Create Salesforce tasks for Gong activities

Who can do this? Tech admin

Where to go: Click Company settings > Salesforce

Centralize your sales data in Salesforce so that you don’t have to move between apps to get a clear picture of what’s going on in each deal. You can export the following Gong activities:

• Calls

• Emails

• Engage tasks

• Engage LinkedIn connection requests and messages

• Engage flow data

Gong activities are exported as tasks, where you can create reports which combine Gong and Salesforce data to get the business analytic statistics you need.

To export activities to Salesforce:

• In the Salesforce Integration page scroll down to Export to Salesforce as tasks.

Exporting calls to Salesforce

Choose whether to export conference call data, or data on calls recorded on a telephony system or both. The data exported includes details such as when the call took place, how long it lasted and what the call resolution was. The call transcript is not exported.

Configure the timeframe for updating Salesforce tasks:

Gong activities are updated with new data as it becomes available, for example if a new smart tracker is set up, the Salesforce task for that activity is updated with the new data.

Updating Salesforce tasks can cause unnecessary overload on your CRM especially if it includes updating obsolete tasks. Therefore, we update activities for a relative period of time after they occur, after which they are no longer updated.

In Export data for activities that occurred up to: set the number of months after the activity occurs that it should be updated. If you set this to 3 months, an activity will be updated as follows:

To export calls to Salesforce:

1. Select the activities you want to export:

   • Meeting invites: exports details of meetings that have not yet taken place. At least one external participant must be a contact or lead in the CRM in order to create a task for a meeting. If no contact, lead, or account is found, the task isn't created.

     The task is created with a status of open. Once the meeting has taken place, the meeting details, such as a link to the recording, are added to the task and the status is automatically changed to complete.

   • Conference calls: the call is added to the task containing the relevant meeting invite.

   • Telephony system calls: exports calls as follows:

     • For calls made with the Gong dialer:

       • All recorded calls

       • Call attempts: details of calls that were made but not answered

       • Short calls: calls that are under 5 minutes

       • Non recorded calls: details of calls that were made, answered, and not recorded

     • For calls made with other telephony systems:

       • All recorded calls that last longer that the time set in your recording settings page

2. In the Advanced section, select whether to create one or several tasks for each activity exported. For more details, see Creating tasks below.

3. Click Update

Exporting emails to Salesforce

Emails are exported from the date you configure them to be exported and are not exported retroactively.

To export emails to Salesforce:

Note

This is supported for emails written in the Gong email composer, Google Workspace and Office365

1. In Gong captured emails, select the workspaces you want to export emails from.

2. Choose whether to export All Emails to Salesforce, or only Emails Written in Gong, (emails written using the Gong email composer).

   Caution

   If you select All Emails and you have another app which exports emails to Salesforce, your Salesforce tasks will be duplicated.

3. Select which team members you want to export emails for. By default no team members are selected and no emails are exported to Salesforce for the workspace. Click Edit to add or remove team members whose emails should be exported to Salesforce.

   1. In the Add/remove team members dialog, search for the employee name, team or job title you want to export emails to Salesforce for.

   2. Click the team members or teams to add them to the list, and click the X to remove them from the list.

   3. Click OK to close the dialog. The number of team members should be updated.

4. In the Advanced section:

   • Select whether to create one or several tasks for each email exported. For more details, see Creating single tasks for activities or Creating several tasks for emails.

   • Select the task type for the activity. You must set up the relevant task types in Salesforce first. For more details, see Configuring the task type for an activity.

5. Click UPDATE to save the changes.

Exporting Engage data

If you have an Engage seat, you can export two types of Engage data to Salesforce.

Engage tasks

Engage tasks, LinkedIn messages and connection requests are exported to Salesforce once the to-do is marked as completed in Gong, the activity is not imported from external sources.

To export Engage to-dos:

1. Scroll down to Engage to-do type and select whether to export:

   • Engage tasks

   • LinkedIn messages and connection requests

2. Select whether you want to create one task in Salesforce, or several tasks for each Engage to-do.

Engage flow data

You can export data on which contacts have been added to a flow and what step in the flow they are in. This enables you to see which activities are part of an Engage flow and which aren't.

Viewing flow data in Salesforce is dependent on various fields being added to the task and contact layout. These fields contain information such as the status of the flow and the flow name. For more details, see Setting up Salesforce custom fields.

To enable exporting Engage flow data in the Engage flow data section, select Export flow fields.

Creating Salesforce tasks

Tasks are created once, immediately after the activity is processed in Gong. Tasks for emails may take a little longer as they are created in bulk and depend on the available Salesforce resources.

Tasks are associated with an existing Account, Contact, Lead, or Opportunity as identified by Gong.

Setting the task status

Most tasks are created with a status of Completed as activities are exported after they have already occurred. This includes emails, telephony calls, conference calls and Engage activities depending on what you choose to export to Salesforce.

Meeting invite task status

Tasks for meeting invites have a status of In Progress as they are exported before the meeting takes place. If past meeting invites are exported, they are also assigned the In Progress status.

After the meeting takes place, the task is updated as follows:

• Recorded meetings: The recording of the meeting is added to the corresponding meeting invite task, and the task status is changed to Completed.

• Non recorded meetings: The task keeps its In Progress status and is not closed automatically. No additional details of the meeting are exported to the task.

• Canceled meetings: The title of the task is updated with Meeting Canceled. The status remains as In Progress.

• Deleted meetings: Deleted from the CRM.

See Values assigned to task fields for more details.

Creating single tasks for activities

Choose between creating a single task for each activity exported to Salesforce, or separate tasks for each participant, account and opportunity.

