As an administrator of Telligent Connect for Salesforce.com, you can configure the business rules for the integration between your community and Salesforce to ensure that your provide the right level of proactive customer service to your audience.

In this Article

Persona for support

All interactions between any customer service agent and people seeking answers in the community will come through a single persona within the community. The user was created during the installation process for Telligent Connect for Salesforce, so if you did not perform the installation, check with the person who did to find out the username and password. We recommend that you give this persona  more personality by modifying its profile.

You may consider including all or some of the following:

  • A compelling avatar that represents your support team as a whole
  • A bio that describes your support processes
  • Phone number(s) to reach customer support directly

(In a future version of Telligent Connect for Salesforce, each of your customer support agents will be enabled to use their established community profiles. All communication between each support agent and customers, prospects and partners needing help will be from their profiles.)

Profile synchronization

Profile synchronization enables your organization to know more about each community participant.

You can configure any number of profile fields to synchronize between Telligent Community and Salesforce and choose the direction of synchronization. Refer to our product documentation for Telligent Community for instructions to create new profile fields in Telligent Community.

  • Import means that the value of the Salesforce contact attribute specified will be brought from the Salesforce contact record into the Telligent user's profile field specified. If the value is changed within Salesforce, the value will be automatically updated in Telligent Community. Some common Salesforce contact attributes that you may want to bring into the user's profile within the community as hidden or visible profile fields are:
    • Title
    • Department
    • Account name
    • Contact owner
    • Lead source most recent (hidden)
    • Level
    • Website
    • Phone
    • Mobile phone
    • Any custom fields that would provide value within the community either for the customer, prospect, or partner, or for your internal teams like Marketing and Sales.

  • Export means that the value of the Telligent Community profile field for the user will be pushed into the specified Salesforce contact attribute for the associated contact within Salesforce. If the user edits his/her profile and changes the value of this Telligent Community profile field, the value will be automatically updated within the associated Salesforce contact record. Some common community profile fields that you may want to push to Salesforce are:
    • Social network links - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook
    • Birthday
    • Education
    • Language
    • Custom fields that you have created within the community that provide a better picture of your customers, prospects and partners to help with lead nurturing.

Once you have a successful connection between Telligent Community and Salesforce, you can access the Profile Sync tab within the Telligent Connect for Salesforce plugin within Telligent Community.

  1. As a community administrator, navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration > Site Configuration > Manage Plugins.
  2. Find the Telligent Connect for Salesforce plugin and click Configure.



  3. Click the Profile Sync tab.



    1. To add a new mapping between Telligent Community and Salesforce, click Add Mapping.
    2. To remove any existing mapping, click Delete.
    3. You can modify any existing mapping, including changing the direction of the synchronization (such as changing from import to export).
    4. Be sure to click Save to save the profile synchronization changes before moving away from the tab or closing out the dialog window.

Forum thread escalation

As a community administrator, you have control over who can escalate a question or discussion within the community to a case in Salesforce. You can enable either manually or automatically escalate, or both, as appropriate.

Manual escalation

Within a forum where you want certain community groups to have the option of manually escalating a question or discussion to a Salesforce case, you must include the Salesforce - Promote Thread widget.



This widget is typically placed at the top of the right sidebar immediately next to the forum thread. By default, anyone who meets one of these three criteria will be able to manually escalate a question:

  • Anyone with Site - Manage Settingspermission within the community
  • Any actual user within Salesforce, which typically includes all of your customer support, marketing, sales, and account management staff
  • Any community participant who is a contact within Salesforce

If you want to alter this default behavior, you can modify the Salesforce - Promote Thread widget within Telligent's Widget Studio. If you do not want to provide manual escalation capabilities, you simply need to remove the Salesforce - Promote Thread widget from the forum thread detail pages throughout the site (or remove the widget entirely via the Widget Studio).

Automatic escalation

You have many options as you consider whom you want to provide automatic proactive support for when their questions and discussions go unanswered within the community. You will likely want to be selective as to which customers, prospects, and partners receive this support and how responsive you are based on their value to your organization.

Most typically, there are two areas of a community:

  1. Public - Participation from everyone is encouraged within the publicly accessible community and/or micro-communities, and people can help each other through issues and benefit from a collective and growing knowledge base. 
  2. Private - Only certain people are part of each private, closed network micro-community. The micro-community is typically dedicated to one single customer; high-profile prospect, partner, or a group of people brought together for a specific project or event.

Within the public forums, you likely only want a portion of the participants to receive proactive agent-escalated community support. Within a private micro-community, you may want to be more aggressive with escalation options because of the smaller audience and the dedicated collaboration space you have created for this set of people. 

Telligent Connect for Salesforce provides you several configuration options to set as appropriate. These options are contained in template tabs of the Telligent Connect for Salesforce.com plugin configuration (Control Panel > System Administration > Site Administration > Site Configuration > Manage Plugins).

