Zendesk
Audience: Admins, Developers, Solution Architects
Purpose: Explains what the Zendesk integration is, when to use it, and how it works within Kizen
Overview
Connect the Zendesk® platform to Kizen with the Zendesk integration. Create, update, and search Zendesk support tickets, post replies and internal notes, and look up or create Zendesk users directly from Agentic Workflows.
What Is the Zendesk Integration?
The Zendesk integration adds seven action steps to the Agentic Workflow builder in Kizen:
Create Ticket: Opens a new Zendesk support ticket
Update Ticket: Updates an existing Zendesk support ticket
Add Ticket Comment: Adds a public or private comment to a Zendesk support ticket
Get Ticket: Returns complete information about a Zendesk support ticket
Get Ticket Comments: Returns the conversation thread of a Zendesk support ticket
Search Tickets: Returns Zendesk support tickets by specific criteria
Find or Create User: Searches for a Zendesk user and optionally creates the user in the Zendesk platform if no match exists
To connect to the Zendesk platform, first you provide the subdomain of your Zendesk instance as an integration secret. Then you log into the Zendesk platform from Kizen as an administrator and allow the integration to access your Zendesk account.
For more information, see Set Up Zendesk in Kizen.
When to Use the Zendesk Integration
Use the Zendesk integration when your customer support or internal service teams need to automate the creation and tracking of Zendesk support tickets. With this integration, you can build robust Agentic Workflows for remediating any kind of Zendesk support issue using live Zendesk data directly from Kizen.
Common Use Cases
Here are some common use cases of the Zendesk integration:
Opening a Zendesk ticket automatically in response to an external trigger: a form submission, a monitoring alert, an escalation event from another tool, and so on
Assigning a ticket to an agent and tracking the status of the ticket without the agent needing to work in the Zendesk platform
Reviewing a difficult ticket's full comment history to establish context and improve the tone and accuracy of communications with the customer
How the Zendesk Integration Works
Before you configure the Zendesk integration, it's important to understand how it functions at a conceptual level.
Zendesk Plan Requirements
The integration works with any paid Zendesk support plan or any plan with access to the Zendesk API. For best results, use an enterprise plan with its larger rate limits.
Connection Model
The integration communicates with the Zendesk platform at the business level over a single OAuth 2.0 connection. That is, every integration user in your Kizen business shares this same connection. To establish the connection, a Kizen administrator authorizes access to the Zendesk API during integration setup.
See Set Up Zendesk in Kizen for more information.
Authentication
You authenticate to your Zendesk account during integration setup. To learn more, see Set Up Zendesk in Kizen.
If your access token expires during the execution of an Agentic Workflow, re-authenticate from the integration settings and retry.
Agentic Workflow Step Execution
Each Zendesk action step executes synchronously, so the Agentic Workflow waits at the step until it completes. The step times out on the Kizen side after 30 seconds.
Rate Limiting
Your rate limit for API requests depends on your Zendesk plan, with more generous rate limits for more fully featured plans.
If you exceed your rate limit while executing an Agentic Workflow, the Zendesk API returns HTTP status code 429 Too Many Requests. Whether the integration retries the request depends on the response from the Zendesk API:
If Zendesk's response specifies a wait of 20 seconds or less, the integration waits that long and retries the request. If it hits the rate limit again, the action fails.
If Zendesk specifies a longer wait or no wait at all, the action fails immediately without retrying.
See also Troubleshoot Zendesk.
Results Handling
The Get Ticket Comments and Search Tickets actions return a maximum of 1,000 results starting from the most recent. If there are more than that many results to return, the Zendesk API responds with HTTP status code 422 Unprocessable Content. Narrow the scope of the search parameters, and try again.
See also Troubleshoot Zendesk.
Data Integrity
If your Agentic Workflow writes data back to the Zendesk platform, be sure to validate its behavior thoroughly on non-production data first. You can't roll back a write operation after it executes, and the operation might partially apply if an error occurs during execution.
Status, Type, and Priority Values
Many of the integration actions accept or return Zendesk-specific keyword values for the status, type, or priority of a ticket. The following expandable sections describe these values.
Available Zendesk Actions and Topics
For step-by-step instructions on using the Zendesk integration, see the following topics:
What's Next
Continue to Set Up Zendesk in Kizen to configure your connection to the Zendesk platform.
Zendesk® and the stylized Z logo are registered trademarks of Zendesk, Inc. Kizen's Zendesk integration is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Zendesk, Inc.
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