When was our last customer interview? Who should we reach out to next? Both are simple questions, but digging for the answers can slow you down. The Salesforce integration with Aha! Discovery automates contact syncing, allowing information to flow between both tools. This helps you build a research-ready database of participants in Aha! Discovery using the data you already have in Salesforce — all while keeping teams in Salesforce informed about when and how often you speak to customers.
The Salesforce integration is included in the Aha! Discovery Advanced and Aha! Ideas Advanced plans. When you combine both plans, you get a broad range of valuable benefits from the integration. See the full list of Salesforce integration features for more information.
Use the links below to skip ahead at any time:
Prerequisites
Integration type |
Two-way |
Aha! Ideas level |
Account level |
Required user permissions: Configuration |
|
Required user permissions: Use integration |
|
Associated records |
Aha! Discovery
Salesforce
|
Your Salesforce edition must have API access to use this integration.
Overview
Aha! Discovery's Salesforce integration provides a simple way to sync contacts in Aha! Discovery with your contacts in Salesforce. Once you set up the integration, you can import your Salesforce contacts into your participant database in Aha! Discovery, including any information you have about them that you want to make available. The integration will also add new contacts created in Salesforce to Aha! Discovery.
Integrating Aha! Discovery with Salesforce involves several steps in both tools, so it can be helpful to walk through the integration procedure at a high level:
To start the process, you need to install the most recent Aha! Ideas package in your Salesforce account.
Determine which Salesforce fields you want to import with contacts, and configure your contact custom layout in your Aha! account to include corresponding fields so the data you import has a place to go.
Link the two accounts to each other through an account-level integration in Aha! Discovery and map fields to Salesforce.
Install the Aha! Discovery package in Salesforce
Log in to your Salesforce instance. Then, click this link to install the latest version of the integration. This link will always be the latest version. If you already have the integration installed, it will upgrade your package to the latest version while preserving your existing data. If you are setting up this integration with a sandbox account, you might need to manually change the login URL to Salesforce.
You will see a page describing the package. Click Install. It may take a minute or two for the installation to complete.
Configure custom layouts
When you link your Salesforce accounts and contacts to your Aha! Discovery organizations and contacts, you might want to add new custom fields to your custom layouts for those records. This provides a place for customer information to go when you import it from Salesforce.
Consider what type of information you have stored in Salesforce that you would want to know about potential research participants and the organizations they work for. You can map insights like user type or permission to contacts and fields like revenue and account owner for organizations.
Navigate to Settings ⚙️ -> Account -> Custom layouts. You will need to be an administrator with customization permissions to do this.
Click the Contacts or Organizations tab, depending on which record layout you want to configure.
Click Add custom field to add any fields you want to map to Salesforce.
Click Next.
Enter the field details.
Click Create to create your field.
You might want to add the Integrations field to your contact and organization layouts at this time. It will provide a link from the Aha! Discovery record to its corresponding record in Salesforce.
Add the Salesforce integration in Aha! Discovery
Now, you need to link your Aha! Discovery account to Salesforce so you can import contacts and organizations. If you are subscribed to the Aha! Ideas Advanced plan and you already have your Salesforce integration configured, you can skip to the Mappings section below to map contacts.
In your Aha! Discovery account, go to Settings ⚙️ -> Account and click the + icon next to Integrations. Click on the green + Salesforce button to add a Salesforce integration. Then, follow the steps to finish setting up the integration.
Start: Add a name to your integration and click Save and continue.
Configure sandbox (optional): If you are using a Salesforce sandbox, enter the host here. If you are not using a sandbox, leave the field blank. Click Save and continue to continue.
Authorize: Click the Authenticate button. The Salesforce login screen will appear. Enter your user credentials to log in. The user setting up the integration must have permission for all records that will be linked to your Aha! Discovery account and API access. Click Allow on the next screen to finish authenticating Salesforce. Then, click Save and continue.
-
Mappings: In this step, you will map Aha! records to Salesforce records.
Start by clicking Add record +. Select the Aha! record from the left and the Salesforce record on the right to link those record types, linking Organization (Aha!) to Account (Salesforce) and then Contact (Aha!) to Contact (Salesforce).
Next, you will map the fields within the Aha! records you just linked to corresponding fields in Salesforce. Start by clicking Field mappings beneath the Organization or Contact record link.
Continue configuring your field mappings by selecting the Aha! field on the left with the desired Salesforce field on the right. Fields in Aha! that contain preset list values will require additional configuration. To ensure each part of these fields is mapped appropriately, open the configure modal for the field by clicking ⚙️ Configure. In the Configure modal, matching values are mapped automatically and you can rearrange values manually as needed. Values may map one-to-one or one-to-many.
Click Save and continue to save your mappings.
-
Enable: On the final screen of your integration setup, you will see two options for importing data from Salesforce.
Approve new records before importing: If your Salesforce integration is configured to approve new records before importing, account data will not be imported into Aha! until it is approved in the Settings ⚙️ -> Integration updates window. Clear the workspace filter to review new contacts prior to import.
Automatically import new records: This is the default option. If this setting is enabled, new contacts and organizations will be imported automatically when the account in Salesforce is created or updated.
You can set filters to control which new Salesforce contacts should be imported. In the Filter imports section, click Show filters to expand the section. Use the filters to narrow down which accounts and contacts you want to import. With your filters in place, only accounts and contacts that meet all the filter criteria will be imported.
After selecting an import option, click Enable integration.
Import contacts and organizations into Aha! Discovery
Once your integration is set up, contacts and organizations will import whenever someone creates or updates them in Salesforce going forward (according to your import setting in the Enable step of your integration setup). You might also want to start with a bulk import of contacts and organizations from Salesforce into your participant database in Aha! Discovery.
Import Salesforce data into the account level of Aha! Discovery:
Go to Settings ⚙️ -> Account -> Integrations and select your active Salesforce integration.
On the Start step, click Import records.
Check the boxes next to Contact to Contact and Account to Organization.
Configure filters for the accounts and contacts you wish to import. Then, click Save and continue.
This will import all contacts and organizations into Aha! Discovery from Salesforce that match these filters, along with the fields you have mapped through your integration. If you import contacts from Salesforce that already exist in Aha! Discovery, records will be matched and linked if the contact email fields match exactly. If they do not match exactly, it may result in duplicate contacts in Aha! Discovery.
If you have thousands of contacts to import from Salesforce, we recommend that you use the available filters to do smaller imports. It may take several hours for the import to complete. As it runs, you will see contacts appear in Aha! Discovery. You can check progress on the Background jobs page.
Configuration notes
You can have more than one Salesforce integration in Aha! Discovery. Please note:
-
Each Salesforce integration must be connected and authorized to a different Salesforce instance.
This can be helpful if you want to have separate integrations for your sandbox or if your company uses multiple Salesforce instances across business units.
If you try to connect multiple integrations to the same Salesforce instance, only the most recently connected integration will work.