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Aha! Ideas | Integrate with Salesforce without ideas capture

If you want to integrate your Aha! account with Salesforce so that you can import data, but you do not plan to use Salesforce to capture ideas, we recommend you use this guide for the best experience setting up your integration.

Your Salesforce edition must have API access to use this integration.

Use the links below at any time to skip ahead:

Prerequisites

Integration type

  • One-way

Aha! Ideas level

  • Account level

Required user permissions: Configuration

Required user permissions: Use integration

Associated records

Aha! Ideas

  • Organizations

Salesforce

  • Accounts

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Overview

Integrating Aha! Ideas and 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.

If you plan to import customer information from Salesforce into organizations in Aha! Ideas, you need to determine which fields from Salesforce that you want to import, and configure your organizations custom layout in your Aha! account to include corresponding fields.

The next step is to link the two accounts to each other through an account-level integration in Aha! Ideas and map fields to import account and opportunity data from Salesforce.


Install the Aha! Ideas package in Salesforce

  1. Log into your Salesforce instance, then click on this link to install the latest version of the integration. This link is always to the latest version. If you already have the integration installed, this 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 may need to manually change the login URL to Salesforce.

  2. You will see a page describing the package. Often people select users with administrator permissions in this step. Then, click Install. It may take a minute or two for the installation to complete.

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Configure custom layouts

Organizations

When you link your Salesforce accounts to your Aha! Ideas organizations, you may want to add new custom fields to your organizations layout to provide a place for customer information to go when you import it from Salesforce. Once you have imported details about your customers, you can use that data to group customers into segments.

Consider what type of information you have stored in Salesforce that you would want to see in Aha! Ideas. Insights like opportunity value, industry, location, and account owner can all be mapped.

  1. Navigate to Settings ⚙️ Account Custom layouts. You will need to be an administrator with customizations permissions to do this.

  2. Click the Organizations tab.

  3. Click Add custom field to add any fields you want to map to Salesforce.

  4. Click Next.

  5. Enter the field details.

  6. Click Create to create your field.

You may want to add the integrations field to your organizations layout at this time. It will provide a link from the Aha! record to its corresponding record in Salesforce.

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Add the Salesforce integration in Aha! Ideas

Now you need to link your Aha! Ideas account to Salesforce. This lets your Salesforce users create an Aha! Ideas idea (or link to an existing idea) without leaving Salesforce and allows you to import customer information into organizations.

In your Aha! Ideas account, go to the 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.

  1. Start: Add a name to your integration and click Save and continue.

  2. 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.

  3. Authorize: Click the Authenticate button. The Salesforce login screen will appear. Enter your user credentials to log in. This user must have permission for all opportunity and account records that will be linked to your Aha! Ideas account and have API access. Click Allow on the next screen to finish authenticating Salesforce. Then, click Save and continue.

  4. Capture ideas: Do not check the box next to Enable capturing ideas

  5. Mappings: In this step, you will map Aha! Ideas records to Salesforce records.

    1. Start by clicking Add record +. Then 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).

    2. Next you will map the fields within the Aha! records you just linked to corresponding fields in Salesforce records. Start by clicking Field mappings beneath the Organizations Accounts record link. First, map the Aha! organization 'email domain' field to an equivalent field in Salesforce. This will automatically associate your customer portal users to the correct organizations. This is not a standard field in Salesforce and may require that your Salesforce admin create this field and populate it with the appropriate email domain(s).

    3. Continue configuring your field mappings by selecting the Aha! Ideas 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 are mapped appropriately, open the configure modal for the field by clicking ⚙️ Configure. In the Configure modal, matching values are automatically mapped and you can manually rearrange values as needed. Values may map one-to-one or one-to-many.

    4. Click Save and continue to save your mappings.

      Organizations data is a one-way sync from Salesforce to Aha! Ideas. Only data from mapped fields will be sent to Aha! Ideas and any changes you make to organization fields in Aha! will not be reflected in Salesforce.

  6. 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 organizations prior to import.

    Automatically import new records: This is the default option. If this setting is enabled, new organizations will be automatically imported when the account in Salesforce is created or updated. After selecting an import option, click Enable integration.

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Import Salesforce data into Aha! Ideas

Once your integration is set up, accounts will be imported whenever they are created or updated in Salesforce going forward, according to your import setting above. You may also want to start with a bulk import of accounts from Salesforce to get customer data into Aha! immediately.

You will import Salesforce data into the account level of Aha! Ideas:

  1. Go to Settings ⚙️ Account Integrations and select your active Salesforce integration.

  2. On the Start step, click Import records.

  3. Check the box next to Account to Organization and select the account type from Salesforce that you want to import.

  4. Select Yes or No in the second menu to determine whether you want inactive or active account data to import. Then click Save and continue.

This will import all accounts into Aha! Ideas from Salesforce that match these filters, along with the fields you have mapped through your integration. If you import account data from Salesforce that already exists in organizations within Aha! Ideas, records will be matched and linked if the account and organization name fields match exactly. If they do not match exactly, it may result in duplicate organization records in Aha! Ideas. If you discover duplicate organizations, you can merge the organizations together and then manually link the organization to the intended Salesforce account.

If you have thousands of accounts to import from Salesforce, we recommend that you use the available filters to break this into smaller imports. It may take several hours for the import to complete. As it runs, you will see organizations appear in Aha! Ideas and you can check progress on the Background jobs page.

You can also manually link an Aha! organization to a Salesforce account by opening the organization's page in Aha! Ideas and clicking Link with existing record on the integrations field and entering the Salesforce account id.

Note that organization data are synced one-way and that any changes you make to organization fields in Aha! will not be reflected in Salesforce.

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Configuration notes

You can have more than one Salesforce integration in Aha! Roadmaps. 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.

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