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Intercom Webhooks

TL;DR

To integrate Intercom webhooks with ngrok:

  1. Launch your local webhook. npm start
  2. Launch ngrok. ngrok http 3000
  3. Configure Intercom webhooks with your ngrok URL.
  4. Secure your webhook requests with verification.

This guide covers how to use ngrok to integrate your localhost app with Intercom by using Webhooks. Intercom webhooks can be used to notify an external application whenever specific events occur in your Intercom account.

By integrating ngrok with Intercom, you can:

  • Develop and test Intercom webhooks locally, eliminating the time in deploying your development code to a public environment and setting it up in HTTPS.
  • Inspect and troubleshoot requests from Intercom in real-time via the inspection UI and API.
  • Modify and Replay Intercom Webhook requests with a single click and without spending time reproducing events manually in your Intercom account.
  • Secure your app with Intercom validation provided by ngrok. Invalid requests are blocked by ngrok before reaching your app.

Step 1: Start your app​

For this tutorial, we'll use the sample NodeJS app available on GitHub.

To install this sample, run the following commands in a terminal:

git clone https://github.com/ngrok/ngrok-webhook-nodejs-sample.git
cd ngrok-webhook-nodejs-sample
npm install

This will get the project installed locally.

Now you can launch the app by running the following command:

npm start

The app runs by default on port 3000.

You can validate that the app is up and running by visiting http://localhost:3000. The application logs request headers and body in the terminal and responds with a message in the browser.

Step 2: Launch ngrok​

Once your app is running successfully on localhost, let's get it on the internet securely using ngrok!

  1. If you're not an ngrok user yet, just sign up for ngrok for free.

  2. Download the ngrok agent.

  3. Go to the ngrok dashboard and copy your Authtoken.
    Tip: The ngrok agent uses the auth token to log into your account when you start a tunnel.

  4. Start ngrok by running the following command:

    ngrok http 3000

  5. ngrok will display a URL where your localhost application is exposed to the internet (copy this URL for use with Intercom). ngrok agent running

Step 3: Integrate Intercom​

To register a webhook on your Intercom account follow the instructions below:

  1. Access the Intercom Home page, and sign in using your Intercom account.

  2. On the left menu, click your avatar icon and then click Settings. Tip: The avatar icon is below the What's new bell icon. If your avatar icon doesn't appear, zoom out on the page.

  3. In the Settings menu, expand the Apps & Integrations section and then click Developer Hub. Tip: If the Developer Guidelines popup appears, accept the guidelines by clicking Accept and Continue.

  4. In the Developer Hub page, click New App.

  5. In the New app popup window, provide a name for the app, select the appropriate workspace in which you work, keep Internal integration selected, and then click Create app.

  6. In your app page, click Webhooks under the Configure section of the left menu.

  7. In the Your request endpoint URL field enter the URL provided by the ngrok agent to expose your application to the internet (i.e. https://1a2b-3c4d-5e6f-7g8h-9i0j.sa.ngrok.io). Your request endpoint URL

  8. In the Webhook topics, select contact.user.created and then click Save.

    After you add a webhook to your Intercom account, Intercom will submit a test post request to your application through ngrok. Confirm your localhost app receives this test notification in the terminal.

  9. Optionally, in the Intercom Webhooks page, you can click Send a test request to resend this test post request to your application.

Run Webhooks with Intercom and ngrok​

Because you've selected the contact.user.created event, you can trigger new calls from Intercom to your application by following the instructions below:

  1. In the same browser, access Intercom Home page, and then click the Contacts icon.

  2. On the left menu, click New, click New users or leads, and then click Create new user.

  3. In the Create a new user popup window, provide a Name, an Email, a User UI, and then click Create a user.

Confirm your localhost app receives the create user event notification and logs both headers and body in the terminal.

Tip: Intercom sends different request body contents depending on the event you select during the webhook registration.

Inspecting requests​

When you launch the ngrok agent on your local machine, you can see two links:

  • The URL to your app (it ends with ngrok-free.app for free accounts or ngrok.app for paid accounts when not using custom domains)
  • A local URL for the Web Interface (a.k.a Request Inspector).

The Request Inspector shows all the requests made through your ngrok tunnel to your localhost app. When you click on a request, you can see details of both the request and the response.

Seeing requests is an excellent way of validating the data sent to and retrieved by your app via the ngrok tunnel. That alone can save you some time dissecting and logging HTTP request and response headers, methods, bodies, and response codes within your app just to confirm you are getting what you expect.

To inspect Intercom's webhooks call, launch the ngrok web interface (i.e. http://127.0.0.1:4040), and then click one of the requests sent by Intercom.

From the results, review the response body, header, and other details:

ngrok Request Inspector

Replaying requests​

The ngrok Request Inspector provides a replay function that you can use to test your code without the need to trigger new events from Intercom. To replay a request:

  1. In the ngrok inspection interface (i.e. http://localhost:4040), select a request from Intercom.

  2. Click Replay to execute the same request to your application or select Replay with modifications to modify the content of the original request before sending the request.

  3. If you choose to Replay with modifications, you can modify any content from the original request. For example, you can modify the email field inside the body of the request.

  4. Click Replay.

Verify that your local application receives the request and logs the corresponding information to the terminal.

Secure webhook requests​

The ngrok signature webhook verification feature allows ngrok to assert that requests from your Intercom webhook are the only traffic allowed to make calls to your localhost app.

Note: This ngrok feature is limited to 500 validations per month on free ngrok accounts. For unlimited, upgrade to Pro or Enterprise.

This is a quick step to add extra protection to your application.

  1. Access the Intercom Developer Hub page, click your app name, and then click Basic information on the left menu.

  2. In the Basic information page, copy the Client secret value.

  3. Restart your ngrok agent by running the command, replacing {your client secret} with the value you copied before:

    ngrok http 3000 --verify-webhook intercom --verify-webhook-secret {your client secret}

  4. Access the Intercom Home page and create a new contact.

Verify that your local application receives the request and logs information to the terminal.