Warehouses and Lakes
Sales & Support Analytics

How to load data from Intercom to S3

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Intercom data into S3 within minutes.

TL;DR

This can be done by building a data pipeline manually, usually a Python script (you can leverage a tool as Apache Airflow for this). This process can take more than a full week of development. Or it can be done in minutes on Airbyte in three easy steps:

  1. set up Intercom as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
  2. set up S3 as a destination connector
  3. define which data you want to transfer and how frequently

You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

This tutorial’s purpose is to show you how.

What is Intercom

Intercom is a customer messaging platform that helps businesses communicate with their customers in a personalized and efficient way. It offers a suite of tools that enable businesses to engage with their customers through targeted messaging, live chat, and email campaigns. Intercom also provides customer data and analytics to help businesses understand their customers better and make informed decisions. The platform is designed to help businesses build strong relationships with their customers, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive growth. Intercom is used by thousands of businesses worldwide, including Shopify, Atlassian, and New Relic.

What is S3

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a cloud-based object storage service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is designed to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web. S3 is highly scalable, secure, and durable, making it an ideal solution for businesses of all sizes. S3 allows users to store and retrieve data in the form of objects, which can be up to 5 terabytes in size. These objects can be accessed through a web interface or through APIs, making it easy to integrate with other AWS services or third-party applications. S3 also offers a range of features, including versioning, lifecycle policies, and access control, which allow users to manage their data effectively. It also provides high availability and durability, ensuring that data is always accessible and protected against data loss. Overall, S3 is a powerful and flexible tool that enables businesses to store and manage their data in a secure and scalable way, making it an essential component of many cloud-based applications and services.

Integrate Intercom with S3 in minutes

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Prerequisites

  1. A Intercom account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
  2. A S3 account.
  3. An active Airbyte Cloud account, or you can also choose to use Airbyte Open Source locally. You can follow the instructions to set up Airbyte on your system using docker-compose.

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform that consolidates and streamlines the process of extracting and loading data from multiple data sources to data warehouses. It offers pre-built connectors, including Intercom and S3, for seamless data migration.

When using Airbyte to move data from Intercom to S3, it extracts data from Intercom using the source connector, converts it into a format S3 can ingest using the provided schema, and then loads it into S3 via the destination connector. This allows businesses to leverage their Intercom data for advanced analytics and insights within S3, simplifying the ETL process and saving significant time and resources.

Step 1: Set up Intercom as a source connector

1. First, navigate to the Intercom source connector page on Airbyte.com.
2. Click on the "Create new connection" button.
3. Enter a name for your connection and click "Next".
4. Enter your Intercom credentials, including your Access Token and App ID.
5. Click "Test" to ensure that your credentials are correct and that Airbyte can connect to your Intercom account.
6. Once the test is successful, click "Next".
7. Select the data you want to replicate from Intercom, including conversations, users, and companies.
8. Choose the replication frequency and the destination where you want to send the data.
9. Click "Create connection" to finalize the setup.
10. Your Intercom source connector is now connected to Airbyte, and you can start replicating your data to your desired destination.

Step 2: Set up S3 as a destination connector

1. Log in to your Airbyte account and navigate to the "Destinations" tab on the left-hand side of the screen.

2. Click on the "Add Destination" button and select "S3" from the list of available connectors.

3. Enter your AWS access key ID and secret access key in the appropriate fields. If you don't have these credentials, you can generate them in the AWS console.

4. Choose the AWS region where you want to store your data.

5. Enter the name of the S3 bucket where you want to store your data. If the bucket doesn't exist yet, you can create it in the AWS console.

6. Choose the format in which you want to store your data (e.g. CSV, JSON, Parquet).

7. Configure any additional settings, such as compression or encryption, if desired.

8. Test the connection to ensure that Airbyte can successfully connect to your S3 bucket.

9. Save your settings and start syncing data from your source connectors to your S3 destination.

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Intercom data to S3

Once you've successfully connected Intercom as a data source and S3 as a destination in Airbyte, you can set up a data pipeline between them with the following steps:

  1. Create a new connection: On the Airbyte dashboard, navigate to the 'Connections' tab and click the '+ New Connection' button.
  2. Choose your source: Select Intercom from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
  3. Select your destination: Choose S3 from the dropdown list of your configured destinations.
  4. Configure your sync: Define the frequency of your data syncs based on your business needs. Airbyte allows both manual and automatic scheduling for your data refreshes.
  5. Select the data to sync: Choose the specific Intercom objects you want to import data from towards S3. You can sync all data or select specific tables and fields.
  6. Select the sync mode for your streams: Choose between full refreshes or incremental syncs (with deduplication if you want), and this for all streams or at the stream level. Incremental is only available for streams that have a primary cursor.
  7. Test your connection: Click the 'Test Connection' button to make sure that your setup works. If the connection test is successful, save your configuration.
  8. Start the sync: If the test passes, click 'Set Up Connection'. Airbyte will start moving data from Intercom to S3 according to your settings.

