Salesforce account mapping integration for Lucidchart

Integration overview

Visualize your path to sale by leveraging the Salesforce integration with Lucidchart. You’ll be able to visualize key influencers, roadblocks, and internal relationships by building account maps that leverage data imported from Salesforce. With bi-directional syncing, changes made in Lucidchart will be reflected in Salesforce—preserving data integrity and ensuring you’re always looking at the most up-to-date information.

For Enterprise users who’ve had an admin set up Enterprise-only features, you’ll also be able to create new Contacts directly from Lucidchart, see and edit data beyond Contacts (e.g. Accounts, Opportunities, Leads, and more), leverage advanced shapes like Contact Kanban and Smart Tables to quickly group and sort information, access your Lucidchart documents directly from a button in Salesforce, and enjoy automatic sharing of Salesforce-linked documents with your team.

Leverage the Salesforce integration with Lucidchart to increase visibility and alignment across your sales org—making the most of your Salesforce data to close bigger deals faster.
 

Create or view Salesforce-linked documents

Salesforce-linked documents automatically keep data in sync between Lucidchart and your Salesforce instance. This allows you to create accurate account maps that always have the most up-to-date information—without having to copy and paste data between Salesforce and Lucidchart. There are multiple ways to create a Salesforce-linked Lucidchart document:

Import Salesforce data into an existing Lucidchart document

You can import Salesforce data into any Lucidchart document that was created previously. If you haven’t created a Lucidchart document before, check out our guide for creating documents on The Lucid Home Page article. To import Salesforce data into an existing Lucidchart document:

1. Open the Lucidchart document.
2. Click the More menu from the top-left of the canvas.
3. Hover your cursor over “File”.
4. Hover your cursor over “Import”.
5. Click Data.
6. Select Sales Account Map.
7. Click Import Your Data.
   • If you aren’t already authenticated with Salesforce, a dialog box will appear prompting you to sign into Salesforce.
8. Search for and select the name of the Account you’d like to import.
9. Click Import.

Once the import is finished, the data from the selected Salesforce account will be displayed in the Shapes panel on the left-hand side of the canvas. See the Work with Salesforce contacts in your account map section below for more information on how to find and use this imported data.

Navigate to the Salesforce folder in Lucid

Directly from Salesforce

You can create and access Salesforce-linked documents directly from Salesforce if your admin has enabled the “Lucidchart Folder” button in your Salesforce instance. To create a new Salesforce-linked document using this method:

1. Login to Salesforce.
2. Navigate to an Account or Opportunity page.
   • Your admin may have configured the button on one or both pages.
3. Click Lucidchart Folder on the top-right of the page. This will open the Lucidchart folder associated with this Salesforce account.

From this folder, you can open an existing document or create a new one. Any Lucidchart documents created within this folder will automatically import Salesforce data for the relevant account. Proceed to the Create Lucidchart documents from the Salesforce folder section for instructions.

Directly from Lucid

You can create and access all Salesforce-linked documents for your company directly from Lucid—as long as your admin has added you as a member of the Salesforce User Group. To create a new Salesforce-linked document using this method:

1. Log in to Lucid.
2. Open the workspace dropdown from the top-left of the Lucid Home Page.
3. Select Salesforce User Group from the list of teams, or click View all teams to locate it.
   • If you aren’t seeing this team, you may not be part of the Salesforce User Group. Contact your Lucid admin to be added to the group.
4. Click + New in the top-left corner.
5. Choose Salesforce folder.
6. Search for and select the name of your desired Salesforce account.
7. Click Create folder.
8. A new folder will be created and linked to the account. Click Open on the notification to navigate inside the new folder.
   • If a folder already exists for the chosen account, you will instead be prompted to open the existing folder.

From this folder, you can open an existing document or create a new one. Any Lucidchart documents created within this folder will automatically import Salesforce data for the relevant account. Proceed to the Create Lucidchart documents from the Salesforce folder section for instructions.