There are two templates: one for group escalation criteria and one for user escalation criteria.

Group and user escalation templates

Template Location to configure within the plugin Description
Group Escalation Criteria Group Configuration tab with no specific group selected This provides a template for any specific groups for which you want to configure specific business rules. This DOES NOT affect any group that does not have specific business rules configured.
User Escalation Criteria User Configuration tab with no specific user selected This provides a way to set the time at which unanswered questions or discussions without at least one reply are automatically escalated for each specific user you configure. This ONLY affects the specific users that are configured, not all users within the community.

Automatic escalation rules

You can configure business rules for specific groups and users for which you want to automatically escalate unanswered questions and discussions without at least one reply. For each, we provide specific criteria that you can leave as the values set within the template so that they all change when the template is changed, or you can set custom settings for an individual group or user.

Category Location to Configure Within the Plugin Option Description
Specific Group Criteria
 Group Configuration tab with a specific group selected by clicking Configure next to its name Salesforce Account Number To create a link between the group in the community and the account within Salesforce, you must specify the group's account number. This is required if you want to specify the status of a particular account field as one of the triggers for when community forum threads are automatically escalated to Salesforce cases (see Salesforce Account Status).
Thread Author Select Yes if you require that the person who asks the question or starts the discussion within the group to be a Salesforce contact in order for their question/discussion to be escalated automatically into a case. If, instead, you think any member of the group (not necessarily a Salesforce contact) whose question/discussion qualifies for automatic escalation warrants a Salesforce case, select No.
Time to Response Depending on the value of the account to your business, you can set an appropriate automatic escalation time after a question is asked or discussion is started and no response has been posted.
Salesforce Account Status Specify an account field and field value if you have, for example, a flag that indicates whether an account is up to date on support and maintenance. You can choose any account field from Salesforce.
Enabled/Disabled Forums By default, all the forums within the group are enabled and shown in the Enabled Forums list. If you have specific forum(s) that you do not want to have automatic escalation from unanswered threads, move them to the Disabled Forums list.

Specific User Criteria

User Configuration tab with a specific user selected by clicking Configure next to his/her username

 Automatic Escalation Time Period For each key person in your community whom you want to provide with proactive customer service, ensuring that his/her questions are answered, you can add an escalation time period. You can specify whether to escalate immediately or after a specific number of hours or days. If this escalation period is more aggressive than the escalation period for the group where the question was posed, then the question will be escalated to a case at this key person's specific escalation rate. If the group setting is more aggressive, that rule will apply first.

Add automatic escalation business rules

To add or change any business rules for escalation for groups:

  1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration > Site Configuration > Manage Plugins.
  2. Click Configure next to the Telligent Connect for Salesforce plugin.



  3. Click Group Configuration.



  4. To modify the template for groups:
    1. Click Configure Default Template.
    2. Verify that the parenthesized text next to Group Configuration says Configure Default Template.
    3. Set the criteria as appropriate. You do not need to click Save unless this is the last configuration change you need to make.

  5. To add a group that you want to follow the group template:
    1. Start typing the name of the group in the Add Group text box. The list of groups that match the text you have typed will show in a drop-down list.
      When you have found the right group and selected it, click Add.
    2. Click Configure to view the Group Configuration.

    3. Select the Check this box to use the default Group template check box.

  6. To add a new group that does notfollow the group template:
    1. Follow the same instructions in a and b above.
    2. Do NOT select the Check this box to use the default Group template check box; instead, specify the other criteria.



      Note that this configuration separates the group from the group template, so any updates to the template will NOT affect the settings for this group. To tie the group back to the template, you just need to select the Check this box to use the default Group template check box.
  7. Click Save.

To add or change any business rules for escalation for users:

  1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration > Manage Plugins.
  2. Click Configure next to the Telligent Connect for Salesforce plugin.



  3. Click User Configuration.



  4. To modify the template for users:
    1. Click Configure Default Template.
    2. Verify that the parenthesized text next to User Configuration says Configure Default Template.
    3. Set the criteria as appropriate. You do not need to click Save unless this is the last configuration change you need to make.

  5. To add a user that you want to follow the user template:
    1. Start typing the name of the user in the User Lookup text box. The list of users that match the text you have typed will show in a drop-down list.



    2. When you have found the right user and have selected him/her, click Add.
    3. Click Configure to view the User Configuration.



    4. Select the Check this box to use the default User template check box.

  6. To add a user who does notfollow the user template:
    1. Follow the same instructions in a and b above.
    2. Do NOT select the Check this box to use the default User template check box; instead, specify the other criteria.



      Note that this configuration separates the user from the user template, so any updates to the template will NOT affect the settings for this user. To tie the user back to the template, you just need to select the Check this box to use the default User template check box.

