• Capabilities

• Setup

  • Using the Dashboard

  • Using the Integration API

    • Twitter App Setup
    • Twitter Integration Setup
• Direct Messages
• Invitation to Direct Message Conversations

Our Twitter DM integration allows you to send & receive direct messages on Twitter using your own account. You will receive these messages in a business system or with webhooks.

Capabilities

Twitter supports a wide variety of capabilities as seen in the channel capabilities grid. Below is a detailed view of each capabilities.

Setup

There are two ways to set up a Twitter integration: using the dashboard, or using the integration API.

Using the Dashboard

Twitter can be integrated directly using the dashboard. With this option you’re granting access to act on behalf of your Twitter account. Note that access to this option is limited to a per request basis. Contact us to request access.

If you are a licensed Zendesk customer, use the embedded sign-up flow in the Admin Center. For detailed instructions, see Adding Twitter DM channels to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

If however you have your own Twitter Account Activity API subscription or you’re willing to set one up, you can set up a Twitter integration using the integration API. The section below guides you through this process.

Using the Integration API

In this option you’ll be using your own Twitter app to act on behalf of a business Twitter account. If you’re building your own user experience for businesses to integrate their Twitter accounts with your software, this option is for you.

Twitter App Setup

The steps below describe how to set up a Twitter app that can be used to create Twitter integrations.

1. First, you’ll need to set up an Account Activity API Subscription with Twitter. Twitter offers several tiers of access: a free sandbox option for testing purposes, as well as paid premium and enterprise tier subscriptions.

2. Create a Twitter app if you don’t already have one. Twitter apps can be managed via the Twitter app dashboard. Take note of your Twitter app consumer key and secret.

3. With the sandbox and premium tiers you will need to create a dev environment associated with your Twitter app. You can do this via the dev environments dashboard. Take note of your dev environment label. You will need to specify this in the envName parameter when configuring the integration with Sunshine Conversations.

You now have a Twitter app that’s ready to power new Twitter integrations!

Twitter Integration Setup

We’re now going to use the Twitter app we configured in the steps above to connect with a specific Twitter account representing your business.

1. First, acquire an Access Token Key and Secret on behalf of the business’ Twitter account. These can be obtained via the Twitter OAuth Flow. Note that if you’re just testing things out, you can integrate with your Twitter app’s owner account by using the access token and secret found under your app’s Keys and tokens tab.

2. Call the Create Integration endpoint. You’ll need to include:

   • tier: Your Twitter subscription tier (sandbox, premium or enterprise).
   • envName: Your dev environment label (sandbox and premium tiers only)
   • consumerKey and consumerSecret of your Twitter app
   • accessTokenKey and accessTokenSecret that were issued on behalf of the Twitter account you’re integrating with, obtained in the previous step

Please see the API docs for more details on how to call this API.

Direct Messages

In order for a business to receive direct messages from anyone (including accounts it does not follow), the option must be enabled in Twitter’s settings. Go to Twitter’s Direct Messages settings and check “Allow message requests from everyone”. Be sure to save your changes!

Invitation to Direct Message Conversations

You can easily send links to your users to direct them to a private conversation from a public Tweet.

Sending https://twitter.com/messages/compose?recipient_id={your account’s numeric user ID} will render in twitter a “Send a private message” button like this:

You can find your User ID here:

These links also works anywhere on the web. Read more details about the “Send a private message” link here.