Help Scout

Help Scout is a cloud-based SaaS (software as a service) HIPAA-compliant help desk solution that helps businesses and teams manage their customer relationships with flexibility and affordability.

Data integration: Skyvia supports importing data to and from Help Scout, exporting Help Scout data to CSV files, replicating Help Scout data to relational databases, and synchronizing Help Scout data with other cloud apps and relational databases.

Backup: Skyvia Backup does not support Help Scout.

Query: Skyvia Query supports Help Scout.

Help Scout-Specific Features and Limitations

Skyvia has the following limitations for Help Scout:

  • In the Data Integration product, Help Scout connections are supported only for packages, which use a new data integration runtime.

    Make sure that the Use new runtime checkbox is selected on the tab bar if you want to use Help Scout in your package.

  • Skyvia supports the following DML operations for Help Scout objects:

    INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE: Webhooks.

    UPDATE, DELETE: CustomerAddressess, CustomerChats, CustomerEmails, CustomerPhones, CustomerSocialProfiles, CustomerWebsites.

    INSERT, DELETE: Conversations.

    INSERT, UPDATE: Customers.

    DELETE: Users.

  • Skyvia supports Synchronization for objects that contain the CreatedDate and UpdatedDate fields. Thus, only _Customers_object can be fully synchronized.

  • Skyvia supports Replication with Incremental Updates for objects that contain either the CreatedDate or UpdatedDate fields.

    Such objects as Users, Teams, TeamMembers,Tags, Workflows, MailBoxes, Customers have both CreatedDate and UpdatedDate fields, thus, they can be fully relicated with incremental updates.

    The Conversations object contains only CreatedDate, thus Skyvia detects only new records.

  • Customers object and its peculiarities. When importing data to the Customers object, no fields are marked as required in the mapping settings of the import package. It is because when importing data, any field can be specified to describe the contact details.

    When performing an Insert operation to the Customers object, one of the following fields must be specified: Emails, Phones, Chats, SocialProfiles, Websites, Addresses and Properties fields.

    For example, for the Emails field, specify the value like this:

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       [ {
   "type" : "work",
   "value" : "[email protected]"
   } ]

    Please note that you can also import data to the above fields via such child objects as CustomerPhones, CustomerEmails, CustomerWebsites, CustomerSocialProfiles and CustomerChats by specifying the required CustomerId.

  • CustomerAddresses object and its peculiarities. Skyvia supports Update and Delete operations for this object. However, please note that the successful Delete operation does not mean that the record will be physically deleted from the CustomerAddresses object, instead it supposes that the values from such fields as “city”, “state”, “postalCode”, “country”, “lines” will be cleared.

  • Convesrsations object and its peculiarities. When importing data to the Conversations object, the Threads field is an obligatory field. The data can be transferred in the following format:

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       [ {
      "type" : "customer",
      "customer" : {
       "email" : "[email protected]"
     },
      "text" : "Hello, Help Scout?"
   } ]

    Besides the obligatory Threads field, you also need to specify Customer (the one for whom the Conversation is being created).

    You can do it in two ways by specifying:

    1. Id of the customer (if it is already in Help Scout), i.e. the PrimaryCustomer_Id field;
    2. Email of the customer (if such a customer is not yet in Help Scout), i.e. the PrimaryCustomer_Email field. After you do it, the corresponding record will be automatically added to the Customers object, and the corresponding Id for a new record will be inserted to the PrimaryCustomer_Id field of the Conversations object.

    Therefore, in Skyvia, when setting up mapping for data import to the Conversations object, you have an opportunity to specify either the PrimaryCustomer_Id value, which you directly receive from the Customers object, or the PrimaryCustomer_Email, PrimaryCustomer_FirstName and PrimaryCustomer_LastName values of the user.

    If neither values are present, you will receive an error from the Help Scout API, saying that the parameters in the request are missing.

Help Scout Connections

To create a connection to Help Scout, you simply need to sign in to Help Scout via OAuth 2.0. The OAuth authentication token is stored on the Skyvia server. Your Help Scout account login and password are not stored on the Skyvia server.

  1. Click +NEW in the top menu.
  2. Click Connection in the menu on the left to open the Select Connector page.
  3. In the opened page, select Help Scout.
  4. In the Connection Editor page, specify a connection name that will be used to identify the connection.

  5. Click Sign In with Help Scout.

    Connection Editor window

  6. In the opened window, enter your email and password used when signing up to Help Scout.
  7. Skyvia will request permission to access your Help Scout account. Click Authorize to give permissions.
  8. The authentication token is generated. Use the Test Connection button to make sure that the connection is successful and then click Create Connection.

Supported Actions and Actions Specifics

Help Scout connector supports the following actions: