Help Scout integration for Easy Digital Downloads

Description

Help Scout integration for Easy Digital Downloads is a WordPress plugin that will show customer information right from your Help Scout dashboard.

Activating the plugin and configuring the integration will add the following information to your Help Scout dashboard:

• The name of the customer and link to the profile page in EDD
• All purchased “downloads”
• Orders with status and link to payment providers

If using the Software Licensing add-on, the following information is shown as well:

• License keys. Links to the site manager in Easy Digital Downloads.
• Active sites, with a link to deactivate the license for the given site.
• Links to purchase an upgrade directly

When using Easy Digital Downloads with Recurring Payments:

• Subscriptions and their status

How to install and configure

Have a look at the installation instructions.

Please note that Help Scout changed their App interface. This plugin uses custom legacy apps, which you can learn more about here.

More information

• Developers; follow or contribute to the plugin on GitHub
• Other WordPress plugins by Thomas Maier

Screenshots

Installation

To get this up and running, you’ll need to configure a few things in WordPress and Help Scout.

WordPress

1. Upload the contents of edd-helpscout.zip to your plugins directory, which usually is /wp-content/plugins/.
2. Activate the Help Scout integration for Easy Digital Downloads plugin
3. Set the HELPSCOUT_SECRET_KEY constant in your /wp-config.php file. This should be a random string of 40 characters.

Example

Replace your-random-string with your own random string.

define( 'HELPSCOUT_SECRET_KEY', 'your-random-string' );

Help Scout

1. Go to the Help Scout custom app interface.
2. Enter the following settings with adjustments according to your site’s URL and the secret key.

App Name: Easy Digital Downloads
Content Type: Dynamic Content
Callback URL: https://YOUR-SITE.COM/edd-helpscout-api/customer_info (I recommend using HTTPS)
Secret Key: The value of your HELPSCOUT_SECRET_KEY constant.

Testing the plugin locally

You can set the plugin in some test mode.
Set HELPSCOUT_DUMMY_DATA to true and HELPSCOUT_DUMMY_DATA_EMAIL to an email address in wp-config.php to let the plugin use dummy data.
You can then call https://your-site.com/edd-helpscout-api/customer_info directly and get a reply based on the value of HELPSCOUT_DUMMY_DATA_EMAIL.

FAQ

Help Scout just shows “Invalid Signature”

Make sure the “Secret Key” setting for your Help Scout application matches the value of your HELPSCOUT_SECRET_KEY constant. This key is used to authorize requests coming from HelpScout.

Reviews

Thank you

Soflyy July 13, 2023 1 reply

This plugin saves us time and allows us to provide better and faster service.

Hugely helpful

Steve Burge August 22, 2022 1 reply

Thanks so much for developing this plugin. It’s really enormously helpful for anyone using EDD.

Brilliant plugin

Edith Allison March 24, 2022 2 replies

Thank you for taking the time to build this plugin! Works perfectly, super easy to set up. I chose Easy Digital Downloads and Helpscout indepdently not knowing this plugin existed, so happy I came across it by pure chance in the plugin directory. No idea why neither EDD nor Helpscout list this plugin on their site, should be top recommended!

Excellent Work!

Adnan January 8, 2022 1 reply

I am using this plugin on both of my EDD stores for LoginPress and Analytify. Helps in support management a lot.

This is going to be a huge timesaver

DaanvandenBergh October 22, 2021 1 reply

Before doing my support rounds on Help Scout I decided to installed this. I’ve just installed it and got it up and running in less than 5 minutes. After that I dove into my support tickets and I could immediately tell this is going to be a huge timesaver. Thanks a lot for creating this!

Great

megamenu May 20, 2019 1 reply

We have been using this for a couple of years. Works amazingly well. Huge timesaver!

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

2.4.0

• Increased required PHP version to 7.4
• Increased required WordPress version to 6.0
• Fix: PHP 8.2 deprecation notice, props @slaFFik

2.3.0

• Improvement: added the edd_helpscout_after_licenses_active_site_list_item filter to extend output of activated sites
• Improvement: added the subscription id to endpoint data
• Fix: status badge of completed orders is now also green

2.2.1

• Improvement: added the edd_helpscout_after_subscription_list_item action hook to allow adding elements to the Subscriptions view
• Improvement: increased required PHP version to 7.2
• Fix: typo in the installation instructions

2.2.0

• Feature: the toggle state for Licenses, Orders, and Subscriptons sections is now persistent, props @nosilver4u on github
• Feature: display the number of items found for each section in the heading, props @nosilver4u on github
• Improvement: show “Lifetime” label for lifetime licenses, props @nosilver4u on github
• Improvement: override section templates by hosting your own version of them under wp-content/themes/{THEME}/edd-helpscout/, props @Spreeuw on github
• Improvement: added the edd_helpscout_endpoint_html_sections and edd_helpscout_endpoint_html filters to customize existing section templates, props @Spreeuw on github
• Improvement: added the edd_helpscout_order_list_item_download_details_start and edd_helpscout_order_list_item_download_details_end actions to order template, props @Spreeuw on github
• Improvement: added the edd_helpscout_default_section_toggle and edd_helpscout_persist_section_toggle filters to force a specific toggle state for sections, props @Spreeuw on github
• Improvement: increased required PHP version to 5.6 to sync with WordPress core

2.1.1

• Improvement: check if emails field is empty and handle fallback to email field

2.1

• complete template refactoring, e.g., to show Customer, Licenses, Orders and Subscriptions separately, props @Spreeuw
• refactor data collection, props @Spreeuw
• support EDD 3.0 and newer add-on versions, props @ashleyfae, @Spreeuw
• edd_helpscout_customer_licenses to filter license query response, props @Spreeuw
• changed “HelpScout” to “Help Scout” where technically reasonable

2.0

The original developer Danny van Kooten stopped working on EDD Help Scout since he no longer uses it.
The development of the plugin was taken over by Thomas Maier from https://wpadvancedads.com, who continues using the plugin.
Danny left in the middle of developing a better version 2.0. I decided to build in top of that because the changes show a lot potential and fixed some issues.
Please test carefully and let me know in case something is missing or not working as expected.

Additions

• callback URL changed from https://your-site.com/edd-helpscout/api to https://your-site.com/edd-helpscout-api/customer_info, though both are working for now
• added name of the customer and link to the profile page in EDD since Help Scout doesn‘t show it for everyone
• set HELPSCOUT_DUMMY_DATA and HELPSCOUT_DUMMY_DATA_EMAIL constants in wp-config.php to let the plugin use dummy data

Improvements

• fetch all payments when user has multiple emails in Help Scout or in his EDD profile

Fixes

• Compatibility with latest EDD plugin versions.

1.1.1 – January 28, 2016

Fixes

• Certain characters at start of URL were being stripped off in HelpScout.

1.1 – September 6, 2015

Fixes

• The plugin is now listening at a later hook in the WP request lifecycle, which prevents issues with bbPress and EDD Wishlists.

Improvements

• Code refactoring for better separation of concerns and better overall code readability
• Better naming consistency

Additions

• Support for lifetime licenses in Easy Digital Downloads
• Various action hooks to output your own HTML

1.0.3 – February 19, 2015

Fixes

• Added protocol for links to active sites
• Querying payments by multiple emails was not working

Additions

• When using EDD Software Licensing, show if a license is expired.
• Added helpscout_edd_customer_emails hook to filter customer emails

1.0.2

Improvements

• The plugin used to “listen” to all requests to the site. It will now (after confirmation) only listen to requests to /edd-hs-api/customer-data.json.

1.0.1

Fixed

• Issue with nonces not working properly for the admin actions. Now using the HelpScout signature to validate requests.

Improvements

• Minor code & inline documentation improvements

Additions

• Added “renewal” label to renewals