Create Salesforce-linked documents from a Salesforce folder in Lucid

Now that you’ve navigated to a Salesforce folder in Lucid, you can create documents with your Salesforce account’s data automatically imported. To create a new Lucidchart document, follow these steps while in the Salesforce folder in Lucidchart:

1. Click + New in the top left corner.
2. Hover over Lucidchart.
3. Choose Blank document or Create from template.

As the document finishes loading, the Salesforce account’s data will be automatically imported for you to use. See the Work with Salesforce contacts in your account map section below for more information on how to find and use this imported data.

Work with Salesforce contacts in your account map

Add an existing contact to your account map

Once you’ve opened a Salesforce-linked document, you can begin adding contacts to the canvas. To do so:

1. Click Contacts from the Shapes panel on the left-hand side.

2. Select, then drag and drop to bring the contacts out onto the canvas.

   • If you have an account with many contacts, you can use the search bar to find them. You may search using any information that appears on the listed contacts.
   • You may use “Shift + Select” or “Command/Control + Select” to drag and drop multiple contacts onto the canvas at once.

   

If you’d like to view a contact’s details before dragging it out to the canvas, you can do so by hovering over the contact in the list, then selecting the Contact details icon.

Create a new contact from Lucidchart

As you build your account maps on sales calls and in deal reviews, you’ll likely want to add contacts to the canvas that aren’t yet created in Salesforce. Rather than going to Salesforce, creating a contact, and then finding it in Lucidchart, you can create a Salesforce contact right within your Lucidchart document and it’ll sync back to Salesforce. To create a new contact from Lucidchart:

1. Click Contacts from the Shapes panel on the left-hand side.
   
2. At the bottom of the list, locate New Contact. Drag and drop it anywhere on the canvas. 
   
3. Fill out the required contact information.
4. Click Create Contact.

Upon successful creation, you will see your new contact on the canvas. In addition, that data will be immediately available in Salesforce (if it doesn’t appear right away, refresh your Salesforce tab).

View and change contact details

While building or viewing an account map in Lucidchart, seeing contact details will provide better insight into key contacts and can save you time as you’re working to close the deal.

To view the contact details panel, select any contact on the canvas. The panel will automatically open on the right.

Inside this panel, you can see all the imported Contact fields such as Department, Email, and Phone Number. For Enterprise accounts, these fields can be customized by your Lucid admin, so you may see different fields than these. If you want to edit a contact’s information, you can do so directly from this panel. Alternatively, you can edit text on the contact shape on the canvas. No matter how you edit a contact’s information, your changes will immediately sync to Salesforce.

You can add photos to your contacts that will display anywhere the contact is shown in the Lucidchart document. To add a photo to a contact:

1. Click on the Profile tab.
2. Click the image placeholder at the top. An upload dialog will appear. 
   
3. Upload an image directly or provide the image’s public URL.
4. Click Save Photo.

In addition to photos, contacts can have an external link, helping you quickly navigate to a useful website, such as their LinkedIn profile. To use the external link on a contact, click the External link icon. This external link may sync back to Salesforce or it may only live in this Lucidchart document, depending on how your Lucid admin has configured the external link field.

To navigate to the contact’s page in Salesforce, click the Salesforce icon. If you make any changes to a contact in Salesforce, those changes will be reflected in Lucidchart after refreshing the page.

Beyond viewing a contact’s profile, the contact details panel also allows you to view or add notes on any contact:

1. Select the contact to see the contact details panel.
2. Click the Notes tab.
3. To view or add notes that sync back to Salesforce, click the Salesforce option at the top of the Notes tab. This is useful for notes that need to be shared with your team.
   • If the Salesforce option is disabled, ask your Lucid admin to configure a notes field to sync with Salesforce.
4. To view or add notes that only live in this Lucidchart document, click the Lucidchart option at the top of the Notes tab. This is useful for personal notes.

Assign a contact to an opportunity and a role

Successfully navigating a deal requires you to understand the political landscape and how individuals are related to each other. This can be difficult when solely working in a customer relationship management (CRM) software. Account maps in Lucidchart make it easy to understand and visualize relationships and roles of key stakeholders in the deal—ultimately helping you close faster. Visualizing complex deals is simple when utilizing Salesforce opportunities and contact roles within your Lucidchart account map.

