Showpad and Salesforce are a powerful combination. Showpad’s Salesforce integration capabilities will enable sales reps to focus on selling and ease the pain of administrative work. It's a great way to share specific content, available in Showpad, with customers and prospects. The corresponding contacts, opportunities, and meetings are stored in the Salesforce CRM.
In this article, you will learn how to connect your Salesforce instance to Showpad via the Online Platform, which is the first step in integrating the two systems to take advantage of all the features available. You will also learn which Salesforce permissions are needed for specific features of the integration.
Key features
- Access the Showpad app with your Salesforce account
- Compatible with Salesforce Classic and Lightning
- Populate Salesforce contacts with Showpad
- Log all Showpad activity in Salesforce
- Share content available in Showpad with Contacts and Leads created in Salesforce
- See what content is recommended for which Opportunity
- Check all shares via Showpad on Account and Opportunity level
You need this to succeed
- Admin privileges on both the Showpad and Salesforce platforms
- Showpad Ultimate plan
- Salesforce Enterprise, Unlimited, or Professional plan with the Web Services API
You can purchase the Salesforce integration for an additional fee. Pricing information is available on the Showpad website in the Integrations section. If you are interested in this feature, please contact your customer success manager to activate the Salesforce integration.
Note: If your organization uses the Salesforce Professional plan, the Web Services API add-on must also be purchased through Salesforce.
See how it works
Do this step by step
Let's start configuring the Salesforce integration in your Showpad instance.
- To connect Salesforce and Showpad, you need to configure your Salesforce instance(s) in Showpad's Online Platform. You can configure multiple CRM instances if your company uses more than one.
Open the Showpad Online Platform and log in with your Administrator credentials. - In Settings, select CRM under the Integrations section, then select Connect to CRM.
- Enter an Alias for your CRM Configuration. If you're planning to set up multiple Salesforce instances, be sure to choose appropriate names for each instance to make it easier to identify them.
- Select the Salesforce CRM type from the drop down menu.
- Choose the connection type: Production or Sandbox.
- Enter a Domain name for your Salesforce Instance.
- If you're using a custom domain to access Salesforce, like https://companyxyz.my.salesforce.com, enable Use a Custom Domain and enter companyxyz.
- By leaving this field blank, users will connect via https://login.salesforce.com
- Click Connect to Salesforce.
- A Reminder will pop up asking you to ensure you have the proper permissions to be the integration user. Click Connect. You'll need to enter your Salesforce credentials now. This login will be used as an Integration user to connect with Salesforce.
If the user that is used to configure this integration is not a full admin, find more about the following permissions needed at the end of this article.
The integration works with a server to server communication. The outcome of this is that the originating IP address will not be the company's IP range or IP address, but a Showpad IP address. If you use IP restrictions, we advise reading our OAuth app recommendations. - After logging in, the Showpad Online Platform will reopen. You will see a message when you've successfully connected your CRM instance.
About permissions
The following section will explain the various permissions needed to achieve certain integration actions with Salesforce.
Permissions for the integration user if not a Salesforce admin:
For background tasks such as ContentROI reporting, we use the integration user. By default, we set the integration user to be the Salesforce user you used to set up the integration within the Showpad Online Platform, but you can always override it with a different user if needed in the details screen. These are the permissions needed for the integration user:
- System Permissions
- API Enabled
- Edit Tasks
- Edit Events
- View Roles and Role Hierarchy
- View Setup and Configuration
Object settings
- Read/Create/Edit for Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, Accounts objects.
- Read/Create/Edit/Delete for Showpad Activities, Showpad Activities Items, Showpad Content & Showpad Content Views objects.
- The integration user should have access to the Task Object as well as the Related To field, as a field-level permission for full effectiveness.
- When configuring a connection with a sandbox, make sure to enter a custom URL and that non-Lightning is the applied setting.
To ensure ContentROI syncing works:
- Read / create / edit for the custom objects used for ContentROI reporting: ShowpadForSF_Showpad_Content_c,ShowpadForSF_Showpad_Activity_Item_c,ShowpadForSF_Showpad_Activity_c,ShowpadForSF_Showpad_Content_View_c
- Access to the Showpad for Salesforce included apex classes from the package that expose the 'syncing' endpoints:
InfoRestAPI
ContentViewRESTAPI
ActivityRestAPI. (set under setup > apex classes > 'security' next to the class) - Be part of the profiles with access to the 'Showpad App' connected app that's part of Showpad for Salesforce
- Assure read+write access to the custom Showpad_Activity__c lookup field on Task object
Permissions for logging activities to Salesforce as a sales rep:
For logging activity to Salesforce, we use the individual user’s authentication. The following permissions are required for users:
- 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
What's up next
Now that your Showpad and Salesforce instances are connected, the following options are possible to utilize your new integration.
- Integrate Showpad activities in Salesforce
- Enable auto-provisioning to automatically create Showpad users
- Install the Showpad app from the AppExchange
- Set up Content ROI analytics