You've set up Live Chat in Salesforce to provide real-time support to your customers. Your agents are having productive conversations and resolving issues efficiently. But when you look at your case records, you notice a problem - those valuable chat transcripts aren't appearing in the case activity timeline. Your agents have to manually search for related chats, wasting time and potentially missing important context.

"Have been trying to include live chat conversations onto Activity for cases but haven't found a way of doing this?" This common question appears frequently in Salesforce community forums, and with good reason. The disconnect between chat transcripts and case activities creates a fractured view of customer interactions.

The root of this challenge lies in a fundamental Salesforce design decision: chat is not an activity, it is a different service channel. While this separation makes sense architecturally, it creates practical challenges for support teams who need a unified view of all customer touchpoints.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll solve this problem by walking through how to automatically link chat transcripts to case activities using native Salesforce tools. You'll learn:

1. How to create the necessary lookup fields to establish relationships

2. How to use Process Builder to automate the linking process

3. How to troubleshoot common issues and optimize your implementation

Why You Need a Unified View: The Benefits of Linking Transcripts to Cases

Before diving into the technical implementation, let's understand why linking chat transcripts to case activities is so valuable:

• Complete Interaction History: Agents can see the full context of a customer issue in one place, including previous chats, emails, and phone calls.

• Increased Efficiency: Eliminates the need for agents to manually search for transcripts or switch between different records. As one Salesforce admin noted, the goal is to simply "follow that record" from the case.

• Improved Reporting: Enables comprehensive reporting on customer interactions across all service channels.

• Enhanced Service Quality: With full context of previous conversations, agents can provide faster, more accurate support without asking customers to repeat information.

Method 1: The Declarative Approach with Process Builder (No-Code)

This approach is perfect for Salesforce admins who prefer clicks over code. We'll use native Salesforce tools to create a seamless integration between chat transcripts and cases.

Part 1: Create a Lookup Field on the Case Object

First, we need to create a relationship between the Case and Chat Transcript objects:

1. Navigate to Setup.

2. In the Quick Find box, type Object Manager, then select the Case object.

3. Click on Fields & Relationships and then click New.

4. Choose Lookup Relationship as the data type and click Next.

5. In the "Related To" dropdown, select Chat Transcript and click Next.

6. Enter a Field Label (e.g., "Chat Transcript") and a Field Name will be automatically populated. Click Next.

7. Set the field-level security for relevant profiles and click Next.

8. Add the field to the appropriate Case Page Layouts to ensure it's visible to users. Click Save.

Part 2: Create a Long Text Area Field to Store the Chat Body (Recommended)

While the lookup field establishes a relationship between the case and the transcript, it's often useful to have the actual chat content visible directly on the case record. To accomplish this:

1. On the Case object in Object Manager, create another new field.

2. Select Text Area (Long) as the data type.

3. Name it "Chat Transcript Body" or something similar.

4. Set an appropriate length (consider at least 32,768 characters to capture longer conversations).

5. Add the field to your Case Page Layouts.

This field will store the complete transcript text, making it easily accessible to agents without having to navigate to a separate record.

Part 3: Build the Automation with Process Builder

Now comes the crucial part - automatically populating these fields when a chat ends:

1. Go to Setup and find Process Builder under Process Automation.

2. Click New. Name your process "Link Completed Chat Transcript to Case" and set the process to start when a record changes.

3. Choose Object: Select Chat Transcript (LiveChatTranscript) as the object and start the process when a record is created or edited.

4. Define Criteria:

   • Criteria Name: "Chat is Completed and Linked to a Case"

   • Criteria for Executing Actions: Conditions are met

   • Set Conditions:

     • [LiveChatTranscript].CaseId Is Not Null (Ensures the chat is related to a case)

     • [LiveChatTranscript].Status Equals Completed (This is crucial; the automation should only run after the chat is finished)

   • Conditions: All of the conditions are met (AND)

5. Add Immediate Action:

   • Action Type: Update Records

   • Action Name: "Update Case with Transcript Info"

   • Record Type to Update: Select Select a record related to the LiveChatTranscript -> Case ID -> Click Choose

   • Set new field values for the records you update:

     • Field 1: Find your lookup field (e.g., Chat_Transcript__c)

     • Type: Field Reference

     • Value: [LiveChatTranscript].Id

     • Field 2: Find your long text area field (e.g., Chat_Transcript_Body__c)

     • Type: Field Reference

     • Value: [LiveChatTranscript].Body

6. Click Save, then Activate the process.

Once activated, this automation will run whenever a chat transcript is completed and linked to a case. It will update the case record with both a reference to the transcript record and the full conversation text.

