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Syncing Company/Account group structures (parent/child) via the Salesforce integration
Syncing Company/Account group structures (parent/child) via the Salesforce integration

How to sync group structures of Salesforce Companies into Planhat (and sync back to Salesforce too)

Christian Dreyer avatar
Written by Christian Dreyer
Updated over a week ago

Summary

  • The Planhat Salesforce integration supports Company/Account group structures (parent/child hierarchies)

  • You sync these by mapping a field in Salesforce (typically "Parent Account ID") with the "Parent Org" Planhat field, as a line of custom field mapping

  • The field needs to contain the Salesforce ID (source ID) of the parent

Who is this article for?

  • Planhat builders (e.g. CS Ops) setting up the Salesforce integration in Planhat

Series

We have a series of articles on the Salesforce integration:


Article contents


Introduction

It's fairly common to have a group structure (parent/child hierarchy) when it comes to Companies (Planhat terminology) or Accounts (Salesforce terminology).

For example, you might have a parent "Coca-Cola Global" Company, with child Companies being "Coca-Cola France", "Coca-Cola Spain" and "Coca-Cola Germany" etc.

You can set up group structure in Planhat and in Salesforce, and the great news is that the Planhat Salesforce integration supports syncing this. It's easy to set up, via custom field mapping.


How to sync group structures in the Salesforce integration

To sync Company/Account group structures (parent/child), within the Salesforce integration, set up custom field mapping between:

  • the Planhat field called "Parent Org" (a default/system field - "Attribute") and

  • the Salesforce field called "Parent Account ID" (a default/system field), or otherwise a custom field containing the ID of the parent Account

This can potentially be either a string or an Account lookup field.

Although the examples above show the typical sync from Salesforce to Planhat ("Receive"), it's also possible to sync group structures in both directions.

๐Ÿ“Œ Important to note

If you add this field mapping after setting up the integration, press the green "Save" button and resync the Company/Account data by clicking "Fetch Data from SFDC".


Technical details

  • This is specifically for records of the Account object in Salesforce (Company model in Planhat)

  • The mapped field needs to contain the Salesforce ID (which in Planhat we call the "source ID") of the Account record's parent Account (not the ID of a child Account)

    • This means the field is populated on child Accounts but is not populated on the parent Account at the top of the structure

  • The Salesforce field must be a lookup field or a string/text field, as mentioned above

    • Generally a lookup field is recommended, as it's easier to use and avoids the potential issue of an incorrect ID being manually typed/pasted into a text field

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