A contact sync brings people from a connected tool into Simplesat as customers, so you can send them email surveys and build audiences from their details. It never writes anything to your tool, and it never deletes a customer.

Simplesat keeps one customer for each email address in your workspace. When the sync finds someone in your tool whose email matches a customer you already have, it updates that customer, and when the email is new, it creates one. Anyone without an email address is skipped. So if you already have customers from surveys or a CSV import, turning on a sync adds to that list rather than duplicating anyone.

The sync reads people, whatever your tool calls them: contacts, users, people or profiles. Companies, clients and organizations don't become customers. Where the sync picks up companies, each person is saved with their company's name.

To write feedback to a contact or ticket in your tool, you need a different integration, which Writing feedback back, and mapping the fields walks through.

For ticket details on each response, Attribution: linking feedback to tickets, customers and agents explains pull integrations such as Pull ticket details.

Salesforce integrations are available on the Pro plan and above.

Anyone with the Owner or Admin role can turn on a contact sync, and so can anyone whose role includes Manage integrations.

The Intercom sync, Sync Intercom contacts, has its own setup in Intercom integrations.

For every other tool:

Once the sync is on, it shows Active and its button reads Deactivate integration.

Most syncs save each person's email address, name and company. Some also save details such as a contact's status or type as customer custom attributes, and the Zendesk sync adds each user's tags as customer tags. Each tool's article, such as Autotask integrations, lists the fields its sync reads. The Intercom sync reads name, email, company, Intercom tags, segments and custom attributes, all listed in Intercom integrations.

Each run updates the customers it brings in with the values from your tool. A name or company can also arrive with a survey response, and the customer shows whichever value was written last for that email.

A sync that saves custom attributes replaces all of a customer's custom attributes, and a sync that saves tags replaces all of their tags, including any that came from a CSV import or another source. The Intercom sync replaces only the attributes and tags it brought in from Intercom. For a customer synced from any other tool, bring their attributes and tags in through the sync, not a CSV.

Most syncs have no settings. These do:

The Intercom sync runs once a day at 02:00 UTC and picks up the contacts whose last change in Intercom fell on the previous calendar day, in UTC. A contact you change just after midnight UTC is picked up about 26 hours later, plus however long the run takes.

Most other syncs run once a day, at the time of day they were turned on. The Klaviyo sync runs every 5 or 60 minutes, depending on your workspace. Each person can take up to ten minutes to appear once the sync finds them, and a large run arrives in batches over a longer time.

The Smartsheet sync runs whenever a row in your sheet changes, and saves the change straight away.

The tool's page doesn't show when the sync last ran, whether it's running, or how many people came in. To check that someone arrived, look for them on the Customers page.

Deactivate integration turns a sync off, and it then shows Inactive. Activate integration turns it back on with the same settings.

For Intercom, turning the sync off and on again imports everything: each click on Activate integration imports all your Intercom users, then the daily run carries on.

Other tools' syncs don't import everyone when you turn them back on. The Zendesk sync catches up on the contacts changed while it was off. Most other syncs read only the contacts changed in the past day, so someone who changed while the sync was off for longer comes in the next time they change. A sync that's off and has been on before also shows Reset integration. Use it when you want to set a sync up again from scratch. It returns the settings to their defaults and can't be undone. The next Activate integration then imports every contact, the way the first activation did. Stripe is the exception. Every run of its sync, the first one included, reads only the customers whose details changed in Stripe in the past 30 days, so a reset doesn't bring in the rest.

A contact sync never deletes a customer. People you delete or deactivate in your tool stay in Simplesat, and their past responses stay linked to them.

To stop surveying them, build an audience rule on the status your tool's sync saves, if it saves one. For Autotask that's Autotask Contact Active Status, for HaloPSA it's Inactive, and for ConnectWise and Zendesk it's Contact Active. Check the value on someone you know is inactive before you build the rule, so you know what to match.

Audience rules, explained in Sending audiences and delivery windows, can use the custom attributes and tags a sync saves, so you can survey only active contacts or a single contact type.

An attribute shows up in the rule's list of attributes once any customer carries it. A value shows up in the list of values once at least one customer has been synced with it. Old values stay listed even after no customer carries them.

