Salesforce Integration

ClickBid’s Salesforce integration lets you pull existing Salesforce contacts into ClickBid as bidders, push auction activity and sales back to Salesforce after your event, and keep records in sync automatically throughout the night. This walkthrough covers everything from the video above, along with a few additional details from our full integration guide.

Quick Summary

• Connect under Integrations > Dashboard. Connecting uses Salesforce login (OAuth), not an API key, and you’ll need a Salesforce user with permission to install apps and create records.
• Connecting also installs ClickBid’s custom objects in Salesforce (ClickBid Attendee, ClickBid Event, and transaction-level records), which hold extra historical metadata beyond a standard Contact or Opportunity.
• Settings covers your campaign, auto sync, email and phone field mapping, and default source and purpose values for exported sales.
• Auto sync is one-way only, from ClickBid to Salesforce, and runs every 5 minutes.
• Under Advanced, choose between Standard mode (Contact + Opportunity) or Nonprofit Cloud mode (Person Account + Gift Transaction), and use Detect Packages if you ever need to troubleshoot your connection.
• Data Mappings connect ClickBid fields to custom fields that already exist in Salesforce, at either the bidder contact or opportunity level.
• Import Bidders, Export Bidders, Export Guests, and Export Sales move data between ClickBid and Salesforce in each direction.
• The Activity Log tracks everything the integration does, and most connection errors mean you need to reconnect.

ℹ️ A quick note on this one: the video walks through connecting before ClickBid’s app was live on the Salesforce AppExchange, so it shows a manual install step (logging into Salesforce, installing “ClickBid Connect” for all users, and acknowledging you’re installing a non-Salesforce application). Depending on where that rollout stands when you connect, your screens may look a little different, but either way, you’ll need a Salesforce user with permission to install apps and create records.

Step 1: Connect ClickBid to Salesforce

1. Go to Integrations > Dashboard and click Connect on the Salesforce card.
2. Log into Salesforce and approve the connection (or install the ClickBid app, depending on what you’re shown).
3. Once connected, you’ll see a Salesforce tab with several new options.

ℹ️ Connecting also installs ClickBid’s custom objects in your Salesforce account. When sales are pushed back from ClickBid, these objects capture extra metadata, things like fair market value, quantity purchased, and total amount, that you can use for historical reporting or with tools like Agentforce.

Step 2: Configure Your Settings

Open the Salesforce > Settings tab.

1. Choose the Campaign this integration should associate data with.
2. Turn on Auto Sync if you want data pushed to Salesforce automatically every 5 minutes.
3. Set your default email and phone field mapping (for example, choosing which phone field, like Mobile, ClickBid should write to).
4. Set a default Source and Purpose for exported sales.

ℹ️ Auto sync only moves data one way, from ClickBid to Salesforce. It picks up new bidders, guests identified from your ticket page, ticket sales, and auction purchases every 5 minutes, which is especially useful if you’re running peer-to-peer campaigns alongside ticket sales.

⚠️ Wait until your event is completely over before pushing attendee and event data into the ClickBid custom objects. This is meant to capture your final, complete results.

Step 3: Review Your Advanced Settings

Under Advanced, you’ll find two things worth knowing about:

• A choice between Standard mode (uses Contact and Opportunity records) or Nonprofit Cloud mode (uses Person Account and Gift Transaction records), depending on how your Salesforce org is set up.
• Detect Packages, which confirms ClickBid’s custom objects are installed correctly. You likely won’t need this unless you’re troubleshooting a connection issue.

Step 4: Set Up Data Mappings

Go to Data Mappings to connect ClickBid fields to custom fields you’ve already created in Salesforce, at either the bidder contact level or the opportunity level.

1. Choose whether you’re mapping an Opportunity or a Bidder Contact.
2. Select the Salesforce custom field and match it to the corresponding ClickBid field.

ℹ️ This is separate from the automatic metadata that gets pushed into ClickBid’s custom objects, Data Mappings is for your own custom fields.

Step 5: Import Bidders

Go to Import Bidders to pull Salesforce contacts associated with your selected campaign into ClickBid.

ℹ️ If no one is linked to that campaign in Salesforce yet, this list will be empty, that’s expected, not an error.

Step 6: Export Bidders

Go to Export Bidders to send an existing ClickBid bidder to Salesforce.

1. Choose whether to add them as a new contact or link them to an existing one.
2. Click Export.

ℹ️ Bidder data is typically sent within 5 minutes, though it can happen right away.

Step 7: Export Guests

Go to Export Guests to send ticket holders to Salesforce as Contacts.

⚠️ A guest needs an email address or phone number on file before they can be exported, otherwise their record will be grayed out.

The campaign defaults to whatever you selected under Settings, but you can choose a different one at the time of export.

Step 8: Export Sales

Every sale, whether it’s a ticket purchase, an online donation, or an auction purchase, shows up under Export Sales.

1. Select the sale or sales you want to send.
2. Click Export.

Exports use your default campaign, source, and purpose settings, but you can change any of these at the time of export, for example, sending ticket sales to one campaign and auction purchases to another.

ℹ️ Exported sales create Opportunity (or Gift Transaction) records in Salesforce, and each individual sale also appears as a transaction-level record with details like item name, quantity, fair market value, total purchase amount, and the related order ID, tied back to the ClickBid event.

Step 9: Track Campaign-Level Rollups

In Salesforce, open your campaign and look for its related ClickBid Events. This shows rollup totals, like number of bidders and number of attendees, that update automatically as you export more data over time.

Step 10: Review the Activity Log

The Activity Log records everything pushed or pulled through the Salesforce integration: the action type, status (Successful, Failure, or Pending), the data sent, and Salesforce’s response.

ℹ️ Entries are kept for three months before they’re automatically removed. A 500 error usually points to an authentication problem, reconnecting through the Integrations Dashboard typically resolves it.

Related Best Practices

• Salesforce Integration, the full written guide this walkthrough is based on.