Help Scout handoff

Ada’s Help Scout integration allows an AI Agent conversation to be escalated to a human agent in Help Scout. When a conversation escalates, the connector creates a new conversation in the configured Help Scout mailbox and bidirectionally relays messages and attachments between the end user (via Ada) and the human agent (via Help Scout).

Get started

Unless otherwise noted, all instructions must be followed each time you connect a new AI Agent.

To set up the Help Scout integration, complete the steps in this order:

Initial configuration — create a mailbox, an OAuth2 app, and a webhook in Help Scout.
Configure the handoff — add the handoff block.
Custom fields (optional) — pass Help Scout conversation custom field values on each handoff.

Limitations

The following constraints stem from the Help Scout platform or from how the integration works:

Agent presence messages are not displayed to the end user until the agent sends the first reply.
The end user cannot resume chatting with the AI Agent until the Help Scout conversation is marked Closed, unless the keep_agent_conversation_open field is set on the handoff block. When it is set, Ada ends the handoff on its own end-of-handoff event without waiting for Help Scout to close the conversation.
Conversations handed off from Ada are created as email-style tickets in Help Scout. Help Scout does not support creating Beacon (Chat) conversations through its API.

Capabilities

The integration supports the following:

Text messages from the end user to the agent (and vice versa)
Attachments from the end user to the agent (and vice versa), subject to Help Scout’s supported file types and size limits
Routing into any Help Scout mailbox, specified per handoff through the Mailbox ID field
Passing tags, subject, internal notes, and custom fields to the Help Scout conversation
An optional static agent display name shown in Ada for all agent messages
Optional ticket lifecycle control — end Ada’s handoff without closing the Help Scout conversation