Bigin for Zoho Desk Integration
Bigin is an easy-to-use pipeline-centric CRM solution built for small businesses and designed to make sales processes more effective. Being an ideal precursor to a full-fledged CRM, Bigin is a great first step for anyone who wants to eliminate the use of spreadsheets and other third-party applications that function in silos. Integrating Bigin with Zoho Desk gives your sales and support teams a holistic view of your customers by maintaining a single customer and product database, which is always in sync.
Note:
- To set up this integration, you must be an administrator of both Bigin and the Zoho Desk instance.
- If your Zoho Desk account is already integrated with Zoho CRM, then the integration with Bigin and Salesforce will be restricted. This constraint is in effect to prevent the looping of account and contact records between the services during two-way sync.
Key Features
Integrating with Bigin brings with it the below features to deliver a great customer experience:
- Maintain a unified database of customer and product information using the two-way sync for contacts, accounts, and products along with their data for custom fields.
- Agents can view the customer information pulled in from the Bigin - such as potentials, notes, and activities on the same window as that of the support ticket.
- View the customer profile pulled in from the Bigin, within a contact or an account in Zoho Desk.
- Prioritize and work on Zoho Desk tickets based on their customer types in the Handshake Mode.
Configuring Bigin Integration
Configuring the Bigin integration can be split into 3 steps.
Step 1 - Setting up Bigin Integration
Follow the steps below to set up the Bigin integration in your Zoho Desk.
- Log in to your Zoho Desk account with Administrator privileges.
- Click the Setup icon (
) in the top bar.
- Click Zoho under the Marketplace menu.
- On the Zoho page, click Bigin.
Make sure that you have subscribed to one of the paid plans of Bigin. - On the Bigin page, click Integrate.
The Bigin companies matching your email address are listed. - Select the CRM Company with which you want to integrate from the drop-down menu.
- Click Authorize.
The Bigin account is authenticated, and you can proceed to Step 2.
Step 2 - Syncing Contacts and Accounts
The next step is to select the sync type and map the Zoho Desk fields with those of Bigin. To begin with, the standard fields in the Contacts and Accounts module will come pre-mapped for your convenience.
Follow the steps below to complete the integration:
The next step is to select the sync type and map the Zoho Desk fields with those of Bigin. To begin with, the standard fields in the Contacts and Accounts module will come pre-mapped for your convenience.
Follow the steps below to complete the integration:
- Select a Sync Type. By default, two-way sync is selected. You may choose a one-way Bigin to Desk sync if required.
- Associate the fields under Zoho Desk Fields column header with the corresponding fields in Bigin.
You can choose the appropriate field from the drop-down menu. - Click Start Sync.
You can click 'Edit' under Configuration Details to edit the sync type or the field mapping.
Step 3 - Syncing Products
The final step is to configure syncing of your products. You must select the sync type, the departments whose products must be synced, and map the Zoho Desk fields with those of Bigin.
Follow the steps below to sync products:
The final step is to configure syncing of your products. You must select the sync type, the departments whose products must be synced, and map the Zoho Desk fields with those of Bigin.
Follow the steps below to sync products:
- Click Configure corresponding to Products and under Sync Settings.
- On the Configure Product Sync page, select a Sync Type.
By default, two-way sync is selected. You may choose a one-way Bigin to Desk sync if required. - Select the departments whose products must be synced from the drop-down menu.
- Associate the fields under Zoho Desk Fields column header with the corresponding fields in Bigin.
- You can choose the appropriate field from the drop-down menu.
- Click Start Sync.
You can click 'Edit' under Configuration Details to edit the sync type or the field mapping.
Bigin integration is successfully completed.
Note:
- During your first sync session, the system will perform a bulk import and export of data. Depending on the size of your database, this might take several hours to complete.
- The records that were created during the last one year alone will be imported and synced between your Zoho Desk and Bigin accounts.
- The duplicate check for Contacts and Accounts is primarily based on the Email ID of the contacts and the Account Name respectively.
- The duplicate check for Products is based on the Product Name.
- All contacts irrespective of whether they have an email address or not will be synced.
- The sync will kick-start when you create, update, delete or mass update records either in Zoho Desk/Bigin.
Delete Preferences
You can choose to keep or delete records when their equivalent is deleted from the other service. This will make the syncing experience smoother and prevents test or junk records from syncing between databases.
To set your delete preferences:
- Go to Setup > Marketplace > Zoho > Bigin.
- On the Configuration Details tab and under Preferences, select whether to keep or delete contacts and accounts when their equivalent are deleted from the other service.
Let's look at the impact of each of these preferences:
On deleting a Bigin record:
- Always delete the corresponding record in Desk - Deletes and moves the record and its associates to the recycle bin.
