One of the very first steps to getting set up with Qualified is to connect to your Salesforce environment. This is not only going to allow for you to map over your visitor fields to create new leads and prospects, but it will also allow for you to pull information as well from Salesforce to personalize your visitor's experiences.
If you have a Salesforce account, most likely you also have a test sandbox environment. Sandboxes are mainly used to create multiple copies of your production environment, so that you have an exact replica of your production environment without affecting your live data during your test period. If you don’t already have a sandbox, you can easily create one by following the steps outlined in the Salesforce help documentation. You can also view what types of sandboxes are available on the Salesforce help site.
Connecting to Your Sandbox in Qualified
Once your sandbox is ready for testing, you can connect it to Qualified.com to begin your setup and testing.
- Navigate to Your Salesforce Connection Page by going to Settings > Salesforce > Connection.
- Use the option “Connect to Sandbox” underneath the main connection button.
- Enter in your Sandbox credentials here after the pop-up appears.
You’ll also notice on this page that there are two places where you’ll need to connect to your Sandbox: Connecting with a Personal account and Connecting with a Team level account.
The first is a personal user account for each sales rep using the system. The personal user accounts are used by each rep when creating Salesforce objects such as leads or contacts.
Each user in your org will need to connect using their own personal Salesforce credentials. Most likely for your sandbox testing, however, you won’t need to connect all reps at this time and can wait until you’re using your Salesforce production environment.
The second connection is a team-level account and it’s used by the system to read and write data as necessary. You can create a user specifically for the Qualified integration or use an existing integration user that has full rights.
To learn more on how these two connections work together visit our documentation on connecting to Salesforce Production as this information is the same.
Limitations of Sandbox Connections
There are some limitations to using the Sandbox for testing and connecting to Qualified.
- When using a Sandbox connection, you cannot have campaign attribution; you won't be able to create campaign members from lead or contact records.
- If you create fields and map them in Qualified and your sandbox, these fields do not exist in your production environment. As such, your mappings will most likely fail. Check to make sure that all fields are created in your sandbox and production before going live.
Recommended Tests in Sandbox
- Create a new lead through a chatbot experience and create a lead through the Qualified app.
- Verify that the new lead created by Qualified is assigned to the expected sales rep.
- Update an existing lead via mapped field values through a chatbot experience and the Qualified app,
- Update existing contacts via mapped field values through a chatbot experience and the Qualified app.
- Ensure Salesforce events are logged on leads and contacts for conversations and meetings booked.
Once the above testing scenarios are completed, promote your Salesforce team-level connection from sandbox to production. You’ll see the option to “Promote to Production” in your Salesforce connection area.
When you press this button, we’ll keep your mappings in place but replace your credentials with your Production credentials so that it’s a smooth transition. The remainder of the Experience Build will be completed while you are connected to production.
Moving to Production
When you’re done with your testing in the Sandbox environment, you’ll now want to move to Production before you go live with Qualified. You’ll see the option to “Promote to Production” in your Salesforce connection area.
When you press this button, we’ll keep your mappings in place but replace your credentials with your production credentials so that it’s a smooth transition.
Make sure all of the fields that you’ve created within Qualified and tested in your sandbox also exist in your production instance. If they do not, your mappings will fail.
Summary
A Salesforce sandbox is a test environment that allows you to test integrations without disrupting your live production data. You can connect to your sandbox environment in Qualified, but there are a few limitations such as the ability to add campaign attribution. Once you are done testing, you can easily use the ‘promote’ button to switch to your production environment without disrupting the mappings you’ve created into Salesforce.