Help Scout

Overdesk connects to Help Scout through an app you create in your own Help Scout account. It reads your mailboxes, learns from your past conversations and saved replies, and places each draft on the conversation as an internal note or as an unsent draft reply in the composer.

Connect Help Scout

You need to be an owner or admin in Overdesk.

1. In Help Scout, open your profile menu and choose My Apps, then Create My App.
2. Pick OAuth2 with Client Credentials.
3. Help Scout also asks for a Redirection URL. Overdesk never uses it, because Client Credentials apps do not redirect, but the field is required, so enter https://app.overdesk.io.
4. Create the app and copy its App ID and App Secret.
5. In Overdesk, open Integrations, choose Help Scout, and paste them into App ID and App Secret.
6. Choose Connect.

Use My Apps under your profile, not Manage then Apps. That second page is the Apps Directory, and the app it creates asks for a Content URL and a content signature key instead of giving you an App ID and Secret, so it cannot connect Overdesk.

Once connected, the Help Scout page on Integrations lists the mailboxes Overdesk can read. Internal notes from Overdesk appear under the Help Scout user who created the app, so create it from an account your team recognises.

Add your Help Scout Docs articles

If you publish articles with Help Scout Docs, Overdesk can pull them into your knowledge base so drafts cite them. This takes a separate Docs API key.

1. In Help Scout, open your profile, then Security and Access, and find the Docs API section.
2. Copy the Docs API key.
3. Paste it into Docs API key (optional) when you connect, or later with Add Docs API key under Help docs on the Help Scout page in Overdesk.

Sync help desk docs then imports your published articles every night at 04:30.

Where drafts appear

Drafts arrive as internal notes by default. Help Scout can also hold an unsent draft reply in the composer, ready to edit and send: choose Draft reply, ready to edit and send under Guardrails → Send mode. A draft reply needs the customer's email address on the conversation; a conversation without one gets a note instead.

Help Scout is also where editing a draft in Overdesk reaches furthest. When you Edit or Discard a draft reply from its page in Overdesk, the copy in the composer changes with it, as long as nobody has already rewritten it there.

Inboxes and escalation

In Allowed inboxes, enter all or list the mailbox numbers to draft in. A mailbox's number is in the address bar when you open it in Help Scout.

Escalation rules can hand a conversation to a Help Scout user or team, picked from a list Overdesk reads from your account. See Escalation.

Real-time updates

Help Scout makes you invent a webhook's signing secret, so Overdesk generates one for you. The steps are in Real-time updates with webhooks.

If the connection is refused

The form shows Help Scout's own reason when it refuses what you typed.

• A message starting "credentials rejected by Help Scout" means the App ID or App Secret did not work, and Help Scout's own words follow it. Check that both come from a My Apps app, not an Apps Directory app.
• "Help Scout rejected the Docs API key" means the optional key is not a Docs API key. Copy it from the Docs API section of your profile, not the App Secret.

Disconnecting Help Scout deletes its credentials and everything it put into your knowledge base.