Discourse Salesforce Plugin

For more information, please see: https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-salesforce/218267

Updating existing Salesforce users

When a Discourse user is created, the plugin links them to an existing Salesforce Contact or Lead with the same email address. By default, it does not update the Salesforce record. Enable the salesforce_contact_sync_mode site setting to choose how existing Contact fields selected in salesforce_contact_sync_fields are synchronized. Description is selected by default and is set to the Discourse profile URL:

• link_only only links the matching record and does not update it.
• fill_blank populates selected fields only when they are empty in Salesforce.
• overwrite replaces selected Salesforce field values with values from Discourse.
• Email is only used to find the record and is not included in the default update payload.

Lead lookups, creation, conversion sync, feed items, and association cleanup are controlled by salesforce_leads_enabled, which defaults to true to preserve existing behavior.

For Contact-only integrations or Salesforce organizations where the integration user cannot access Leads, disable salesforce_leads_enabled. Existing Lead links are retained and Contact operations continue. Lead enablement is independent of Leads group membership and salesforce_lead_source; leaving the source blank only omits LeadSource from payloads.

Leads are linked but never updated. If multiple Contacts have the same email, the plugin skips linking and updating the ambiguous records when fill_blank or overwrite is selected.

Creating and syncing cases

Only admins can create and manually sync Salesforce cases by default. Enable salesforce_allow_moderators_to_create_cases to allow moderators to perform these actions for topics they can see. Both actions use the site's Salesforce integration credentials. This setting does not affect automatic case synchronization through salesforce_automatic_case_sync_tags or grant access to Salesforce configuration or manual Contact/Lead creation.

Unlinking cases

salesforce_case_unlink_allowed_groups controls who can unlink cases. It defaults to empty, which disables unlinking for everyone, including admins. The fixed list offers only Admins and Moderators; select either or both to grant access. They must also be able to see the topic.

Open the first post’s wrench menu and choose Unlink case to remove the Discourse case and comment links after confirmation. The case and its comments remain in Salesforce. Unlinking only changes local data and works even when Salesforce credentials are unavailable.

Unlinking also removes the configured case tag, enabled case status tags, and automatic case sync trigger tags from the topic so subsequent edits do not create another case. Already queued automatic sync jobs skip creating a case once its trigger tags and local association are gone. Other tags and the Discourse topic remain. This action is separate from create/sync permissions.

Reconnecting Salesforce

After connecting Discourse to a different Salesforce organization or refreshing a sandbox, run bin/rake salesforce:prune_dead_associations. The task removes local Contact, Lead, Case, and Case Comment references that the connected integration user cannot resolve. Assign the integration user full record-level read access to Contact, Lead, and Case records before running it.

When salesforce_leads_enabled is disabled, the task skips Lead reporting and cleanup, retaining existing Lead links. Pruning stale Lead links preserves Leads group membership. Contact group memberships are still removed when their Contact links are pruned.