Sell has three native object types: Leads, Contacts, and Deals. These are valuable ways to organize your business data, but don’t necessarily represent all of your business context. Use custom objects if you’d like to adjust your Sell data to better meet your needs.
With custom objects you can define new object types in Sell that are specific to your business, and then associate them with your leads, contacts, and deals. This means you can ensure your users have all the sales context available to them directly from the lead, contact, and deals cards.
To configure this feature you must be an admin in Support.
Taking full advantage of custom objects in Sell takes three steps: Define your custom object, link it to a lead, contact, or a deal, then create records around it.
This article covers the following process:
Related articles:
Defining your custom object
You can use custom objects to represent almost anything in Sell, such as the data of your delivery companies, contract, contractors, or products. For example, if you sell physical goods, and you want to keep information about delivery companies in your system, then you need to define what information to store for each delivery company, defining how your object should be named, and what fields it should store data for.
To define a custom object
- Click theZendesk Productsicon (
) in the top bar, then selectAdmin Center. - Click theSunshineicon (
) in the left sidebar, then clickObjects > Add object. - In theObject namefield, enter a name for your object, for exampledelivery_company.Note:For multiple words you must use an underscore between words instead of spaces.
- InAdd object, clickAdd property.
- InAdd property, in theNamefield, enter the name of the property, for exampledisplay_name.Note:如果you want your object records to have labels, you must define the
display_nameattribute. In this scenario, if the lead used multiple delivery companies, then you would store the name of the delivery companies in thedisplay_nameattribute. Then your sales reps could immediately see the names of the different delivery companies that are associated with that lead. - In theTypefield, choose from the dropdown menu or leave it as
stringif applicable. - (Optional) In theDescriptionfield you can add a brief explanation.
- Select theRequiredcheckbox, then clickAdd.
Only select theRequiredcheckbox if you want to make sure this field is filled in for all of the object records.
- Repeat steps 2-5, but in theNamefield enterplanand do not selectRequired.
- Specify the order you want the attributes displayed by dragging and dropping the attributes into the order you want your reps to see them.
- ClickSave.
Linking a custom object to a lead, contact, or deal
Now you have added an object and decided how you want it displayed, you can think about how it relates to objects that already exist in Sell. It is an important step because it defines where the objects will be displayed in the system, for example on Leads, Contacts, or Deals cards.
To link your custom object to a lead, contact, or deal
- ClickRelationships > Add relationship.
- In the fieldRelationship name, enter a name for your relationship, for exampledelivery_company.
The relationship name is displayed in the widget of an object card, so ensure your label is something that your reps will understand.
Note:You must define the relationship name using an underscore between words instead of spaces. - In theSourcefield, choose where you want the objects to be displayed, in this scenario, choosezen:lead.
- In theRelationship typedropdown menu, choose1:1.
You can choose either1:1or1:Many,这取决于关系的性质。如果your company has multiple delivery companies, add 1:Many so there are multiple object fields, if your company uses just one delivery company, then choose 1:1.
- In theTargetfield, choose your newly created type of object. For example,delivery_company.
- ClickSave.
After you have created the objects and relationships, they should look similar to the following example in the related objects widget for your sales reps.
Creating objects records
After you have set up your data structure, you must create specific object records for your reps to use. For example, if you want your reps to add multiple delivery companies to their deals, then you must create a separate object record for each company.
There are two ways to create an object record:
- Use the Zendesk API (you’ll probably need a developers' help, or use a REST API client )
- Use one of the apps available in Zendesk Marketplace (such as the Sunshine Data Editor)
You can create object records via the Zendesk REST API, which is especially handy if you want to use custom objects to integrate with other systems, and to ensure the information is available for your reps on the Leads, Contacts, or Deal cards. By storing information from another system in custom objects, you can have a minimal-code integration.
To create custom objects via the Zendesk REST API
- Work with your developer to store and manage customer data (seeGetting started with custom objectsas the process is a little technical).
8 Comments
Hi I have followed the above mentioned instructions and made a custom sunshine object and relationship with deal.
Also created an object record and its relationship record with a deal but i am not seeing related object widget in my instance. Is there any other thing to see that widget there?
Hi Shameen,
I've created a separate ticket (ticket # 6718772), to take a closer look at what could've caused the behavior you're experiencing. You should receive an email for the separate support ticket by now, and kindly check it out.
Thank you,
Customer Advocacy Team
It should be possible to generate new objects from within the interface, not only from API or custom apps.
My use case (and I guess many other people's) is having the need to create new objects in the already created object structure, directly from the deal. For example, I created a custom object for invoice generation, and I made a relationship to the deal. So it would be nice to create this "invoices" from the Sell interface and store them there.
Custom objects can be just about anything that is related to your company that you want to have a record in Zendesk. More information can be found inAbout custom objects .
The only working app in marketplace in Sell costs 100$ per month just to show objects in deal cards? There's got to be another way ?!
它可以很难表达你所有的业务有限公司ntext in Zendesk Sell with only Leads, Contacts, and Deals. However, with custom objects, you can create new object types to tailor your Sell data model to your specific requirements.
Once your custom data model is defined, you can surface it in leads, contacts, and deal cards in Sell to provide context for the user. To demonstrate how this can be done, an example custom objects app is available to download and use.
Take a look at this developer's documentation for more information:How a custom objects app is built for Sell
Hi there,
I don't understand how to use the Sunshine Data Editor to create new records.
I have been able: to create a custom object, to define a relationship between my custom object and Zendesk Deals, and to download the Sunshine Data Editor as suggested in this article. The Sunshine Data Editor App is active and visible in my Apps inside Sell, but I don't understand how I start inputting data! Can anybody help me please?
I you installed thisSunshine Data Editor App, the data can be entered once you access the app on your Zendesk Support agent dashboard.
Pleasesign into leave a comment.