Intercom

Overdesk connects to Intercom with an access token from a developer app in your own workspace. It reads your conversations, learns from your past conversations, macros and Help Center articles, and posts each draft on the conversation as an internal note for your team to review.

Connect Intercom

You need to be an owner or admin in Overdesk.

1. In Intercom's Developer Hub, create an app for your own workspace.
2. Open the app and copy the access token from Configure, then Authentication.
3. In Overdesk, open Integrations, choose Intercom, and paste it into Access token.
4. Choose Connect.

Overdesk writes to Intercom as the teammate the access token belongs to, so internal notes appear under that name.

What joins your knowledge base

• Past conversations, through Sync past conversations, every night at 03:00.
• Macros, imported as saved replies alongside your conversations.
• Help Center articles, through Sync help desk docs, every night at 04:30. Only published articles are imported. If your Intercom app is not allowed to read articles, the Knowledge base page says "Intercom would not let Overdesk read your Help Center articles". Check the permissions on your app in the Developer Hub, then choose Sync now on that page to confirm the fix took.

Drafting also needs a docs site address in Settings → Knowledge base, even if your Help Center is where your docs live. See Point Overdesk at your docs.

Where drafts appear

Every draft arrives on the conversation as an internal note, which your customer never sees. Intercom has no API for filling in the reply composer, so the unsent draft reply option in Where drafts go stays with Help Scout and FreeScout, and your team keeps receiving notes.

If you edit or discard a draft from its page in Overdesk, Overdesk adds a note to the conversation saying what changed. Drafts for Intercom conversations are listed on the Agent drafts page without a link to open them in Intercom, so find the conversation there by its number.

Inboxes, tags and escalation

• In Allowed inboxes, enter all. With a second help desk connected, write Intercom:all. Intercom conversations carry no inbox number, so a list of numbers never matches them.
• Triage tags are added to the conversation, and Overdesk creates any tag your workspace does not have yet.
• Escalation rules name the person or team on the note and raise an alert, but Intercom cannot be asked to assign a conversation from Overdesk, so the hand-over is yours to make. See Escalation.

Real-time updates

Intercom generates the webhook signing secret and shows it to you. The steps are in Real-time updates with webhooks.

If the connection is refused

The form shows the reason next to the field. A message starting "credentials rejected by Intercom" is followed by Intercom's own words; copy the token again from Configure, then Authentication, in your app.

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