In enterprise businesses, it is nearly impossible for sales and marketing teams to align and close deals without additional help. The most successful teams operate efficiently with the help of sales enablement tools—many of which sync activities to Salesforce. However, with many tools and integrations comes the risk of overlapping tools creating duplicates in Salesforce.
Backstory CRM sync logic is constantly evolving to better fit our customers’ needs. Most recently, Backstory has been successfully trained to work smartly when used in tandem with cadence tools like SalesLoft and Outreach. Actively avoiding duplicates in Salesforce, Backstory employs a collaborative approach with these tools to effectively track team activities without generating additional noise.
How It Works
Backstory has integrated with Outreach, SalesLoft, and SendBloom to ensure that each tool logs a unique Message-ID to any task that is pushed to Salesforce. Backstory then detects this unique ID when processing activities to ensure that the existing record is updated, and not duplicated.
Administrators can define a custom field in Salesforce and map the field to persist the originating Message-ID from the source systems, and configure that in Backstory to let our algorithm know that a duplicate record is not created. The "Created by Backstory" flag in Salesforce will be marked as True if the record is either created or enriched by Backstory. This solution currently supports the three named integrations but will be scaled out in the future based on demand.
Check out this article about Backstory's CRM Sync Logic to understand how Backstory appends tasks to Salesforce objects after being inserted or updated!
Pre-Enablement Things to Consider
Once the Cadence tool integration is enabled, Backstory will start using an upsert operation when syncing Tasks to CRM. This operation will create a new Task record if it does not already exist, or update the existing record to prevent duplicate records.
In the scope of the upsert operation, your CRM checks for duplicates using the custom field that you will configure below.
It is strongly recommended that this custom field be configured as a unique field (“Unique = true”). This ensures that no system—Backstory or any other—creates duplicate Tasks for the same activity. If the field is not unique, Backstory will not be able to update any of the pre-existing or newly created duplicate records.
If you absolutely cannot enforce this custom field to be a unique field, then Backstory must have full read access across all Tasks (the “View All Data” permission) to properly scan for existing duplicate records before it can create a new record. Please note that even if this is done, Backstory will still not be able to update or insert a Task for pre-existing or newly created duplicate records.
Note: Your Backstory integration user must have Read and Edit access to the newly created custom field.
Enabling Outreach, SalesLoft, or SendBloom
Create a custom field on the Activity Object. We recommend naming the field Message_ID__c.
Under the Field Information section, set the Data type to be Text
Under the General Options section, please mark both Unique and External ID to be True
Under Text Options, set the maximum value length to be 255
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Map the
Message-IDfrom Outreach, SalesLoft, or SendBloom to the newly created custom field directly in the cadence tool’s field mapping settings.Set the
Message-IDin the Backstory settings. You can find this by navigating to Backstory > Settings > Integrations.Once there, navigate to CRMs > Sync Settings > Email Sync Extra Settings.
In the Upsert Message Id field name field, please add the name of the custom field to the text field.
Tip: Learn more about the Backstory<>Outreach integration in Outreach's Help Center for more information.
For best results, please make sure calls are logged from the dialing tool with <Task.Subtype = Call>. This may require additional configuration within the dialing tool, as Salesforce field permissions may need to be adjusted.
Although this is not required, this configuration will ensure Backstory is able to capture calls that were not answered and/or have no duration.
Post-Enablement Things to Consider
If Outreach, SalesLoft, or SendBloom is unable to create the task due to a Salesforce Error (e.g., User record is inactivated, API limits are reached, Insufficient privileges, Salesforce connection is unavailable), Backstory will attempt to create the Task. If successful, Outreach, SalesLoft, or SendBloom will then backfill and update the task.
If Backstory is unable to update (or) insert the task due to a Salesforce Error (E.g.. API limits is reached, Insufficient privileges, Salesforce connection is unavailable) Backstory will create or update during backfill.
The "Created by Backstory" Flag will be set to True if a record is either created or enriched by Backstory.
The Message ID field must be populated on all tasks created by the integrated cadence tool for Backstory to identify and update successfully.
All fields pushed by Backstory during syncs without a cadence tool integration will also be pushed when a cadence tool integration is enabled. The
Message_id__cfield will be the only exception.
If you have any questions about using Backstory with cadence tools, please reach out to us at support@backstory.ai.