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Setting up the Freshdesk integration
Setting up the Freshdesk integration

Learn how to sync your Freshdesk tickets into Planhat

Christian Dreyer avatar
Written by Christian Dreyer
Updated over 5 months ago

Summary

  • Data you can sync

    • Sync Freshdesk tickets into Planhat; ticket labels and fields can be included

  • Sync direction

    • Freshdesk to Planhat

  • Sync frequency

    • New/updated tickets are automatically synced into Planhat in near real time

    • Manual fetch to sync in historical tickets

  • Data mapping

    • Freshdesk tickets are mapped to the Conversation model - type "ticket" - in Planhat

Who is this article for?

  • All Planhat users

  • It's particularly relevant to those setting up the Freshdesk integration

Article contents

Introduction

Planhat's Freshdesk integration makes it really easy to import your tickets into Planhat. As well as an initial manual sync of historical tickets, new/updated tickets will automatically sync in.

Within Planhat, you can view your tickets alongside other conversations, such as emails and meetings. It's simple to filter your view (e.g. see the highest priority tickets), and to tag in colleagues to collaborate.

You can also visualise and analyse time-series ticket data, making it easy to track changes and trends over time. You can perform calculations on ticket data, and blend with other data types in Planhat for deeper customer insights and to take action on your data. You can display your ticket data in customisable dashboards, and use ticket data to trigger Automations. For example, if the ratio of ticket volume v. contract value crosses a threshold, create a review task.

How does the sync work?

Mapping tickets to customers

Tickets are synced into Planhat if they can be mapped to End Users, via their email address (e.g. bob@pendo.com).

If a ticket is received by Planhat and the End User already exists in your Planhat tenant, then the ticket will be synced in and mapped to them.

If the End User doesn't yet exist in your Planhat tenant, but the Company does (e.g. Pendo in this case, as identified by the email domain), Planhat can automatically create the End User on that Company, and then sync in the ticket. It's your choice whether you would like Planhat to create End Users from external conversations like this - it's configured per tenant. You can view your current setting under "Automatic Detection of New Contacts" within "General Settings"; speak to your CSM if you would like to enable or disable this.

Manual sync for historical tickets

There is a button in the integration to manually "Fetch All". This is typically used when you first set up the integration, in order to sync past tickets into Planhat. The historical sync only brings in tickets that have been created or updated in the last 6 months, up to 16,000 tickets.

This manual sync may also be used later on, if new End Users are added to Planhat using a different method than the Freshdesk integration, and then you want to sync in their historical tickets. However, note that if you have made updates to other tickets in Planhat, these could be overwritten.

Ongoing sync for new/updated tickets

Going forward, tickets that are new or updated in Freshdesk will automatically sync into Planhat, in near real time.

Remember that tickets can only sync in if they can be associated with an End User via the email address (as described above).

Setting up the integration

There are two main stages to setting up the Freshdesk integration:

A. Configure the Freshdesk integration in Planhat, and manually fetch historical tickets

  1. Go to the Freshdesk integration in Planhat

    1. Click on the Operations Module (bottom of the left-hand black bar)

    2. Ensure the "INTEGRATE" tab is selected

    3. Search for and click on the Freshdesk integration

  2. Click on the "Freshdesk integration" toggle switch at the very top of the page, so it goes from "NO" to "YES"

    • If you ever want to deactivate the integration, you can simply turn this toggle back to "NO"

  3. Fill in the authorisation section:

    1. "Username" - this is the email address that you use to log in to your Freshdesk account (administrator)

    2. "App Token" - paste in an API token from Freshdesk, which you get as follows:

      • Log into Freshdesk as an administrator

      • Click on your profile avatar in the top-right corner, and select "Profile Settings"

      • Copy your API key, which is displayed on the right-hand side

    3. "Your Freshdesk URL" - enter https://[yourfresheskDomain].freshdesk.com (customised for your unique URL)

  4. "Allow fetching labels" toggle switch - click to turn it to "YES" if desired

    • If enabled, Freshdesk tickets will be synced in including their labels, which will be created in Planhat as labels (tags)

  5. Set up custom field mapping if desired - "Custom Fields Match" section

    1. Click "Fetch Fields" to load available custom fields from your Freshdesk

    2. Click on "Add a match", then select your chosen Planhat field (from the left-hand dropdown), followed by the Freshdesk field that you want to map it to (from the right-hand dropdown)

