Create an Intercom account

This article explains to get started with Intercom. It provides detailed steps on how to signup and setup your account.





1 - Create a new Intercom account


1.1 - Account creation process


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  1. First go to https://www.intercom.com/, enter your email and click "Get Started"
  2. You will be required to either signup with your Google account or enter a few information about your company
  3. Once that's done, you can start a trial or skip to the setup. Since, we'll be able to select a plan and start the trial later, let's skip to the guide:
    1. You'll get to the welcome page and you can jump to the next section
    2. If you selected "Start your trial now", you'll have to select a plan and enter your billing details. See "1.3 Start a free trial"

1.2 Configuration

1.2.1 - Creating a Test App

To be able to test the Intercom integration on non-production environements (development, uat, ...), you'll need to enable a test version of Intercom

Go to your App Settings:

You can then enable the test version and click save:

This will create another app, called "Your Company [TEST]":

Some configurations steps need to be done separately for these two apps.

1.2.1 - Generate a access token BOTH APPS

Click on Developer tools in the left hand menu of your app settings page. Then, simply follow the instructions on screen to create an access token - these will take you through a few simple steps to setup your Token.

Save the token and the app id for both apps.

1.2.2 Enable Secure Mode BOTH APPS

Select the Installation > Web section of the App settings menu. If the options are not showing yet, click Add to Setup Guide and then enable the option. Save the Secure Mode Secret.

1.3 Start a free trial and configure the billing PROD APP

The Intercom Messenger won't appear in your frontend until a subscription to Respond has been started.

1.3.1 Start a free trial

First, click on the set-up guide in the bottom left corner:

Then click "Start a free trial":

You can then send to a teammate (eg: your finance team) or select a product (see next step).

1.3.2 Select a product

Select the product you need. Most of the time it's only going to be "Respond" as you want live chat on the dashboard. But here is a description of the others that might be relevant:

  • Engage Automatic messages (aka: Trigger, Workflow). The workflow will need to be manually set up.
  • Respond: Support chat. That's what we need most of the time.
  • Educate: Knowledge base / help center

You'll then need to enter your payment card details.

1.3.3 Configure Billing

We recommend that you configure the Billing Settings so that invoices are sent to your finance team:

2 - Configure your mno-enterprise frontend

Once you have the following items:

  • app id
  • access token 
  • secure mode secret

 you can follow the steps on the mno-enterprise README to configure your project.

2.1 - Configuration on Nex!™

If your project is running on Nex!™, it's as simple as:

# Note the double quotes around the token as it contains =
nex-cli apps:vars switchable-dolphin-13 --add INTERCOM_APP_ID=xxx,INTERCOM_TOKEN="dG9rO...OjA=",INTERCOM_API_SECRET=dhXV...BYr