Selecting one contact/lead

Sometimes, there are multiple CRM contacts or leads that could correspond with a single Gong activity participant. In this case, we choose the contact with the most recent Due date of the contact or lead’s closed tasks. If the due date of all potential contacts is empty, we randomly assign a contact ot the activity.

Viewing the task

Activity details are displayed in a single task as follows:

• The task’s name and related to fields contain a single participant and account that we select in the following way:

  • Name: We select the participant for the task based on the following:

    1. CRM contact: we look for the CRM contact that corresponds to each participant in the activity.

    2. CRM lead: if there are no contacts, we look for CRM leads. As leads aren’t associated with accounts in the CRM, we will not be able to associate the task with an account or opportunity and the Related to field will be empty.

    3. Domain: if there are no CRM leads we look to see if there is an account with the same domain as any of the participants, and we associate the activity with that account. In this case, the Name field is empty.

  • Related to: This is either an opportunity or an account based on the following criteria:

    • Opportunity: if we identify one opportunity associated with the activity, the Related to field is populated with the opportunity.

    • Account: If there are no opportunities, or there are multiple opportunities that can be associated with the activity, the Related to field is populated with the account of the participant in the Name field.

• Additional participants, accounts, and opportunity details are displayed in custom fields that should be defined in the task:

  • Gong_Participants__c: to display the list of participants

    Note:

    The maximum length of this field is 255 characters. If the list of participants exceeds this, see the activity in Gong for the full participant list

    Gong_Associated_Accounts__c: to display the list of associated accounts

  • Gong_Associated_Opportunities__c: to display the list of associated opportunities

  See Setting up Salesforce custom fields for more details on fields added to the task.

Note

If the custom fields relevant for creating one task for each activity are not defined in Salesforce, a single task is generated but the associated participant, account, and opportunity details will not be available.

Creating several tasks for calls

If you select to create several tasks for each call, the tasks are created as follows:

Tasks are created for each of the relevant Salesforce records identified by Gong.

For example, if a meeting was held for Acme Robotics about a Renewal opportunity with Marcus Rashford and Jack Grealish from Acme Robotics, then tasks activities will be created for the Acme Robotics Account, Renewal Opportunity, and Marcus and Jack's Contacts records.

In the Acme Robotics record, you’ll see 2 tasks; one for Marcus, and one for Jack. In the Renewal Opportunity, you will also see 2 tasks, one for each contact.

Gong creates task records with the following info:

Call comments example:

Creating several tasks for emails

Multiple tasks can be created in Salesforce for a single email. Tasks for emails are created as follows:

1. The email sender and receiver exist in Salesforce either as users or contacts

2. For outbound emails: the Salesforce contact or user are in the To field and not in the CC field of the email

   For inbound emails: the Salesforce contact or user are in either the To or the CC field of the email

3. CC: Tim@acme

   Separate tasks are created for each Salesforce user and contact and for each opportunity the email is associated with

4. A separate task may be created for up to five email recipients. If an email has more than five recipients, the recipient names are added to the task comments but no task is generated for them.

5. For inbound emails, tasks are created for Salesforce users that are either the opportunity owner if the status of the opportunity is open, or the account manager.

Example of tasks created from outbound emails

From: John@acme

To: Graham@prospectCompany, Julie@prospectCompany

Associated opportunities: Basic package, Advanced package

In this case, four tasks are created for John.

• Task 1: User: John@acme, Contact: Graham@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Basic package, call-object-identifier - az173489

• Task 2: User: John@acme, Contact: Julie@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Basic package, call-object-identifier - az173489

• Task 3: User: John@acme, Contact: Graham@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Advanced package, call-object-identifier - az173489

• Task 4: User: John@acme, Contact: Julie@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Advanced package, call-object-identifier - az173489

Example of tasks created from inbound emails

To: John@acme, Amy@acme

From: Graham@prospectCompany, Julie@prospectCompany

Associated opportunities: Basic package, Advanced package

In this case two tasks are created as Amy is not the account manager or the opportunity owner.

• Task 1: User: John@acme, Contact: Graham@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Basic package, call-object-identifier - ad8959654

• Task 2: User: John@acme, Contact: Graham@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Advanced package, call-object-identifier - ad8959654

Tasks based on emails are created as follows:

Configuring the task type for an activity

Salesforce tasks include a task type which can be set for Gong activities exported as tasks to Salesforce. This enables you to create reports in Salesforce based on the different types of Gong activities. The default task types set by Salesforce are: 

• Call

• Meeting 

• Other

In order to be able to set a task type for emails, Engage to-dos and LinkedIn messages, we recommend creating the following task types in Salesforce: 

• Email: mapped automatically if the task type is already defined in Salesforce. You can change this if needed.

• To-Do

• LinkedIn message

Once you have configured the task types, set the relevant task type for each activity in the Advanced section. Existing tasks are not updated with the relevant task type. To update your existing tasks with the new task type, see Updating existing tasks with a task type.

The following table shows the default values for the task type and task subtype if you do not set a task type for the activity:

Ensuring exported data is displayed in the task

In order to display all relevant data in the task, we need to define additional fields in the task object and add them to the task layout in Salesforce. This can be done automatically by Gong if you install the Gong for Salesforce app, or you can set the fields up manually in Salesforce.

In the Custom fields section of the page, select whether you want automatic or manual setup for the custom fields. You can also install Gong for Salesforce if you have not done so.

A list of features and the custom fields for those features are listed with a status of whether they are defined in Salesforce or not. See Setting up Salesforce custom fields for details of how to define the fields in Salesforce.

The call-object-Identifier

The email has an activity ID which is stored in the Call Object Identifier displayed in the task. Use this ID to create reports or search for all activities based on a specific email.