First, you’ll need the contact to be assigned to an opportunity:

1. Select the contact to open the contact details panel.
2. Navigate to the “Opportunity Details” section of the panel.
3. Click the “Opportunity” dropdown menu. 
   

This dropdown shows all the opportunities this contact is already assigned to in Salesforce. You can select an existing opportunity here. Doing so will update the contact shape on the Lucidchart canvas to display the contact’s role in the selected opportunity. Alternatively, you may assign the contact to a new opportunity. Follow these steps:

1. In the “Opportunity” dropdown, click Assign to Opportunity.
2. In the dialogue box that appears, search for any opportunity related to this Salesforce account.
3. Select the desired opportunity.
4. Click Assign.

The contact will now be assigned to the chosen opportunity in Salesforce. Next, you can choose the contact’s role associated with this opportunity. To assign a role:

1. Navigate to the “Opportunity Details” section of the contact details panel.
2. Click the “Contact Role” dropdown menu.
   • If this dropdown is disabled, ensure an opportunity is already selected.
3. Select the desired contact role.
   • These roles come from your Salesforce instance and may have been customized by your sales manager or Salesforce admin.
     

Once you assign a role to the contact, the coordinating color and label will appear on the contact shape.

Keep in mind that when you assign a role to a contact in Lucidchart, the appropriate field is automatically updated in Salesforce—there’s no need to go into Salesforce and update it.

Visualize relationships between contacts

To strategically approach a deal, it’s crucial you understand the political and interpersonal relationships in an organization. These are hard to understand when information is kept in a CRM. Visualizing these relationships is easy in Lucidchart.

Once you have several contacts on the canvas, you can add lines to show the relationships between contacts:

1. Select or hover over a contact shape.
   • Dots around the edges (called nodes) will appear.
2. Begin dragging a node to start creating a line.
3. Drag the line to another contact shape (or any object on the canvas) and release. 
   • If you move shapes after you’ve connected them with a line, the shapes will stay connected.
     
4. To delete a line, select it then hit the delete or backspace key on your keyboard.

You may choose to use a combination of line types and line colors to depict the various kinds of relationships between individuals. If you want to experiment with different line styles (like straight, curved, dashed, colored, etc.), check out our Add and style lines article.

• Understanding reporting and non-reporting relationships is critical for success. We recommend using different line styles to indicate relationship types—standard, solid lines depict a reporting or hierarchical structure, whereas dashed lines indicate an unofficial or indirect relationship.
• Visualizing the sentiment for these internal relationships can help you understand the political landscape. We recommend using different line colors to indicate the sentiment, such as green for healthy relationships, red for strained ones, and black for neutral or unknown sentiments.
  

Here’s a few tips to help you style lines quickly and efficiently:

• To change the style of a single line, select it and then change the desired property. To change the style of multiple lines, click and drag to select a group (or hold Command/Shift while selecting individual lines), then change the desired property.
• After styling a line, you can copy its style to other lines. To do so, select the line you would like to copy and then select the Paint format icon from the formatting bar (once to copy it to one line or double-click to keep the style active to apply to multiple lines). Then click the line(s) to apply the style to them.

Organize account maps with containers

As you navigate complex deals, you’ll most likely be working with individuals who sit across many different teams, geographies, and project groups. Organizing these groupings makes it easier to understand how those individuals relate to each other, which is critical to winning the deal—especially when managers and your team members are viewing these account maps.

To create groupings within your account maps, you can leverage container shapes in Lucidchart:

1. Click More shapes at the bottom of the Shapes menu on the left-hand side.
2. Under “Standard libraries”, expand the “Flowchart Shapes” library.
3. Check the box next to the “Containers” library to enable it.
4. Click Use selected shapes.
   • The Containers library will now appear in your Shapes menu.
5. Choose a container and drag it onto the canvas. 
   