Edit automatic escalation business rules

To edit a group's escalation criteria:

  1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration > Site Configuration > Manage Plugins.
  2. Click Configure next to the Telligent Connect for Salesforce plugin.



  3. Click Group Configuration.
    To edit all groups that are based on the template:
    1. Click Configure Default Template.



    2. Change the criteria as needed. All groups that have not been modified from the template are updated automatically.
  4. To edit a specific group's escalation criteria:
    1. Locate your group in the list of Enabled Groups.



    2. Click Configure next to the group you want to change.



    3. Adjust the criteria. If the group was previously tied to the template, it now is not. To tie the group back to the template, you just need to select the Check this box to use the default Group template check box.

To edit a user's escalation criteria:

  1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration > Site Configuration > Manage Plugins.
  2. Click Configure next to the Telligent Connect for Salesforce plugin.



  3. Click User Configuration.



  4. Locate the user you want to edit and click Configure next to his/her name. Verify that the user's name is shown next to the User Configuration heading.
  5. Modify the time elapse to escalate.

Remove automatic escalation business rules

To remove a business rule for escalation for a specific group:

  1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration > Manage Plugins.
  2. Click Configure next to the Telligent Connect for Salesforce plugin.



  3. Click Group Configuration.



  4. Locate your group in the list of Enabled Groups.
  5. Click Remove next to the group for which you want to remove all automatic escalation business rules.

To remove a business rule for escalation for a specific user:

  1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration > Site Configuration > Manage Plugins.
  2. Click Configure next to the Telligent Connect for Salesforce plugin.



  3. Click User Configuration.
  4. Locate the user for whom you want to remove automatic escalation business rules in the Enabled Users list.



  5. Click Remove next to his/her name.

Example configurations

Depending on how you configure the escalation business rules, some rules may overlap. If rules do overlap, the more aggressive rule will take precedence. We have included some examples to help you decide how best to configure.

Scenario Configuration
You have closed network groups for each key partner and key customer for whom you want to provide very proactive customer support.

Configure the group template with the following values:

  • Thread Author to Yes so that only those who are Salesforce contacts can create cases.
  • Time to Response to 24 hours.
  • Set the Salesforce Account Status to your custom account field Maintenance and Support Up To Date and account value Yes  (or whatever field and value makes sense for your organization).

Add each of the closed network groups under the Group Configuration tab, using the Add Group text box, specifying the corresponding Salesforce account number for each. You may want to change:

  • Time to Response for each group based on their importance and the responsiveness you want to provide relative to that importance.
  • Move any forums within each group that you do not want to provide proactive support for from the Enabled Forums list to the Disabled Forums list.
You know of three key influencers within your community that you want to ensure get answers to their questions relatively quickly, regardless of where they ask the question within the community. Add each of the three influencers under the User Configuration tab, using the User Lookup text box, with settings for escalation after 24 hours for all unanswered questions and discussions with no response.
You have a support group with two public support forums that you want to monitor, but not be aggressive about providing answers until you give the community plenty of time to weigh in. Within the same group, you have two additional forums that you do not want to provide direct support for since they are for solutions that you do not officially support but that the community does well at maintaining and supporting.

Add the support group under the Group Configuration tab, using the Add Group text box. Set the following values:

  • Thread Author to Yes so that only those who are Salesforce contacts can create cases.
  • Time to Response to 48 hours.
  • Leave the Salesforce Account Status blank since participants in this group are from many different groups and you cannot create the tie between the community group and the Salesforce account.
  • Move the two non-supported forums from the Enabled Forums list to the Disabled Forums list.

User experience customization

As an administrator, you can modify the user experience to fit the needs of your community or delegate this responsibility to the group owners or other personnel as appropriate. Telligent Connect for Salesforce is delivered with five widgets that can be managed from the Telligent Widget Studio in the Control Panel, all with the "Salesforce" preview (so you can easily search for them):

  1. Case Comments
  2. Case Details
  3. Case List
  4. Promote Thread
  5. Links

Salesforce - Case Comments widget ("Private comments")

The Salesforce - Case Comments widget, captioned "Private comments," lets users exchange private information with customer support agents.

Customer support agents have the ability to view or delete the asker's comments in this widget and to delete their own private comments. Askers can delete their own private comments, but not comments by support personnel.

Configure the Case Comments widget

When you install Telligent Connect for Salesforce.com, the Salesforce - Case Comments widget is automatically added to every forum thread page so that if that thread is escalated to a case, the private comments between the asker and the customer support agent are visible to the asker. This enables private communication between the person who asked the question in the community and the customer support agent assigned to the escalated case.The widget includes automatic view collapse for multiple private comments, showing only the most recent comment with the ability to expand for viewing all private comments.

When you configure this widget (by entering Edit Page mode on the page where the widget lives and clicking the pencil icon in the upper-right corner of the widget), you have the option of choosing either the full view or the simple view.