People can also become customers in these ways. Each one matches on email address, so it updates the same customer a sync would rather than adding a second one.

Simplesat has no setting that limits a contact sync to flagged contacts. The sync may not have run since your change. The Intercom sync runs at 02:00 UTC and picks up the previous UTC day's changes, so a change made just after midnight UTC arrives about 26 hours later, plus the run time. Most other syncs run once a day, at the time of day they were turned on. Once the sync finds someone, they can take up to ten minutes to appear.

Check that the contact has an email address too. Anyone without one is skipped.

For tools other than Intercom, a contact sync never switches itself off. Inactive means someone clicked Deactivate integration, or clicked Revoke access on the tool's page, which switches off every integration for that tool. If the sync was deactivated, click Activate integration to turn it back on. If access was revoked, click Authenticate to connect your tool again, then Activate integration.

For Intercom, it can also mean Intercom isn't authenticated, or that the sync switched itself off because your Simplesat subscription is no longer active. Once the subscription is active again, click Activate integration on Sync Intercom contacts. If Intercom isn't authenticated, connect it again as described in Intercom integrations. Clicking Activate integration on the Intercom sync imports all your Intercom users again.

To fill the gap, import the missing people from a CSV file. It merges on email address, so nobody is duplicated. For Intercom, you can also turn the sync off and on again to import everything. With any other tool except Stripe, once you've fixed whatever kept people out, click Deactivate integration, Reset integration and then Activate integration to bring everyone in. The reset returns the sync's settings to their defaults.

If you have a very large number of contacts, the first import can fail because it's too big to finish in one run. That happens most often with ConnectWise and rarely with Zendesk. Contact us and we'll import your contacts in batches.

If the numbers still don't match, contact us with the number of contacts you expect and the number you see.

Deactivating contacts in your tool doesn't remove them from Simplesat, so they can still be surveyed. To stop surveying them, build an audience rule on the status your tool's sync saves, such as Autotask Contact Active Status, Inactive for HaloPSA or Contact Active for ConnectWise and Zendesk. Check that value on someone you know is inactive first.

Don't delete them in Simplesat. The sync creates them again the next time it picks them up, and deleting removes them from their past responses.

A value appears in the rule's list once at least one customer has been synced with it, so your new type shows up after the sync next picks up someone who has it.

A new field you add in your tool comes through only if your tool's sync already reads that field. Each tool's article lists the fields its sync reads. If your sync doesn't read the field, contact us and we can add it.

Those details come from a pull integration, which reads a ticket's or order's details onto a response, not from the contact sync. A response goes without them when:

If a pull failed on responses that arrived after it was turned on, contact us within 30 days and we can re-run it. Attribution: linking feedback to tickets, customers and agents explains how each pull works.

A pull integration reads a ticket's details onto a response when the response is created or changes. Its values show the ticket at that moment, not when the survey was sent. Most pulls also set the response's customer from the ticket's contact, and a customer's name and company show the latest value written for that email, whether it came from a contact sync, a survey link or a pull.

Compare with the same field on the ticket in your tool. The tool's own article lists which field each value comes from.

No. The sync reads from your tool and writes only to Simplesat, so deleting or deactivating a contact in your tool leaves the customer in place. To write feedback into your tool's records, you'd set up a separate integration, explained in Writing feedback back, and mapping the fields.

Most syncs run once a day, at the time of day they were turned on. The Klaviyo sync runs every 5 or 60 minutes, depending on your workspace. The Intercom sync runs once a day at 02:00 UTC and picks up contacts changed on the previous UTC day. The Smartsheet sync runs whenever a row in your sheet changes.

It depends on your tool and how many contacts you have. The first import runs in the background, and the tool's page shows no progress, last-run time or count. Look on the Customers page for the people you expect. If they stop arriving, contact us with the number of contacts you expect and the number you see. If a very large first import fails because it's too big to finish in one run, contact us and we'll import it in batches.

Yes. There's no setting for it in Simplesat, but we can add a field from your tool to your sync's custom attributes when you ask. Contact us with the field's name in your tool and the record it's on, such as the contact or the company.

Each tool's article lists the fields its sync already reads. If you use Autotask, its sync already reads Autotask Primary Contact.