    3. Repeat step b. to add in all the fields you would like to match

  6. Click "Save"

  7. Click "Fetch All Tickets" and then "Fetch All" to initiate the manual sync

    • If everything is correct, Planhat will show you a success message, and it will fetch your tickets in the background. This process can take several minutes - it all depends on the number of tickets that you have. If you get an error message, please double check the URL and API token you entered

    • Planhat will fetch the most recent historical tickets from your Freshdesk account, up to 16000 tickets. (This includes tickets of all statuses)

B. Create automations in Freshdesk for ongoing sync

In order to have an ongoing sync between Freshdesk and Planhat, you need to create two automations (webhooks) in Freshdesk, which send information to Planhat when tickets are created or updated.

1. Automation for ticket creation

  1. In Freshdesk, click the cog icon from the menu on the left to take you to the "Admin" area. Under "Helpdesk Productivity", you will see "Automations"

  2. Select the tab "Ticket Creation", and click on the button "New Rule"

  3. Fill in the form:​

    • "Rule name" - any name you want, e.g. “Planhat ticket creation”

    • "On tickets with these properties" - select the option “Match ANY of the below” and set the conditions for tickets with any status (see image below)​

    • "Perform these actions"

      • Select the option "Trigger webhook"

      • "Request type" - select "POST"

      • "URL" - enter this (with your tenant UUID substituted in): https://integrations.planhat.com/freshdesk/[tenant UUID]/receive

        • You will see your unique URL in the instructions in the left-hand panel of the integration - it automatically customises the URL shown to include your tenant UUID - so simply copy and paste that

        • You can also view your tenant UUID in the Developer Module (under the heading "Tenant Token")

      • "Encoding" - select "JSON"

      • "Content" - select "Simple", and add the tag "Ticket ID"

    • Click on the button "Preview and save", and confirm the save


​2. Automation for ticket update

You'll notice that these instructions are very similar to what you have just seen for the creation automation/webhook!

  1. In Freshdesk, click the cog icon from the menu on the left to take you to the "Admin" area. Under "Helpdesk Productivity", you will see "Automations"

  2. Select the tab "Ticket Updates", and click on the button "New Rule"

  3. Fill in the form:​

    • "Rule name" - any name you want, e.g. “Planhat ticket updates”

    • "When an action is performed by" - select "Agent or requester"

    • "Involves any of these events" - select "Ticket is" "Updated"

    • "On tickets with these properties" - select the option “Match ANY of the below” and set the conditions for tickets with any status (see image below)

    • "Perform these actions"

      • Select the option "Trigger webhook"

      • "Request type" - select "POST"

      • "URL" - paste in this (with your tenant UUID substituted in): https://integrations.planhat.com/freshdesk/[tenant UUID]/receive

        • You will see your unique URL in the instructions in the left-hand panel of the integration - it automatically customises the URL shown to include your tenant UUID - so simply copy and paste that

        • You can also view your tenant UUID in the Developer Module (under the heading "Tenant Token")

      • "Encoding" - select "JSON"

      • "Content" - select "Simple", and add the tag "Ticket ID"

    • Click on the button "Preview and save", and confirm the save

C. Verify the automations/webhooks are working

Now you can create or update a ticket in Freshdesk, and see the data get sent through to Planhat! The sync can happen very quickly (e.g. 1 minute), but it may take a little longer for any related filters to update etc.

Tickets within Planhat

Tickets are stored in Planhat as Conversations of type "ticket".

You can view the tickets themselves on the Company and End User Profiles, as well as in the Conversations Module. It's easy to apply filters, to specifically show tickets (just filter by type is equal to "ticket"), or to look for ticket with a particular tag (e.g. "Tier 1" or "bug"), for example. In the Conversations Module, you can even build more advanced filters based on ticket fields you are syncing in, such as Type or Priority. You can comment on tickets in Planhat, to tag in other colleagues, for instance. (Remember that comments or updates to fields made in Planhat will not sync back to Freshdesk.)

In addition, within the "Metrics" tab of the Data Module, ticket volumes can be saved as time-series data (under the "Conversations" category). You can build on this raw time-series data with Calculated Metrics - for example, tracking trends over time, or comparing a Company's number of tickets with the amount of money they are spending with you. In Pages (in the Customer Intelligence Module), you can create graphs to analyse and visualise ticket data, including field data.

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