CRM Integration

Enhance your case management and your customer relationship management processes by integrating iCasework into a CRM system. Create cases in iCasework directly from your CRM, and ensure that your contact centre staff can easily access the history and status of cases raised by your customers.

The basic approaches that we would recommend to integrating your CRM product and your system are:

make use of iCasework deep links
use our rich REST based APIs
if preferred, use a combination of the above approaches.

All iCasework case creation forms, as well as case and customer summary screens are available via deep links. Taking advantage of these deep links is one of the most straightforward ways of integrating with your CRM system as CRM developers do not need to know anything about the case data that is being created. If you are also using Single Sign On with your system, then this process becomes even more seamless.

Alternatively, each iCasework case type comes with a REST style "create case" API as standard, which automatically reflects the current case structure. All case information is also accessible via our reporting APIs. This means that more tightly linked integrations can be built using calls to our APIs - this approach tends to require more development time.

We have outlined high level examples of handling typical integration points with each approach below.

Create a case

Deep link - In your CRM, add a link or button to allow users to access the "Form" deep link from the context of a particular customer, allowing a new case to be created in your system for that customer. Using the deep link means that the CRM integration does not need to be concerned with the details of the information being recorded for complaints. Pass in a customer ID to the form to prevent customer duplication. You can also pass in a unique case ID or external ID for the case. The iCasework forms can be styled, or could be displayed within an iFrame in your CRM.

On case creation in iCasework, you may wish to push a notification back to your CRM to indicate that a particular customer has raised a case, and providing the case ID or external ID. If you expose an API to allow this, the iCasework team can use our SOAP or REST API proxies to quickly and easily generate an outbound API call on case creation. This can take place as part of your system configuration without development work being required.

API call - On case creation in your CRM, use the CreateCase API to pass in the relevant case information to create the case in your iCasework system. Pass in a customer ID and customer information as well, to prevent duplicate customers and ensure that the latest contact information is available in both systems. The CreateCase API response will provide you with the case ID in UsefulFeedback which you can be stored against your CRM customer. You can also pass in the CRM case ID and use this as the basis for subsequent triggers.

Case status reporting

Deep link - Where a customer has raised a feedback case, create a further link or button to allow users to access all case details from a customer using the "Customer" deep link or to access individual cases using the "Case" deep link. With SSO in use, this process becomes seamless. Deep linking will ensure that your CRM users can always see the most up to date case information and status. You will need to pass in either the customer reference, or the case reference received after case creation.

API call - Where a customer has raised a case you can use the ID provided in the response from the "Create case" previous API call, or the customer ID or CRM case ID used in case creation, in order to use the UsefulFeedback GetCaseDetails or GetCustomerCases APIs to lookup and display case or customer information in real time.

Optionally, if you require a record of case status (or other information) to be stored, updated and displayed in your CRM itself, you can make use of our "GetReport" API, in order to define and access the information you require on a nightly schedule for the previous day as XML, JSON or CSV data.

Case updates

Deep link - A deep link into an existing customer or case record will allow notes to be added by any user who is given permissions to do so. Single sign on makes sure that this process is seamless.

API call - If the customer gets in contact again about the same issue, you can use the CreateCaseNotes or CreateAction APIs in order to push notes or trigger case updates in your UsefulFeedback system.

Further information

The examples above outline example high level approaches to integrating UsefulFeedback with your CRM system. There is nothing to stop you using a combination of the above depending on your requirements and CRM capabilities. Follow the links in the document to access further information about use of the APIs or Deep links discussed.

Please contact your project manager, or our helpdesk should you require further information or assisitance on building your integration.