- Delete record in Desk if there are no associates - Deletes and moves the record to the recycle bin only if there are no associates. When an associate is present, it removes the mapping between records.
- Never delete the corresponding record in Desk - Removes only the mapping between records.
On deleting a Desk record:
- Always delete the corresponding record in Bigin - Deletes and moves the record and its associates to the recycle bin.
- Never delete the corresponding record in Bigin - Removes only the mapping between records.
What are the associates?
Associates are the child records linked to a contact, account, or product in your help desk. Given below are the associates for each module:
- Contacts : Tickets, Time Entries, Activities, and Attachments
- Accounts : Tickets, Contacts, Contracts, and Attachments
- Products : Attachments
Setting Profile-level Permissions
The administrator can modify each Zoho Desk profile to grant and remove certain privileges concerning contacts and accounts in Bigin. For example, if the light agents are to be restricted from viewing potentials information, simply disable the Potentials option. Now, all agents with a 'Light Agent' profile can see contact information, notes, and activities but cannot view the potentials information from Bigin.
To set permissions:
- Go to Setup > Marketplace > Zoho > Bigin.
- In the Bigin Integration page, click Permissions.
- Under the Permissions tab, do the following:
- Uncheck the 'Visible' checkbox (
) corresponding to a profile to hide the Bigin integration.
- Click the toggle corresponding to Accounts or Contacts. This option allows you to choose to display either one of them for a specific profile.
- Click the Permission-level link (i.e., Full Access or Restricted Access) to allow or deny access for the following items:
- Contact/Account Information
- Potentials
- Notes
- Activities [Select or unselect Calls, Events, and Tasks individually]
Viewing Sync History
Maintaining a log of the activities performed in your Zoho Desk account is always useful. You know when a ticket was edited, or who added a ticket. Similarly, a log of the synchronization activities helps know when and what kind of records were imported. The Sync History in Zoho Desk provides a clear picture of the recently synced records over the last 7 days.
You can see the following details under the sync history:
- Date of sync
- Source of the sync and the target, i.e., from Desk to Bigin or vice versa
- Imported record type, i.e., Contacts or Accounts
- Details on the number of records that are added, updated or failed
To view sync history:
- Go to Setup > Marketplace > Zoho > Bigin.
- In the Bigin Integration page, click Sync History.
Viewing Failure Logs
The Failure Log is a chronological sequence of entries, each resulting from the failure of the sync actions in Zoho Desk. The logs are helpful to determine the reason behind the failure of a sync event and also to identify the records associated with the event. Given below in the table are some of the common error messages behind the failure of a sync event:
| Error Messages | Description |
| Bigin ID is already mapped with another Support Entity | The record seems to be a duplicate. Its original entity is already mapped with its counterpart in the other database. |
| Text value is given for an Integer field | You have incorrectly mapped a Text type field with an Integer field in the Desk— Bigin field mapping. |
| Mandatory Field Missing (Extremely Rare) | You may have failed to map the mandatory fields that are required for Contacts and Accounts. |
| Missing Parameter (Extremely Rare) | This may occur when an API parameter was missed out during a back-end operation. |
| Incorrect API parameter or Parameter Value (Extremely Rare) | This may happen when an incorrect API parameter was called, or its value seems incorrect during a back-end operation. |
To view failure logs:
- Go to Setup > Marketplace > Zoho > Bigin.
- In the Bigin Integration page, click Failure Log.
- Under Failure Log section, click on a record type to view the details.
The individual records that could not be synced will be displayed. You can view the failure time and the reason for their failure alongside a record. Click Try Again to re-sync the record.
Pausing/Resuming Sync
Zoho Desk allows you to pause and resume syncing as and when required.
To pause an active sync:
- Go to Setup > Marketplace > Zoho > Bigin.
- In the Bigin Integration page, click Pause Sync.
The data sync will be paused. During this time, no data exchange or update will happen between your Zoho Desk and Bigin accounts. You can return here to Resume syncing when you're ready.
Deleting Integration
You can delete Bigin integration at any time. On deleting:
- No further data sync will take place between Bigin and Zoho Desk.
- You will no longer be able to view customer information from Bigin.
- You cannot answer tickets based on their customer type in the Handshake Mode.
To delete Bigin integration:
- Click the Setup icon (
- In the Setup Landing page, click Zoho under Marketplace.
- On the Zoho page, click Bigin.
- Click the More icon (
) in the upper-right side of the Integration page.
- Click Delete Integration from the menu.
- In the Confirmation dialog box, click Delete.
Bigin integration is deleted in your help desk.
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