad to integrate with Salesforce. The instructions below show how a Salesforce Admin can enable our Showpad domain to make requests to your Salesforce instance. 

Setting this up allows:

• Showpad to create a Salesforce Activity whenever a user in the Showpad app or the Web App shares content with a prospect or customer.
• Showpad to create a Salesforce Event whenever a user on any mobile app wants to log a meeting to Salesforce.

1. In Salesforce, click the gear icon and select Setup.
2. In the left menu, search for and select CORS. You can also manually select Security Controls > CORS.
3. Add a New Allowed Origin.
4. Add https://*.showpad.biz and click Save. Here, you will use an asterisk instead of your organization name.

   Note: If the permission Modify All Data is disabled in Salesforce, we will inform you on Showpad's Admin App that we cannot verify the CORS configuration. You can still continue setting up the integration when you see this warning.

5. When users compose an email Share, Salesforce will retrieve suggested entries from your full contact list. Influencing and limiting this query is possible for certain use cases. If you would like to surface custom Salesforce field values related to the Contact or Lead within the contact search results in Showpad, please contact your CSM.

Filter contacts and configure object logging

1. Start by selecting which contacts will populate when users send an email Share in Showpad. Within Integrations, select CRM from the left side menu. Choose your Salesforce integration and scroll to the CRM data to Showpad section. Click Edit next to Data visibility. 
2. Choose whether users can view:
   • All contacts (all contacts they have access to within Salesforce according to their Profile, Permission, and Sharing Rules settings).
   • Only user's contacts (only contacts they are set as the Owner of in Salesforce).
3. Click Save. 
4. To enable advanced logging to custom objects, navigate to the Showpad data to CRM section and click Edit next to Logging.
5. Account and Opportunity will be selected by default. You can check other boxes to indicate other relevant custom objects for the “Related To” field. This allows users to relate shares to objects other than accounts or opportunities when logging tasks. 
6. In Salesforce, the custom object must have the Allow Activities and Allow Search boxes checked in the Optional Features and Search Status sections.
7. Select the custom objects you want to log activity against, then click Save. The list you see has the same objects available in the connected SFDC’s instance in the Related To field of a Task. Users are not able to log meetings to a custom object.  
8. It is possible to control which user groups can log activity to the Salesforce integration. When enabled, these users can log activities, as well as access sharing insights and content recommendations using the Showpad Insights app in Salesforce.
   In the Admin Settings, click Features from the left side menu. Scroll to Salesforce Activity Logging, and select All Users or Select Groups. If desired, choose which groups you wish to have access to, then click Apply.
9. When a Share is logged, you'll see the email body and a link to view the Share as the recipient in the comments of the Task Information. Depending on how your settings are configured, it will look similar to this for your users.
10. Optionally, you can allow Showpad email Share activity to be logged to multiple contacts. To do so, navigate in Salesforce to Setup, Feature Settings, Sales, then Activity Settings. Enable the 'Allow Users to Relate' option.
    If you've already connected your Salesforce instance to Showpad before enabling this option, please return to the CRM set up in Showpad's Admin App. In the logging section, click Edit to open, then Save your logging objects again. This will re-sync the Salesforce multiple contacts setting.
11. For Shared Spaces logged to account or opportunity, we will automatically log to CRM when an external participant invites another participant, to ensure visibility to sellers in their CRM.

Ensure task type

When creating the logged activities, Showpad can set the Salesforce ‘type’ field to a relevant value based on the specific type of share logged (Showpad share and Showpad email), which can help with reporting. To ensure tasks get this type, these values should be present in Salesforce before connecting your Salesforce instance in OP. To add them afterward, you can trigger a re-sync of the available task types by opening and re-saving the custom objects tab, as described in step 2 above.

Logging by default

You can streamline the logging of Share activity to Salesforce and make it easier to ensure that sellers consistently log their interactions by enabling automatic logging by default.

1. Log into the Admin App with your Administrator credentials, click the gear icon to open Settings.
2. Select CRM in the Integrations section, then click Settings.
3. Click the checkbox for Enable CRM logging by default.
4. Click Save.

Once enabled, Shares are automatically set up to be recorded in Salesforce by default. If your sellers haven’t signed into the CRM, they’ll be prompted to do so. If they’re already signed in, they’ll only need to add the Contact/Lead and Related to information. 

Note: This setting is for the Web App only.

Basic Troubleshooting

OAuth authentication error

The Showpad and Salesforce integration works with server-to-server communication. A consequence is that the originating user IP address will be changed with Showpad's address during the login process.

In cases where Login IP ranges are used or when users experience OAuth sign-in errors, we recommend changing the settings in the OAuth app from Enforce IP restrictions to Relax IP restrictions.

The Relax IP restrictions setting allows users to run the connected Showpad app without IP restrictions. You can find these settings in the Salesforce Administer section.

1. In Setup, search for Connected Apps. Open the Connected Apps OAuth Usage options in the Manage Apps tab.
   
2. Find the Showpad Salesforce Integration app and click Install.
3. From the Connect Apps OAuth Usage list, click Manage App Policies.
4. Click Edit Policies. Click the IP Relaxation drop-down menu, then change Enforce IP restrictions to Relax IP restrictions.
   
5. Click Save.

Salesforce connection is not working on the Web app

Ensure you are working on a browser that fully supports HTML. For a full overview of our browser requirements, click here.
Please make sure that in the Security settings, you have the miscellaneous option set to enable both internet and intranet. If this is not the case, Internet Explorer will not allow the Showpad page to connect to the Salesforce domain and get the contacts and leads data.

1. Go to Settings, Internet Options, Security.
2. You should see an Internet icon. Make sure it is selected. If they are using a Local intranet, apply the same change there.
3. Choose Custom.
4. Scroll until you find the below, and make sure Access data sources across domains is enabled.
5. Apply and save.
6. Make sure to apply the same settings for their Local intranet as well.
7. You will also have to make sure you have your CORS set-up in your Salesforce instance.

XMLHttpRequest cannot load. The Response has status code 401

To make Salesforce API calls, we need a valid access token. The access token is obtained on the Showpad servers and not in the user's browser. If the Salesforce setting "locks the session to the IP address" is activated, we can only send API calls from the Showpad servers because we requested the Salesforce token on our servers. Using that access token on a different IP address (your browser) will not work due to this Salesforce setting. If you switch off this setting, the access token can be used in the browser as well, and you'll be able to make Salesforce requests in the Web app.
Note that the mobile apps don't use our servers to request a new access token, so they don't have this issue.

Navigate to Session Settings and ensure the box for Lock sessions to the IP address from which they originated is unchecked.

Learn how this feature works in the current Online Platform.