By default, shapes within the container will follow when you move the container. If you want to move the container without moving everything inside, just click the Magnet icon in the properties bar. This will toggle the “magnetic” element of the container.

Using containers, it’s easy to create groupings of contacts and other key information. We recommend adding a title on the container to label the group. You can also color code containers (using the fill color and line color properties) to visually distinguish groups from one another.

Group contacts automatically with Contact Kanban

Lucidchart’s Contact Kanban feature is a great way to automatically group contacts based on Department, Title, or another Contact field.

To create a new Contact Kanban:

1. Click Contacts from the top of the Shapes menu.
2. At the bottom of the list, locate New Kanban. 
   
3. Drag and drop it anywhere on the canvas.

The Contact Kanban on the canvas will automatically group all contacts into their relevant container based on the chosen grouping field (for instance, their department). To change which field the Contact Kanban is using to group:

1. Select the Contact Kanban shape on the canvas.
   • You will see a kanban panel open on the right side.
2. Click the “Group Contacts By” dropdown menu. 
   
3. Select the desired grouping field.
   • For example, if you select “Department” as the grouping field, the Contact Kanban will show containers (or columns) for the different departments. Contacts will be grouped under their respective department.

The kanban panel has additional customizations you can make, including adjusting layout and choosing which containers are hidden. Under “Manage Containers”, check the box for containers you want to show on the canvas and uncheck the box for containers you want to hide. Don’t worry—this is simply changing the layout and won’t alter any contacts’ data in Salesforce. The “Uncategorized” column contains contacts who have an empty department field (or whichever field the Contact Kanban is currently grouping by).

To create a new container (in this example, a new department):

1. Under the “Manage Containers” section in the right-hand kanban panel, click the plus icon.
2. Input your desired name for the new container.

Moving a contact into a different container seamlessly updates the relevant contact data in Salesforce. For instance, if the Contact Kanban is grouped by department, then moving a contact from the “Uncategorized” container to the “Accounting” container will set that contact’s department in Salesforce to “Accounting”. There are two methods for moving contacts between containers:

Method 1:

1. Select the contact(s) you want to move.
   • You may use “Shift + Select” or “Command/Control + Select” to select multiple contacts at once.
2. Drag the selected contact(s) and drop them into the desired container.

Method 2:

1. Hover over the destination container and click the plus icon.
2. Search for the contact you want to add.
3. Select the desired contact from the list.
   • You can create a new contact if needed by instead selecting Create New Contact at the bottom of the list.

In the Kanban, contacts must live within a container. If you have one or more contacts you would like to visualize outside of the Kanban, simply drag the selected contact(s) and drop them onto a blank part of the canvas. Now those contacts are freeform on the canvas and no longer confined to one of the Kanban’s containers.

Use additional Salesforce data in your account map

You can import multiple Salesforce accounts into one document. Additionally, Enterprise users can leverage Salesforce data beyond Contacts—like Accounts, Opportunities, Leads, or even custom objects—to build highly useful account maps. As always, if you edit the data in Lucidchart, it’ll seamlessly sync back to Salesforce, keeping everyone on the same page.

Smart Fields

Smart Fields are Enterprise-only shapes that help you leverage key Salesforce information in your account maps. They represent a single Salesforce object (such as an opportunity or lead) or a single field (such as the annual revenue of an account). To create a Smart Field, open a Salesforce-linked Lucidchart document, then look for the Shapes panel on the left-hand side. At the top of this panel will be a section labeled with the name of the imported Salesforce account, followed by all the imported Salesforce objects.

Click on an object’s name to see the imported data for that object. From this view, you can:

• Drag and drop an entire Salesforce object to your canvas. This displays all of the object’s data on one Smart Field shape.
• Drag and drop a single field to your canvas. This displays the individual field on a minimal Smart Field shape.
• Use the search and sort features at the top of the panel to narrow down the results.
• Navigate into any sub-objects that have been imported.

