Intercom is a real-time business messaging platform that lets you bring together and manage all your customer life cycle activities in a single platform.

Getting started

Before configuring Intercom as a destination in RudderStack, verify if the source platform is supported by Intercom by referring to the table below:

Once you have confirmed that your source platform supports sending events to Intercom, follow these steps:

• From your RudderStack dashboard, add the source. Then, from the list of destinations, select Intercom.
• Assign a name to the destination and click on Next.

Connection settings

To successfully configure Intercom as a destination, you will need to configure the following settings:

• Access Token: Enter your Intercom API access token. You can obtain the token by going to your Intercom dashboard and navigating to Settings > Apps & Integrations > Developer Hub. Then, select your app and go to Configure > Authentication.

• App ID: The Intercom app ID is required for sending events via the web and mobile SDKs. You can get this ID from your Intercom dashboard by going to Settings > Installation and selecting the relevant platform.

• Android API Key / iOS API Key: This is required for sending events from your mobile apps to Intercom. You can get it from your Intercom dashboard by going to Settings > Installation and selecting the relevant platform.
• Include Context with Identify Calls: Enable this option to send the user context details to Intercom in the identify calls.
• Send AnonymousId as Secondary UserId: Enable this option to send anonymousId as the user ID to Intercom when the userId is absent from the event payload.

Adding device mode integration

Depending on your platform of integration, follow the steps below to add Intercom to your project:

Identify

The identify call captures the details about a visiting user.

A sampleidentify call looks like the following code snippet:

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rudderanalytics.identify("1hKOmRA4GRlm", {
  name: "Alex Keener",
  email: "alex@example.com",
  company: {
    id: "group01",
    name: "Tech Group",
  },
  createdAt: "Mon May 19 2019 18:34:24 GMT+0000 (UTC)",
})

Using identify calls

You can use the identify call to create or update user information in Intercom, as explained below:

• Create/update a user: When you make anidentify call, RudderStack creates or updates the user in Intercom using their Users API.
• Remove users from a company: To remove users from a company, you can pass remove: true inside the company object, as shown:

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rudderanalytics.identify("1hKOmRA4GRlm", {
  name: "Alex Keener",
  email: "alex@example.com",
  company: {
    id: "group01",
    name: "Tech Group",
    remove: true
  },
  createdAt: "Mon May 19 2019 18:34:24 GMT+0000 (UTC)",
})

• Unsubscribe users: To unsubscribe users from emails, you can pass unsubscribedFromEmails: true inside the context object, as shown:

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rudderanalytics.identify("1hKOmRA4GRlm", {
  name: "Alex Keener",
  email: "alex@example.com",
  company: {
    id: "group01",
    name: "Tech Group",
  },
  unsubscribedFromEmails: true,
  createdAt: "Mon May 19 2019 18:34:24 GMT+0000 (UTC)",
})

Traits mapping

The following table lists the mapping of the RudderStack traits to the Intercom properties:

Collecting identify context

If you enable the Include Context with Identify Calls option in the RudderStack dashboard, RudderStack collects the following contextual properties through its mobile libraries (if available):

• device.type
• device.model
• device.manufacturer
• os.name
• os.version
• app.name
• app.version

Identity verification

Intercom's identity verification feature ensures the privacy of the conversations between you and your users. It also makes sure that one user cannot impersonate another.

To enable the identity verification feature for the web device mode, you can pass user_hash within the integrations object, as shown in the following snippet:

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rudderanalytics.identify(
  "1hKOmRA4GRlm", {
    name: "Alex Keener",
    country: "USA"
  }, {
    Intercom: {
      user_hash: "9c56cc51b374c3ba189210d5b6d4bf57790d351c96c47c02190ecf1e430635ab",
    },
  }
);

Track

The track call lets you record the customer events, that is, the actions they perform, along with any properties associated with them.

A sample track call is shown below:

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rudderanalytics.track("Order Completed", {
  order_id: "140021222",
  checkout_id: "WAP3211",
  products: "sports_shoes"
  revenue: 77.95,
  currency: "USD",
})

Page

The page call lets you record your website's page views with any additional relevant information about the viewed page.

A sample page call looks like the following code snippet:

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rudderanalytics.page("Best Seller")

Reset

The reset method resets the previously identified user and any related information.

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rudderClient.reset();

Copy
[[RSClient sharedInstance] reset];

FAQ

Does RudderStack support Intercom's push notification and deep linking features?

Unfortunately, none of the RudderStack SDKs support push notifications and deep linking features currently. Refer to the Intercom documentation for more information on configuring these features for your project.

What happens if both userId or email are missing in the identify / track calls sent to Intercom?

For both identify and track calls, either userId or email is a mandatory field. In case both these fields are missing, RudderStack will drop the event.

It is highly recommended to enable the Send AnonymousId as Secondary UserId setting in your RudderStack dashboard to avoid any event loss in such a scenario.

Contact us

For queries on any of the sections covered in this guide, you can contact us or start a conversation in our Slack community.