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Update custom object references through REST API v2.13

V

The v2.13 REST API introduces support for creating, updating, and reading custom object instances. But, the documentation does not say anything about updating references – either on those instances themselves, or references to custom objects as custom attributes on people.

Without the ability to associate custom objects with contacts or conversations, the API doesn’t seem very useful.

I’ve tried to pass contact IDs and external IDs, and objects with an “id” key with no success, both as arrays and as simple attributes. Based on how the contacts/{id}/companies endpoint works, I’d probably expect the following to work:

POST /custom_object_instances
Content-Type: application/json

{"external_id": "123", "custom_attributes": {"Owner":{"id":"6602eae0ca854b5e2a01f503"}}

And if the attribute support multiple people, it should support an array. Supporting objects, instead of just the ID, would allow you to support identifying references with both Intercom’s ID and external ID, so that’d be nice.

I’ll note that `custom_attributes` for contacts does not support arrays.

Is this supported, and if so, how? If not, is it planned?

Edit: I guess this is fundamentally the same question, which has a response that this is not possible.

 

2 replies

Paul Byrne
Intercom Team
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  • Paul ByrneIntercom Team
  • Intercom Team
  • 15 replies
  • March 30, 2025

Hi ​@Victor Andrée 

You’re right that the current docs do not explicitly cover updating references within custom object instances or linking them to contacts/conversations.

At the moment, the ability to associate custom objects with contacts via custom_attributes is limited. While contacts themselves do not support arrays in custom_attributes, certain API endpoints (like contacts/{id}/companies) follow a different structure. However, for custom object instances, reference linking is currently not supported in the same way.

That said, I’d like to understand more about your use case to see if there are potential workarounds. Are you primarily looking to store and retrieve these associations within Intercom, or do you need them for automated workflows?

 

 

V
  • Victor Andrée
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • 2 replies
  • March 31, 2025

​@Paul Byrne Appreciate the response!

For me specifically, our domain has users that are part of “households” that engage in “deals”. Getting this data into Intercom would be useful for agents to understand who they’re talking to, and to automate communication. Now that custom objects are available in the API, we’re evaluating if custom objects would be a better mapping for this than treating households as “companies” and deals as “tickets”. For that to be viable, yes, I’d have to be able to use these fields just as the same type of fields can be set by custom actions.

After writing my initial post, I tried mapping a contact using the normal custom actions route, and could see that this is how they’re represented in the custom objects REST API:

{
    "created_at": 1743167944,
    "custom_attributes": {
        "Owner": {
            "contacts": [
                {
                    "external_id": "67e696bc93d10489ffb64bf1",
                    "id": "67e696bc93d10489ffb64bf1",
                    "type": "contact"
                }
            ],
            "type": "contact.list"
        },
        "test_attribute": "123456789"
    },
    "external_created_at": null,
    "external_id": "d3de4428-ddd5-4394-884e-a009353536b0",
    "external_updated_at": null,
    "id": "108124576",
    "type": "Test_Object",
    "updated_at": 1743167975
}

The wording of your response suggests that this may just be an issue with documentation and “limited” support. Just to be clear, then: There is currently no way to set a “references” type field on a custom object using the REST API? And vice versa, there’s no way to do this for contacts, either, because the contacts REST API does not expose this information at all (and does not allow you to set arrays on `custom_attributes`)?

I guess an alternative would be the ability to run custom actions through the API… but I don’t think that’s possible either.

 

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