When you select a Smart Field on the canvas, a smart field panel will automatically appear on the right. There are multiple customizations you can make to a Smart Field using this panel:

• Change which item is being displayed under the “Visualization” section. For instance, if the selected Smart Field shape is displaying opportunity A, you can set it to display opportunity B instead.
• Show or hide the header and field titles using the “Field Options” section.
• Show, hide, and rearrange which fields are visualized using the “Manage Fields” section.

Smart Fields show real Salesforce data that updates every time you open the document. You can change this data directly from Lucidchart and the edits are automatically synced to Salesforce. Not only does this save you time, it also ensures that you and your team are always seeing the most accurate, up-to-date information. To edit information directly from Lucidchart, double-click the text on the Smart Field, then begin typing. Be sure to double-click the field’s data and not the field’s title.

Smart Tables

Smart Tables allow you to quickly see and organize bulk Salesforce data in your account maps using a tabular format. You can easily sort and filter to make sure you are focusing on the most pertinent data for closing a deal.

To create a Smart Table in your account map:

1. In the bottom of the left-hand Shapes panel, click More shapes.
2. Scroll down or search for “Smart Table”, then check the box next to it.
3. Click Use selected shapes.
4. In the left-hand Shapes panel, you’ll now see a “Smart Table” section.
5. Drag the table shape onto the canvas.

Now, choose which data the table should show:

1. Select the table.
2. In the “Smart Table” panel that appears on the right, open the “Visualization” section.
3. Click the “Dataset” dropdown.
4. Select your desired data set (Opportunity, Lead, etc.).
   • The options here are determined by the data your admin has chosen to import from Salesforce.
     

You can customize the table further, if desired, using the Smart Table panel:

• Use the “Table Options” section to style the table, including borders and striping.
• Use the “Sort” section to sort the table by a specified column.
• Use the “Filters” section to create one or more filters on the table’s data.
  • If more than one filter is used, all filters must pass in order for a given row to remain visible.
  • Be aware that dates are treated as plain text (so “greater than” and “less than” will not behave as expected).
• Use the “Manage Fields” section to show, hide, and rearrange columns on the table.

Import multiple Salesforce accounts into one document

Sometimes you may be working a deal that spans multiple accounts in your Salesforce instance due to acquisitions or working among a company’s subsidiaries. Lucidchart supports visualizing multiple Salesforce accounts in a single document, giving you a great overview into the deal.

To import an additional Salesforce account:

1. Open a Lucidchart document that has already imported a Salesforce account.
2. On the left-hand Shapes panel, find the imported account’s section (it will be labeled with the name of the account).
3. At the bottom of that section, click Import account. 
   
4. If you aren’t already authenticated with Salesforce, a dialog box will appear prompting you to sign into Salesforce.
5. Search for and select the name of the account you’d like to import.
6. Click Import.

This process can be repeated several times. Be aware, however, that the “Import account” button will only appear on the primary account’s section (see note above on primary accounts).

Manage your Salesforce authorization token

Lucid never has access to your Salesforce credentials. Instead, the integration uses OAuth to store a secure token for you—enabling authorized interactions with Salesforce on your behalf. Sometimes tokens can expire or otherwise become invalid. If this happens, Lucid will automatically try to fetch a new, valid token. In the rare case that this fails or you manually need to manage your Salesforce token, you can do so from your Lucid account settings:

1. Log in to your Lucid account.
2. Select your profile image or initials in the upper-right corner.
3. Click Account settings.
4. Click Apps & Integrations in the left-hand menu.
5. Navigate to the Lucidchart tab at the top of the page.
6. Scroll down to the “Salesforce” section.

If you have a Salesforce token stored, you’ll see "Lucidchart is connected to Salesforce."

If you want to delete your stored token:

1. Click Unlink.
2. In the pop-up window that appears, click Unlink.

To get a new token from Salesforce:

1. Verify you don’t have a stored token from the Lucidchart Account Settings page.
   • You should see the wording “Enable Lucidchart to access Salesforce.” If you don’t see this, follow the steps above to delete your stored token.
2. Click Link.
3. Sign into your associated Salesforce account (if necessary).
4. You should now see "Lucidchart is connected to Salesforce."

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