Find and Create Records Automatically with the Deployment APIs

Use the Deployment API to search for or create Salesforce records—like a case, contact, account, or lead—automatically when an agent begins a chat with a customer.

The legacy chat product is scheduled for retirement on February 14, 2026, and is in maintenance mode until then. During this phase, you can continue to use chat, but we no longer recommend that you implement new chat channels. To avoid service interruptions to your customers, migrate to Messaging for In-App and Web before that date. Messaging offers many of the chat features that you love plus asynchronous conversations that can be picked back up at any time. Learn about chat retirement in Help.

Important

You can add any of these methods as additional scripts within the code that’s automatically generated when you create a deployment.

addCustomDetail

Use the addCustomDetail method to add custom details for each chat visitor.
findOrCreate

Use the findOrCreate method to find existing records or create records based on certain criteria.
setName

Use the setName method to set the visitor name displayed in the Chat console or the Salesforce console.
Search for Knowledge Articles with the Deployment APIs

Use the Deployment API to search for Knowledge articles based on the information that a customer provides in a pre-chat form.
Find and Create Records Deployment API Code Sample

Test and preview how automatically creating records can work with your Chat deployments using this code sample.