Remember, Airbyte keeps your data in sync at the frequency you determine, ensuring your S3 data warehouse is always up-to-date with your Intercom data.

Use Cases to transfer your Intercom data to S3

Integrating data from Intercom to S3 provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

  1. Advanced Analytics: S3’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Intercom data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Intercom alone.
  2. Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Intercom, syncing to S3 allows you to centralize your data for a holistic view of your operations, and to set up a change data capture process so you never have any discrepancies in your data again.
  3. Historical Data Analysis: Intercom has limits on historical data. Syncing data to S3 allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
  4. Data Security and Compliance: S3 provides robust data security features. Syncing Intercom data to S3 ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
  5. Scalability: S3 can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Intercom data.
  6. Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Intercom data in S3, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
  7. Reporting and Visualization: While Intercom provides reporting tools, data visualization tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Looker (Google Data Studio) can connect to S3, providing more advanced business intelligence options. If you have a Intercom table that needs to be converted to a S3 table, Airbyte can do that automatically.

Wrapping Up

To summarize, this tutorial has shown you how to:

  1. Configure a Intercom account as an Airbyte data source connector.
  2. Configure S3 as a data destination connector.
  3. Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Intercom to S3 after you set a schedule

With Airbyte, creating data pipelines take minutes, and the data integration possibilities are endless. Airbyte supports the largest catalog of API tools, databases, and files, among other sources. Airbyte's connectors are open-source, so you can add any custom objects to the connector, or even build a new connector from scratch without any local dev environment or any data engineer within 10 minutes with the no-code connector builder.

We look forward to seeing you make use of it! We invite you to join the conversation on our community Slack Channel, or sign up for our newsletter. You should also check out other Airbyte tutorials, and Airbyte’s content hub!

What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

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Easily address your data movement needs with Airbyte Cloud
Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
Get started with Airbyte for free
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Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
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Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and get the community’s new enlightening content along with Airbyte’s progress in their mission to solve data integration once and for all.
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Connectors Used

What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

flag icon
Easily address your data movement needs with Airbyte Cloud
Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
Get started with Airbyte for free
high five icon
Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
stars sparkling
Improve your data infrastructure knowledge
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and get the community’s new enlightening content along with Airbyte’s progress in their mission to solve data integration once and for all.
Subscribe to newsletter

Connectors Used

Frequently Asked Questions

What data can you extract from Intercom?

Intercom's API provides access to a wide range of data related to customer communication and engagement. The following are the categories of data that can be accessed through Intercom's API:

1. Users: Information about individual users, including their name, email address, and user ID.
2. Conversations: Data related to customer conversations, including the conversation ID, message content, and conversation status.
3. Companies: Information about companies that use Intercom, including company name, ID, and size.
4. Tags: Data related to tags assigned to users and conversations, including tag name and ID.
5. Segments: Information about user segments, including segment name, ID, and criteria.
6. Events: Data related to user events, including event name, ID, and timestamp.
7. Custom attributes: Information about custom attributes assigned to users, including attribute name, value, and type.
8. Teammates: Data related to Intercom team members, including name, email address, and role.

Overall, Intercom's API provides a comprehensive set of data that can be used to analyze customer behavior, improve communication strategies, and enhance overall customer engagement.

What data can you transfer to S3?

You can transfer a wide variety of data to S3. This usually includes structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data like transaction records, log files, JSON data, CSV files, and more, allowing robust, scalable data integration and analysis.

What are top ETL tools to transfer data from Intercom to S3?

The most prominent ETL tools to transfer data from Intercom to S3 include:

  • Airbyte
  • Fivetran
  • Stitch
  • Matillion
  • Talend Data Integration

These tools help in extracting data from Intercom and various sources (APIs, databases, and more), transforming it efficiently, and loading it into S3 and other databases, data warehouses and data lakes, enhancing data management capabilities.