Article updated: January 14, 2025
Set up Hootsuite social customer care for Salesforce
Connect Salesforce Service Cloud with Hootsuite Inbox 2.0 to share customer insights and interaction history, streamline workflows, and automate tasks. Once set up, your team can create Salesforce cases from Inbox 2.0 conversations and continue messaging or managing the conversation from either Inbox 2.0 or Salesforce. You can also use this integration to help your customer service team respond quickly with automation tools and an optional AI chatbot.
Audience: Enterprise Inbox 2.0 admins with Advanced Inbox. Want more Hootsuite features? Upgrade your plan.
Requirements:
- You must be a Salesforce administrator and the Admin for your Hootsuite organization to set up and configure Hootsuite social customer care for Salesforce.
- You must have Salesforce Service Cloud Enterprise or Unlimited with Lightning Experience to use this feature.
1. Create a user for the integration
Go to Salesforce and follow the instructions in the Salesforce help article Add a single user to add a new user for the integration. Ensure you include the following settings for the new user:
- User license - Salesforce integration
- Profile - Minimum access - API only integrations
- Set to Active, Save and send verification email
- Set password from verification email
2. Create a new connected app
Go to Salesforce and follow the instructions in the Salesforce help article Create a connected app to create a new connected app for the integration. Ensure you include the following settings for the new connected app:
- Select Enable OAuth Settings.
- Set the Callback URL to https://oauth.hootsuite.com/v1/callback.
- Add Manage user data via APIs (api) to the Selected OAuth Scopes list.
- Select Enable client credentials flow.
- Edit the Policies for the app to add the user you previously created for the integration Client credentials flow.
- Make sure you copy the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret for use in later steps.
Optionally, follow the instructions in the Salesforce help Set assignment expiration details for users in permissions sets and permission set groups to set the assignments for the user you previously created for the integration and set the Admin to have No expiration date.
3. Install the integration
Install and configure the integration. You'll need the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret you copied in the previous steps.
- You can find the Hootsuite social customer care integration in the Salesforce AppExchange. Go here to install the integration.
- Select the Hootsuite organization connected to your Salesforce account.
- Enter your Salesforce URL. The URL must contain
my.salesforce.com
. If you use a custom URL for Salesforce, it needs to contain or end with this string. - In the OAuth2 Client ID from Salesforce box, enter the Consumer Key you copied in the previous step.
- In the OAuth3 Client secret from Salesforce box, enter the Consumer Secret you copied in the previous step.
- Select Copy to copy the Hootsuite integration ID, you'll need this ID to configure Salesforce.
- Return to the Salesforce Connect page you opened in step 1 of these instructions.
- Enter your Hootsuite integration ID and Consumer Secret, and then select Save. Optionally, select Validate Connection if you'd like to validate this connection.
4. Assign layouts
Go to Salesforce and follow the instructions to set your page and contact layouts.
- Follow the instructions in the Salesforce help article Assign page layouts to profiles or record types and assign all of the profiles in the Hootsuite Conversation Record Type to the Hootsuite Case Layout. If
Hootsuite Case Layout
is not available, you can create the layout manually. This layout needs to include the following fields:Conversation Id
,Social Network Channel
,Created From Hootsuite By Email
,Created From Hootsuite By Id
, andHootsuite Contact Persona
. - Follow the instructions in the Salesforce help article Assign compact layouts to record types to assign the Hootsuite Contact Persona the default layout of Hootsuite Contact Persona Compact.
5. Activate the page
Go to Salesforce and follow the instructions in the Salesforce help article Activate Lightning Experience record pages to activate the Hootsuite Conversation Page and set it as the default Lighting page for your users.
6. Assign permission sets
Go to Salesforce and follow the instructions in the Salesforce help article Manage permission set assignments under Assign a permission set to multiple users to add the Hootsuite User assignments to your users.
7. Map objects
In the Salesforce App Launcher, navigate to the Hootsuite app. Select Setup, and then select Data Mapping. You can choose to use the default mappings or update the custom data mapping Contact and Case configurable objects.
To map the details in each case, set your default values for Origin, Priority, Record Type, and Status.
If you are using a custom case object mapped to data, you'll need to create a flow to send closed case information to Hootsuite. Follow the instructions in the Salesforce help article Create a record-triggered flow. Ensure you include the following settings:
- Make sure you configure the trigger to flow when A record is updated, set the condition requirements to the field
HootsuiteCloud_is_Closed
equals True, and run the flow Every time a record is updated. - Next, add a flow element for the Apex Action Close Case API call and set the input variables as follows before activating the flow:
-
caseConversationId
- Select field mapped to Hootsuite Conversation Id. -
caseRecordId
- Select record Id field.
-
Optional additional steps
You may choose to do any of the following to further configure the integration:
- Add Hootsuite Contact Personas to the apps navigation bar to make it easier to find. Follow the instructions in the Salesforce help article Personalize the navigation bar in Lighting Experience.
- Add Hootsuite Contact Personas to your standard
Related List - Single
component in Salesforce. Follow the instructions in the Salesforce help article Create dynamic related lists in Lighting App Builder. Include Use this contact for theParent record
and Hootsuite Contact Personas for theRelated list
.
Next up: Automatically create Salesforce cases from conversations in Inbox 2.0.
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