Content recommendations help admins to create rules that suggest the most relevant content for each sales conversation in Salesforce. The recommendations, which serve up materials such as videos, ebooks, white papers, and infographics, are based on deal data in Salesforce.
In addition, as an admin, you can configure recommendation rules using all types of Salesforce fields and fields on related objects. This will give your sales reps the best suggestions on how they advance each deal. Users will find recommended content may be surfaced in Accounts, Leads, Contacts, or Opportunities, depending on the setup.
You need this to succeed
- Admin privileges on both the Showpad and Salesforce platforms
- Showpad Ultimate plan
- Salesforce Enterprise or Unlimited plan
- In Showpad, the users need access to the Experience that uses the recommended assets
Select your Salesforce Experience
 Classic |
 Lightning |
See how it's done on Salesforce Classic
- To enable these recommendations, make sure you first configure the Salesforce instance, CORS, and the Showpad for Salesforce app. There are some settings in your Salesforce instance that must be configured a certain way in order for the integration to work.
- Enable the Shared Activities by navigating to the Activity Settings via Setup, Build, Customize, Activities, Activity Settings. Enable the Allow Users to Relate... option.
See how it's done on Salesforce Lightning
- To enable these recommendations, make sure you first configure the Salesforce instance, CORS, and the Showpad for Salesforce app. There are some settings in your Salesforce instance that must be configured a certain way in order for the integration to work.
- Enable the Shared Activities by navigating to the Activity Settings via Feature Settings, Sales, Activity Settings. Enable the Allow Users to Relate... option.
Do this step by step
- Click the settings gear in the Online Platform and select Integrations.
- Create or edit an existing Instance in the CRM tab. Click the Salesforce instance you wish to set up recommendations for.
- Scroll down to the Recommendations tab and click Edit.
- Click Change. Select where you want to see the recommendations in Salesforce by checking Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and/or Opportunities.
Check the box if you wish to also include internal files in recommendations. These files are files intended for internal learning, and are marked not shareable.
If the Showpad App is added to Salesforce Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, or Lead pages without enabling recommendations, users will see the app widget with just the Showpad Insights tab.
- Click Create a Recommendation Rule. These rules link the tags of your assets with the Salesforce fields. When certain Salesforce criteria are met, Showpad content with the linked tag will be recommended.
- Recommendation rules can be configured using all types of Salesforce fields (including text, multi-value, picklist, etc.), as well as fields on related or child objects (for example, products related to the opportunity).
- In the Recommended Showpad content field, add the tags for which you want to surface content. You can match assets with ALL the selected tags, ANY of the selected tags, or NONE of the selected tags.
- Match ALL tags means that in order for an asset to be recommended, it must contain every one of tags listed in this field.
- Matching ANY of these tags means that in order for an asset to be recommended, it must contain at least one of the tags listed in this field.
- Match NONE of these tags means that in order for an asset to be recommended, it must not contain any of the tags listed in this field.
- Next, choose Object field and select Account, Contact, Lead or Opportunity from the drop-down menu.
- Optionally, if you want to based your recommendations on a Child Relation, select an option from the drop down.
- Next choose, choose the field from to the Object or Child object from the drop down menu, or type the related field in.
- Choose the parameter for the field value such as equals, contains, etc. Add the field value that will qualify for recommendations.
- Click Save when you're done editing.
- You can also create advanced rule sets combining Salesforce conditions using OR and AND operators. To do so, click Show advanced Recommendation Rule creation.
- Using the OR functionality means either Salesforce component of the rule can be true for recommendations to show.
- Using the AND functionality means that both components of the rule must be true for the recommendations to show.
Rule Examples
In the image below we will make recommendations for opportunities in the stage 'qualification'.
- Select 'Opportunity' as the object.
- Next, choose the related field 'Stage'.
- Select the qualifier 'equal to'.
- Add the field value 'Qualification'.
- In this example, when the opportunity stage field value is ‘qualification’, we will recommend content with the tags containing both ‘Agriculture’ and ‘Brochure’ that users have access to in their Experiences.
As an example of a rule using the optional child relation, we will make recommendations for products related to an opportunity.
- Select Opportunity as the object.
- Next, choose the child relation OpportunityLineItems. This is the intermediate ‘connecting’ object in Salesforce linking Opportunities to Products.
- For the Child object field, type product2.Name.
- For the qualifier, we selected equal to, and the value Showspace Unlimited as the product.
- In this example, when any of the products related to an opportunity is equal to Showspace Unlimited, we will recommend content with the tags Showspace and Unlimited that users have access to in their experiences.
- 'Opportunity' is the object.
- The related field is set to 'Stage'
- The qualifier is 'equal to'
- The field value is 'Qualification'
- Next, 'AND' was used to add another condition to the rule.
- Within this rule set, we will use an 'OR' qualifier, to say that the account's industry must be equal to Agriculture OR Biotechnology.
- In totality, this rule states that if the opportunity is in the qualification stage AND the account's industry is Agriculture or Biotechnology, content with both the tags 'agriculture' and 'brochure' will be shown.
Note: Recommendation Rules can only be based on existing picklist fields. If not available, you can create a custom picklist field in Salesforce.
If you create your Recommendation Rules and attach content tags to the correct fields, content will start to show up for your sales colleagues in the various places you selected. Assets will be categorized into All, Share, and Learn Tabs. All includes any assets relevant to the recommendation rules applicable, Share content is assets with the sharing permission enabled, and Learn is internal assets, with sharing not allowed.
More information about how it works for your sales reps is available here.
