Please note that this connector is a paid product. For pricing information, please reach out to your Smartling Customer Success Manager.
Smartling's Intercom Connector enables you to seamlessly localize your help center content, ensuring consistent, high-quality multilingual experiences for your global customers. Effortlessly translate articles and collections while preserving formatting, request translations in bulk, and benefit from automated change detection so updates to existing content can be automatically sent for translation. For more information, please see our Intercom Connector Overview.
Prerequisites
Before you begin using the connector, ensure that your Help Center is configured to support multiple languages. Set the default language for your Help Center, then add additional languages and configure the style so that content displays in these languages when they match your customers' device settings. Be sure to check out Intercom's list of supported languages.
Please refer to the Intercom documentation for more details on setting up multi-language support.
Step 1: Create a dedicated user in Intercom
Before connecting Smartling to your Intercom account, we recommend creating a dedicated service user that will act on behalf of the connector. This account will update articles with translations and will appear as the “updated by” user in the translated article metadata. The dedicated service user should have a descriptive name (e.g., Smartling Connector, smartling@yourbusinessname.com).
It is recommended to log in as this service user when setting up the connector, rather than using an employee account. This ensures continuity if the employee leaves your organization or their permissions change.
Step 2: Create a dedicated Smartling project for the connector
You must create one dedicated Smartling project per Intercom workspace. If you have multiple Intercom workspaces, you will need to create a separate Smartling project for each one.
- Log in to the Smartling dashboard.
- Create a new project in Smartling.
- Select the project type "Connector".
- Select "Intercom" as your connecting platform.
- Choose your desired linguistic package or create a new one, and add the source and target languages.
Once the project has been created, ensure that all workflows, linguistic assets, and team members are set up correctly. In particular, we recommend checking that the default workflows for all of your target languages are set up according to your preferences. If auto-authorization is enabled in your Smartling settings, these workflows will be used automatically for all translation requests through the connector.
Step 3: Installing the Intercom Connector
Before completing this step, make sure you are logged in as the dedicated service user you created in Step 1. This will ensure that you connect Intercom to Smartling, using the appropriate account.
- Navigate to your Intercom Connector project in Smartling
- Click the Settings tab > Intercom Settings > Connect to Intercom
- The authorization modal will appear, prompting you to grant Smartling access to your workspace. If you belong to multiple workspaces, be sure to select the correct one before clicking Authorize Access.
- You will then be redirected back to your project’s Intercom settings page, where you can configure the connector settings.
Step 4: Configure the Intercom Connector
Once you have successfully connected your Intercom environment to Smartling, complete the following configurations within the Intercom Settings page by navigating to the project > Settings tab > Intercom Settings.
General
Automation of Prior Requests for Translation
This setting controls how you want the connector to monitor changes to content that has already been requested for translation in Smartling.
Options include:
- Auto: The connector will detect changes to previously submitted source content every three hours. Any detected updates are batched into a job. Depending on your Smartling Settings, these jobs can be authorized automatically (default) or remain in awaiting authorization for manual approval. Please reach out to your Smartling representative, who can adjust the authorization setting for your project. This feature does not detect content in new assets—only updates to content from assets previously submitted for translation. In other words, if an asset is brand new and has never been requested for translation, its content will not be picked up by this automation. See additional details here.
- Manual: The connector checks for changes to source content every 3 hours but does not automatically submit updates for translation.
- Disabled: The connector does not check for changes to source content.
Three hours is the shortest recommended duration between checks. Consult your Solution Architect to adjust the frequency to a longer interval using cron.
Delivery Options
This is where you configure publishing options for delivering translated articles to Intercom. These settings apply only to articles, not collections.
- Never publish: When completed translations are delivered, they are delivered in draft state and are not published automatically.
- Always publish: Smartling will publish an asset after successful delivery, even if the asset was in a draft state as a source.
- Smart publish: This option ensures the connector will match the asset's current status upon translation delivery. It will respect the original publishing state. Drafts remain drafts, and published assets are republished.
Be sure to click the Save button after updating any settings.
Language Configuration
The Language Configuration settings ensure that each of the languages set up in Intercom is mapped to the correct target locale in your Smartling project. This is essential for requesting content for translation and for the correct delivery of translated content to your Intercom environment.
The first time you open this page, you will find a blank field to the left of each of the Smartling target languages. For each Smartling target language, select the appropriate Intercom language from the dropdown menu.
Click the checkmark to save each mapping.
Any language left blank will not appear in the list of target languages when requesting content for translation in Smartling.
Each time you add a new language to the project, you must map that language in the connector settings.
- From within your Intercom project, click on the Settings tab > Intercom Settings.
- Select the appropriate language from the dropdown menu.
- Click the checkmark to save each mapping.
Content Parsing
Content parsing refers to the process of breaking content into translatable strings. All fields are localizable by default. Use the dropdown menu to select how each field should be parsed or if it should not be translated.
For more details on the different parsing options, see here.
Smartling Settings
Talk to your Customer Success Manager or Solution Architect about options regarding auto-authorization, translation retrieval type, file versioning, and capturing custom placeholders. For more details, see the information linked here.
Now, you're ready to start Translating with the Intercom Connector.