Integration with Close CRM – Linked Helper

Before setting up the integration, it's crucial to keep in mind that:

In the Close CRM integration, lead creation is mandatory. Since a lead is created from the profile's company, profile needs to have current company name scraped, otherwise, sending will fail.
When sending a profile to Close CRM, Linked Helper searches for a match between the profile's and contacts' identifiers in the CRM, and if a match is not found, Linked Helper creates a new contact.
By default, email is used as the only identifier to search for a match, but a profile in Linked Helper may not have email at all; in such cases, even if the same contact already exists in Close CRM, a duplicate contact will be created.
To avoid duplicate contacts being created due to the absence of email, we recommend adding extra identifiers, for example, LinkedIn profile member ID and LinkedIn public ID (see Creating custom fields section).
Linked Helper searches for a match using one identifier at a time, starting with the upper one; only if a match is not found, another identifier is used for searching.
Some data like e-mails or phone numbers can be only scraped from your 1st connections. Linked Helper 2 scrapes all available contacts data when visiting contacts profile, so we recommend our users to send contacts to a CRM after "Visit and extract" action.

Add action to your workflow

To send successfully processed profiles

If you want to send profiles to the CRM after they were successfully processed in a certain Action, you need to add Send person to external CRM below that Action:

Make sure Send person to external CRM plug-in is installed;
Go to your campaign Workflow tab and click '+' button below the action after which you'd like to send a profile to Close CRM:
Find 'Send person to external CRM' action and click Add button:
Choose Close CRM and click Next:

To send those who replied

If you want to send only those who replied to a certain message, you need to set up the integration in the corresponding Check for replies and/or any messaging action that sends follow-up to a previously sent message:

Make sure Send person to external CRM plug-in installed;
Navigate to the action that should send replied profiles to a CRM and click it to see the settings on the right:
Choose Close CRM and then click the "Close CRM custom settings" button and follow the instruction in the next section of the article:

Connect Linked Helper with CloseCRM

Click the Connect button.
Note: for the Linked Helper versions below 2.43.31, integration should be done via API key. Please, update the program or, if not possible, check the Get Close CRM API key for integration with old LH versions section of this article for more info.
This window will be shown when connecting via the Send replied to external CRM option:

In the opened browser window, log in to your Close CRM account:
Once logged in, click the Allow button to connect accounts (you may need to click the Connect button from previous step once more after login if this page did not appear):
Then in the browser window you will be asked to open Linked Helper app. Click the Open button in the pop-up, or in case you accidentally canceled it, click the Open Linked Helper button on the page:
Once you're redirected back to the Linked Helper instance window, wait till the Close CRM is connected:
This window will be shown when connecting via the Send replied to external CRM option:
Once done, click Next button and integration settings will be shown (check the "Adjust integration" section below for more details): This window will be shown when connecting via the Send replied to external CRM option:

Adjust integration

Settings overview

Once you've opened Close CRM integration settings, you will see default fields that will be sent to your CRM. Let us quickly review what you can do here:

Depending on the authentication method used, you can change the CRM access token or disconnect from current CRM account and connect to another one.
Send the person's messaging history.
Choose where to store messaging history - in the Qualification Call or another field.
Switch to the Lead tab to choose what profile's current company fields should be sent and adjust them if needed.
Map Linked Helper fields with fields in the CRM.
Identifiers (IDs) - fields that are used to search for a profile in the CRM. If a profile with such an ID is not found, the next field below that's selected as an identifier is used for searching. With no profile found at all, Linked Helper creates a new record in the CRM.
When a profile is found in the CRM, Linked Helper sends data to empty fields only and leaves existing values in the CRM unchanged. If you want to send data to a field and update its value with new data from LinkedIn even if the field is not empty, enable the override option for such a field.
Add new fields that will be sent to Close CRM.
Remove fields that you don't want to send to Close CRM.
Choose what element to send to Close CRM. If a field contains several values, e.g. a profile has three third-party emails scraped, then you can choose what email (1st in a row, or 2nd, 3rd, etc.) to send. To send them all, on the Linked Helper side, you need to add several identical fields but set a different element number for every field, and on the side of Close CRM, you need to have three different fields, one per every email.
Add mapping for most useful fields to send them to Close CRM.
Save the changes.
Save the changes and make current settings be default ones for newly added actions or those actions that set to use defaults.

Changing default options

By default, messaging history is not sent. If you want to send messaging history, set the 'Save messaging history' checkbox and choose the activity. You can create a new one if needed:
If you do not want to overwrite the values of certain fields in Close CRM with new data from Linked Helper, unset the checkbox in the Overwrite column. In such a case, Linked Helper will leave them as they are in Close CRM, or create the fields if they do not yet exist.
If you do not want to create certain fields in Close CRM in case they do not exist, you can delete the mapping by clicking the Bin button in the last column.
Linked Helper sends the company a lead works for into Close CRM as well. If you switch to the Lead tab, you can adjust what fields of a lead's company should be sent to Close CRM.
If you don't want to send the lead's company, simply delete all mappings in the Lead tab, and vice versa, if you do not want to send contacts, then delete all mappings from the Contact tab.

Adding new mapping for other CRM fields

If you want to send some extra data about a profile or its company into a standard CRM field, you need to:

Click '+' button in the list of CRM settings:
In the 'CRM field' drop-down list, choose the needed field, for example, 'URLs':
Once a field is chosen, you can set the Overwrite checkbox if you want to replace the already existing value in the CRM with the value received from Linked Helper. Choose the corresponding field in the 'LH field' drop-down list:
In case you want to send one and the same value for all contacts, then you need to select the CONSTANT_VALUE option in LH Field and set the value manually:

Creating custom fields

This video shows you an example of using integration to update lead's LinkedIn campaign status in the CRM:

Semi-automatically

The easiest way to create custom fields is to click the 'Create most useful custom fields' button at the bottom of the Close CRM configuration menu.

In the pop-up, unset the checkboxes next to the custom fields you do not want to create for lead in Close CRM, and click Save. We recommend leaving lh_member_id and lh_public_id which will help you avoid duplicates:

In the same way, you can add custom fields for companies:

Navigate to the Lead tab.
Click the 'Create most useful custom fields' button.
Unset the checkboxes next to the custom fields you do not want to create for lead in Close CRM for companies. We recommend leaving the lh_company_id and lh_public_id fields which will help you avoid duplicates.
Click Save.

Manually

Click '+' button in the list of CRM settings:
Choose a field from the 'LH field' drop-down list. In case you want to send the same value for every profile, then you need to select the CONSTANT_VALUE option and set the value manually.
In the 'CRM field' drop-down list, choose the 'Create new field' option:
Set the Name for the field and click Yes:
Once the field is created, you can set the Overwrite checkbox if you want to replace the already existing value in the CRM with the value received from Linked Helper.

FAQ

How to export full profile information into the CRM?

How to send updated lead status of Linked Helper campaign into the CRM?

What data fields can be sent to a CRM?

You can find a list of data fields Linked Helper can export in this article - Data fields exported from Linked Helper into a webhook, CRM, or CSV file

Get Close CRM API key for API integration

It is possible to integrate Linked Helper with the CRM using API key. To get the API key and connect Linked Helper and Close CRM, please:

Go to the Settings in the bottom left corner of the main Close CRM page.
Click Developer menu in the Connect section.
Click 'New API Key'
Give it a name and click 'Create API Key' button:
Copy generated key and store it somewhere safe as for security reasons, API key is displayed only once after it was created:
Paste the token you got in the API key field you see when adding Close CRM action, then click Next and proceed as per the Adjust integration section of this article: