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Deep link to external pages in an Insight Card

Last Update: Oct 2024 • Est. Read Time: 4 MIN
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You can reference dynamic content in an Insight Card to create deep links to external sites, allowing agents to jump directly to a relevant page like a customer's profile on social media or other systems. Deep links can be created on the Customer, Conversation, Company, and KObject klasses.

Who can access this feature?
User typesAdmins can access the Klasses page. Users with Timeline access can use deep links in Insight Cards.


In this article

What are deep links?

A deep link is a URL that takes you directly to a relevant page within an external site, rather than the homepage. The impact of this is that agents can skip having to search on the external site manually, and will be able to click a link directly to the results of a search. Eliminating repetitive tasks can improve your agents' productivity and turnaround time.

For example, if you have a search system with a url of https://myhomegrown.system.com/customers?email=customer+email@example.com, an agent might usually be required to start a the search homepage and enter the customer email address manually. By using a deep link on a URL with predictable formatting, you can create links in Kustomer that use dynamic text to insert the customer email address into the target URL, allowing an agent to bypass manual search. Learn more about deep links

In an Insight Card, you can reference a deep link through the Button or URL components. These are styled differently but function identically, so you can pick whichever method you prefer. 

Add an attribute for the deep link

First, an attribute will need to be created that matches the URL format in your target external system, if it doesn't already exist in your Kustomer organization. Depending on the page you're linking to, this could be an email address, a unique identifier, or some other predictable string. Your attribute can be set on the Customer, Conversation, Company, or KObject klass.

As an example, we'll walk through a tutorial setting up a deep link on the Customer klass that allows an agent to open an Airbnb listing from an Insight Card. This card uses dynamic text to reference an Airbnb Listing ID to match the URL format of https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12345678, where the numeric string at the end is the Listing ID.

In the Klasses settings, on the Customer klass, create an attribute to reference in the deep link. In our Airbnb example, the Listing ID is a single line text string.

Create a deep link in the visual editor

Use the visual builder to customize Insight Cards with deep links. Deep links can be added to Insight Cards on the Customer, Conversation, Company, and KObject klasses. To continue this Airbnb tutorial, we'll add an Insight Card to the Customer klass that includes the Airbnb Listing ID and displays a link to view the listing on the external Airbnb site.

To add a deep link in an Insight Card:

  1. In Settings go to Platform > Klasses.
  2. Edit the klass. Following this Airbnb tutorial, you would edit the Customer klass.
  3. Open the Insight Cards tab and select Create Insight Card.
  4. Fill in a Name and Icon to begin customizing the card in the visual builder.
  5. Use the Components list in the sidebar or select Add Attribute to add a Button or URL component.
  6. Fill in the Button Text as preferred to set a display name for your link.
  7. In the Button Link field, add the static part of your URL. In our Airbnb example, we'd add everything up to the Listing ID: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/.
  8. Finish setting the link by selecting the Dynamic Text button in the Button Link field, and select the desired attribute.
  9. Add a fallback link, if desired.
  10. When finished, Save the Insight Card.

Setting a fallback link

A fallback link is used provide an alternate next-best destination address for the dynamic link in cases where the specified attribute does not exist. This would be a useful way to give agents who click this link a secondary suitable landing page, instead of directing them to a nonexistent page that would result in a 404 error.

To set a fallback link, check the Add Button Link fallback box while editing the attribute in the Insight Card. Then, use the field provided to specify the alternate URL to use in cases where the attribute is blank. This may be a homepage, search index page, or whatever fits your team's workflow best.

For our Airbnb tutorial, we'll set the fallback link to the external homepage.

Results

Agent users will now be able to access the deep link button/URL in the Insight Card.

In cases where the attribute is set, the button/URL in the Insight Card will take you directly to the deep-linked page.

When the attribute is blank, the fallback URL will be used and the button will take agents to the fallback homepage.

Without setting a fallback, the destination of the button will be whatever the target site uses as their own fallback in the event of a malformed URL. This could be the homepage, but it could also be a 404 error or some other unintuitive result. By providing your own fallback URL, you can work around limitations in the external system to provide the next-best result for your agents.