Full view - Shows the poster, date and time, full comment, links to see all comments, and a link to delete the displayed comment.

Simple view - Shows only the poster and a link to see all comments.

Salesforce -Case Details details widget ("Case details")

The Salesforce - Case Details widget, captioned "Case details," helps users keep up with case information such as case number, status, severity, creation date, and assigned customer support personnel. You can configure the widget to show any details that make sense for your community.

By default, the following people can see the case details for an escalated forum:

  • The community participant who asked the question or started the discussion within the community
  • (If the forum is within a group that is tied to an account) the designated super-user(s) for that account
  • Anyone with Site - Manage Settings permission within the community
  • Any actual user within Salesforce, which typically includes all of your customer support, marketing, sales, and account management staff

Configure the Case Details widget

When you install Telligent Connect for Salesforce.com, the Case Detail widget is automatically added to every forum thread page so that if that thread is escalated to a case, the details of the case can be displayed.

When you configure this widget, either by entering Edit Page mode for the forum thread page and clicking the widget's pencil icon, you can modify the case fields within Salesforce that are displayed in the Case Details widget:

  1. Enter Edit Page mode on the page where the widget lives. You must have the appropriate permissions to do this, so if you do not see the "Edit Page" button at the top right corner of the page, you need to be granted access.
  2. Edit the Case Details widget by clicking on the pencil icon.


     
  3. To delete any existing field, click delete next to it and then click Save to apply the changes to the widget.
  4. To add a new field:
    1. Click Add Mapping.
    2. In the Account Detail column, type in the label you want to display next to the value of the field when the page appears.
    3. In the Salesforce Mapping Field column, start typing the name of the Salesforce case field you want to display.
    4. Click Save.
  5. Save the page, choosing whether this is custom to the group you're in or for applicable to all forum thread pages through the community.

You can also modify who has access to see this by editing the widget in the Telligent Widget Studio.

Salesforce - Case List widget ("Salesforce cases")

The Salesforce - Case List widget, captioned "Salesforce cases," lets users and customer support agents view a summary of cases and to sort them by case number, priority, status, creation date, owner (customer support agent), and subject or any custom field you want to include.

Each community participant who is also a Salesforce contact can view the cases that he/she has initiated, regardless of where or how they initiated the case (such as via forum thread escalation, direct email to support, by phone, etc.). By default, we have included the Salesforce - Case List widget on the User Profile page below the user's activity stream. 

Install and configure the Case List widget

When you install this widget by entering Edit Page mode, dragging the widget to the desired location, and then configure it by clicking the pencil icon, you can modify the Salesforce case fields that are displayed in the widget.

  1. Enter Edit Page mode on the User Profile page.
  2. Edit the Case List widget by clicking on the pencil icon.



  3. To delete any existing field, click delete next to it and then click Save to apply the changes to the widget.
  4. To add a new field:
    1. Click Add Mapping.
    2. In the Case Detail column, type in the label you want to display next to the value of the field when the page appears.
    3. In the Salesforce Mapping column, start typing the name of the Salesforce case field you want to display.
    4. Click Save.

  5. You can also adjust the number of cases that are displayed at one time on a page for the widget.
  6. Save the page.

Salesforce - Promote Thread widget ("Open support case")

The Salesforce - Promote Thread widget, captioned "Open support case," enables someone to manually escalate a forum question or thread to the support team's attention. By default, this widget is visible to anyone who has a valid email address in Salesforce, but it can be limited to only those with specific access in the Telligent Widget Studio.


 

Install the Promote Thread widget

You can install this widget by entering Edit Page mode on the forum thread page and dragging it to the desired location. You cannot configure this widget in the UI.

Salesforce - Links widget ("Options")

The Salesforce - Links widget, captioned "Options," gives both users and customer support personnel access to their cases in Salesforce. Support personnel see the "View my cases" link.

Install the Links widget

You can install this widget by entering Edit Page mode and on the user profile page and dragging the widget to the desired location. You cannot change any of the links provided by the widget in the user interface.

Customize via the Widget Studio

The way these widgets work can be further modified and customized for your environment using the Telligent Widget Studio. Note that you must have developer-level knowledge, in most cases, to make changes. To edit any of the widgets:

  1. Within the Telligent Community Control Panel, navigate to  System Administration > Site Administration > Widget Studio > Manage Widgets.
  2. Type "Salesforce" into the search box that has the prompt text of "Name or Description..." The five widgets that are a part of Telligent Connect for Salesforce are displayed in the list.
  3. Click on the name of the widget you want to modify, or hover over the widget name to display the Edit button and click Edit.
  4. Modify any portion of the widget and click Save. Note that you have several save options which can be related to defaults, themes, or custom versions. You can find more information about widget versions here (save as) or here (default or theme version).