How can I use Salesforce in Sprout?

Send qualified leads to your sales team, create new contacts, and create new cases for your customer service teams directly from social. With Sprout Social’s integration with Salesforce you can push messages and contact information you receive from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and other networks, so you can get your customers in touch with the right teams quickly. To learn more about Sprout's Salesforce Service Cloud integration, read our Help Center guides.

Note: You must be an Account Owner or have the Manage Profiles Company permission and Manage Advanced Inbox Features feature permission to set up this integration. As of March 1, 2024 this integration is only available on the Advanced Plan.

This article contains the following sections:

• Prerequisites 
• Connecting to Salesforce
• Managing your Salesforce connections
• Creating an entity

• Lookup and link Contacts and Leads

• Creating Cases in Sprout
• Editing Salesforce data
• Salesforce FAQ

Note: If you're looking to better understand how Sprout works to help Salesforce customers better connect with their audience, streamline publishing workflows and deliver excellent social customer care, visit our overview site here. 

Prerequisites

There are a few things to consider before connecting your Salesforce account and creating entities, contacts, leads and cases in Sprout:

• The Salesforce account used for connection must have permissions in Salesforce to view, create and edit Salesforce Contacts, Leads and Cases. If you don't have the necessary permissions, contact your Salesforce Administrator or connect a different account that does have the necessary permissions.

• Although accounts lacking permissions can connect to Sprout, doing so causes errors when trying to use the integration.

Connecting to Salesforce

To connect your Salesforce Instance to Sprout:

1. Navigate to Account and settings > Settings.
2. Click Integrations under Inbox on the left-side navigation.
3. Click Connect for Salesforce.
4. Accept the terms and conditions of the Twitter EULA. 
5. Select Production or Sandbox.
   
   
6. Complete the OAuth process to securely log in to your Salesforce account using your admin credentials. If your sandbox account uses a custom domain, select Use Custom Domain on the Salesforce login screen and enter the domain before authenticating with your sandbox credentials.
7. Click Complete. You now see Connected on the Integrations screen for Salesforce.
   
   

Managing your Salesforce connections

Click the pencil icon on the Integrations screen to manage your Salesforce connections. From the modal, you can delete, edit or add a new account.

Toggle the Show in Reply Layer slider to hide the connection from the reply layer in the inbox.

If your sandbox account uses a custom domain, select Use Custom Domain on the Salesforce login screen and enter the domain before authenticating with your sandbox credentials.

Creating an entity

You can create Cases, Contacts and Leads from Sprout and push social message details to your Salesforce Instance. This push creates a new row on the entity type you specify with the social information tied to it.

Create a Lead if you notice someone on Twitter is engaging with your brand and wants to learn more about your products. By creating a Lead, your sales team can see it in Salesforce, claim it and then follow up to begin the sales process.

Create a Case if a customer reached out to you via Facebook about an issue or problem with your product and they require a little more support. Creating a Case ensures your support team can see the request, claim the case and assist your customer.

Create a Contact for someone who works at a company that you already do business with. For example, if a CEO from one of your partners starts interacting with you on Instagram, you can create a new Contact in Salesforce to keep their Instagram profile along with their contact information.

To create an entity from Sprout:

1. Navigate to the Smart Inbox tab.
2. Click for the message you want to create an entity from. You can create entities from public and private messages. The reply window appears.
3. Click Link to create a Contact or Lead in the right-hand panel of the reply window, or click to create a Case.
   
4. Enter the appropriate fields based on the entity type:
   • For a Case, the contents of the message, along with the social profile are automatically populated in the Description field. Add more information if necessary, and then click Create Case.
   • For a Contact, the first name, last name and social profile are automatically populated. Additionally, the description auto populates with the contents of the message. Add more information if necessary, and then click Create Contact.
   • For a Lead, the first name, last name, social profile and source fields are automatically populated. Additionally, the description auto populates with the contents of the message. Add more information if necessary, and then click Create Lead.
     
     

When the entity is successfully created, a message appears in the lower-right corner of your screen. 

You can double-verify that the entity appears in your Salesforce Instance by logging in and checking the rows for the particular entity you created.

Lookup and link Contacts and Leads

You can lookup and link Contacts and Leads when interacting with users in non-review message types in Sprout. Sprout automatically searches for related Contacts and Leads using the social profile, name and email of the user you’re interacting with. 

Sprout automatically looks for Contact and Lead information in your Salesforce instance to match interactions with. When replying to messages in the Smart Inbox, you’ll either see a preview of the suggested match or a notification stating that no suggested Leads or Contacts were found.

To link Contacts and Leads with a preview of a suggested match:

1. Click to reply to the conversation with the user. In the right-hand panel of the message window, you see the Link section appear in the Salesforce Contact area.
2. Click Link. The Link modal appears.
3. Verify the Contact is a match, and then click Yes, link.
   
   

If the suggested Contact isn’t a match, click No, continue searching. This opens the Contact and Lead search popup. Now you can:

1. Enter the name, email or social profile of the user.
2. Click Create new Salesforce Contact if you can’t locate a match or click Create new Salesforce Lead. The Contact or Lead popup appears. Sprout prefills as many of the fields as possible and copies your entire message history into the Description box.
3. Connect the new Contact to an existing Account or enter a Company Name when creating a new Lead.
4. Click Create Contact or Create Lead.
   
   

To link Contacts and Leads where no suggested matches are available:

1. Click to reply to the conversation with the user. In the right-panel of the message window, you see the notification that No suggested Lead/Contact found.
2. Click Search Salesforce.
3. Enter the name, email or social profile of the user.
4. Click Create new Salesforce Contact if you can’t locate a match or click Create new Salesforce Lead. The Contact or Lead popup appears. Sprout prefills as many of the fields as possible and copies your entire message history into the Description box.
5. Connect the new Contact to an existing Account or enter a Company Name when creating a new Lead.
6. Click Create Contact or Create Lead.
   
   

Now, whenever you open a private message with the user in Sprout, you’ll see all their connected Contact and Lead information from your Salesforce instance.

Creating Cases in Sprout

You can create Salesforce Cases directly in Sprout. To create a Salesforce Case:

1. Navigate to the Smart Inbox and open the message you want to create a Case for.
2. Ensure a User is matched in the right-hand side panel.
3. Click next to Salesforce Cases.
4. Complete the following fields:
   
   
• Enter a descriptive subject.
• Enter details for the Lead or Contact
• Assign a Priority
• Enter a related Contact (optional)
• Enter a Related Account (optional)
• Enter a description. This is where the message history gets pre-filled
5. Click Create Case.

Now the Case appears in the Salesforce Case section in the right-hand panel. You can also add in any private comments for your team. 

Note: Cases created without a linked Contact in the Related Contact field aren't viewable in Sprout.

You can make any edits to your Case by clicking into the fields on the Case. You can also click View All Cases to see a list of all Cases open with a particular Contact or Lead.

Commenting on Cases 

You can view and add comments to any Salesforce Cases in Sprout. Use comments to coordinate with support colleagues using Salesforce or to document the status of the Case. You can also add private comments for your team.

Editing Salesforce data in Sprout

Social Profiles may be linked to Salesforce Contacts and Leads. If you link a Contact, all related Cases will automatically link to the Social Profile. Once a link is made, each time you open a conversation with that user, their profile view contains all of their Salesforce data.

You can edit their data directly from the profile view by clicking into the field. Make your updates and click Enter. Their data is updated in Sprout and in your Salesforce instance.

Salesforce Integration FAQs

Can any user set up the Salesforce integration?

No. Only account admins or users with Edit Profiles & Permissions can set up the Salesforce integration.

Why is N/A populating in the Name field when I create a lead?

Due to privacy restrictions from some social networks, the full name of the social profile doesn’t always appear. When no first name comes through, N/A is populated in its place. If you know the first name for the social profile, you can change it.

Will the Case, Contact or Lead owner and creator always be the account owner or is it the user that created the entity?

The user that connected the Salesforce instance to Sprout is always the owner. 

Why am I seeing errors when I search or try to create a Salesforce entity in Sprout?

Errors occur when the connected account doesn't have the necessary permissions to access the data in Salesforce. Check with your Salesforce Administrator to confirm you have the permissions to view, create and edit Salesforce Contacts, Leads and Cases.

I have the Salesforce permissions to view, create and edit Salesforce Contacts, Leads and Cases but I’m still seeing errors in Sprout Social.

Check with your administrator to see if your Salesforce instance has validation in place to allow third party integrations to access your instance data. This could be in the form of custom rule validation specific to your entities or a firewall that prevents IP addresses that are not recognized by your instance.

My Salesforce instance has a firewall setup. Can Sprout give me an IP address to add to the allowlist?

Sprout can't guarantee or provide a list of static IPs due to limitations of the AWS technology our platform operates on. Unfortunately AWS leverages dynamic IPs by design.

 

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