Method 2: The Advanced Approach for Developers (Code-Based)

For organizations with more complex requirements or those comfortable with code, an APEX-based solution offers greater flexibility and control.

Part 1: Create a Custom 'Chat Key' Field

First, create a custom text field on both the Case and LiveChatTranscript objects called Chat_Key__c. This field will be used to match transcripts with their corresponding cases.

Part 2: Use a LiveChatTranscript APEX Trigger

Next, create an APEX trigger that fires when a transcript is saved:

trigger LiveChatTranscriptTrigger on LiveChatTranscript (after insert) {
    Set<String> chatKeys = new Set<String>();
    Map<String, Id> transcriptIdByChatKey = new Map<String, Id>();

    for (LiveChatTranscript transcript : Trigger.new) {
        if (String.isNotBlank(transcript.ChatKey)) {
            chatKeys.add(transcript.ChatKey);
            transcriptIdByChatKey.put(transcript.ChatKey, transcript.Id);
        }
    }

    if (!chatKeys.isEmpty()) {
        Map<String, Case> caseByChatKey = new Map<String, Case>();
        for (Case c : [SELECT Id, Chat_Key__c FROM Case WHERE Chat_Key__c IN :chatKeys]) {
            caseByChatKey.put(c.Chat_Key__c, c);
        }

        List<LiveChatTranscript> transcriptsToUpdate = new List<LiveChatTranscript>();
        for (String key : chatKeys) {
            if (caseByChatKey.containsKey(key)) {
                transcriptsToUpdate.add(new LiveChatTranscript(
                    Id = transcriptIdByChatKey.get(key),
                    CaseId = caseByChatKey.get(key).Id
                ));
            }
        }

        if (!transcriptsToUpdate.isEmpty()) {
            update transcriptsToUpdate;
        }
    }
}

This trigger matches transcripts with cases based on the shared chat key, creating an automatic link between them when a chat begins.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

If you encounter problems with your implementation, here are solutions for the most common issues:

Process Doesn't Fire

• Check if the Process is Active: A common oversight is forgetting to activate the process after saving it.

• Verify Criteria: The most frequent mistake is not checking if Status equals 'Completed'. Remember that the chat body is only fully populated once the chat is finished.

• Review Process Builder Logs: Check the logs to identify any runtime errors that might be preventing execution.

Lookup Field is Blank

• Check Field-Level Security: Ensure the lookup field on the Case object has appropriate visibility for user profiles.

• For the APEX Method: Verify that the Chat Key is being populated correctly on both the Case and Transcript objects.

Ongoing Chat Limitation

It's important to understand that this automation works on completed transcripts. For ongoing chats, the Body field is not fully populated and the Status is not yet 'Completed'. Your agents can still manually link cases to chats during the conversation, but the automated field updates will only occur once the chat concludes.

Beyond Salesforce: Integrating All Customer Conversations

Now that you've automated linking internal support chats, what about crucial conversations happening outside of Salesforce, like on LinkedIn?

Many important pre-sales, recruiting, or client management discussions occur in LinkedIn DMs. Manually logging this activity is time-consuming and error-prone, creating data silos that fragment your customer view.

For teams using LinkedIn as a communication channel, Kondo offers a solution. Kondo acts as a productivity tool for your LinkedIn inbox (often described as 'Superhuman for LinkedIn') with features like labels, reminders, and keyboard shortcuts.

Its Business Tier includes CRM & System Sync capabilities that can use webhooks with Zapier or Make.com to automatically push LinkedIn conversation details into Salesforce. This creates a truly unified customer view, capturing interactions from both formal support channels (Salesforce Chat) and professional networking conversations, all without manual data entry.

Conclusion

By linking chat transcripts to cases, you provide your support team with the complete context they need to resolve issues efficiently. The no-code Process Builder approach is perfect for most admins, while the APEX trigger offers greater flexibility for developers.

Remember that in an increasingly omnichannel world, true customer-centricity requires bringing together all touchpoints - whether they happen in Salesforce Chat, email, phone, or external platforms like LinkedIn. The more unified your view of customer communications, the more personalized and effective your service will be.

Implementing these solutions will help your agents provide more informed, contextual support, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction and more efficient service operations.