Co-author – Srihari Ananda Kumar
Zendesk is a cloud-based customer service platform that is designed to improve communication between an organization and its customers. Zendesk Service helps to keep businesses in sync and delivers an omnichannel customer experience. You can view, organize tickets, and generate reports or analytics.
Building a flow in IBM App Connect with Zendesk Service
Use to build flows that integrate with the Zendesk Service and other applications. The connector is displayed as Zendesk Service on the IBM App Connect User Interface (UI).
Provide the following information to connect IBM App Connect to your Zendesk Service account.
The connection fields used to connect IBM App Connect to your Zendesk Service account differs based on
your chosen authorization methods.
You can opt to log in to IBM App Connect by using BASIC, BASIC OAUTH, API KEY, OAUTH 2.0 CODE, or OAUTH 2.0 PASSWORD authorization methods.
For more information about connection fields, see
How to use IBM App Connect with Zendesk Service.
|
Connection fields
|
Authorization method
|
Description
|
|
Subdomain
|
- BASIC
- BASIC OAUTH
- API KEY
- OAuth 2.0 CODE
- OAuth 2.0 PASSWORD
|
The subdomain can be identified from your Zendesk account's URL.
For example, in the URL mycompany.zendesk.com, the subdomain is mycompany.
|
|
Login ID
|
- BASIC
- API KEY
- OAuth 2.0 PASSWORD
|
The user ID or email address of the registered Zendesk for service account.
|
|
Password
|
- BASIC
- API KEY
- OAuth 2.0 PASSWORD
|
The password for the specified login ID.
|
|
Client ID
|
|
The unique identifier of your Zendesk client application.
Get the client ID from your Zendesk account user interface.
|
|
Client secret
|
|
The client secret of your Zendesk client application.
Get the client secret from your Zendesk account user interface.
|
|
Access token
|
|
The access token generated from the application client ID and client secret.
|
|
API token
|
|
The API token for the Zendesk instance.
|
The following are Zendesk Service objects that can be run in IBM App Connect.
|
Article attachments
|
Profiles
|
|
Articles
|
Tags
|
|
Events
|
Ticket attachments
|
|
Group memberships
|
Ticket comments
|
|
Groups
|
Tickets
|
|
Organizations
|
Users
|
IBM App Connect allows users to create custom objects on Zendesk Service.
Scenario 1: Create a ticket in Zendesk Service when a new email is received
Consider the following scenario where you use IBM App Connect to create a flow to integrate Zendesk Service with an email service provider and a messaging application.
Zendesk Service creates a ticket with the email details and attachments when you receive a new email through the connected email server account. A notification gets sent through a Slack channel upon successfully creating a ticket.
The steps involved in this event-driven flow are as follows:
- The event-driven flow is triggered whenever a new email is received through the connected email server account.
- The Zendesk Service Create ticket operation creates a ticket when a new email is received. For example, a ticket is created with the email details such as the subject, description, and sender email address.
- The Zendesk Service Upload attachment operation uploads the attachment (if any) with the attachment’s file name and content in binary format.
- The Zendesk Service Create ticket comment operation uploads the attachment.
- A Slack message gets sent to the intended channel with the ticket details.
Tips
Before you add the email attachments to the flow, there are a few things you should know.
- You can attach files only to the comments in the ticket.
- Upload attachment to a new ticket comment.
- To add an attachment to a ticket comment, you need to copy the token received in the Upload attachment response.
- Paste the token received from the Upload attachment response into the Uploads property of the Create ticket comment operation. By pasting the token, it adds the attachment to the ticket comment.
- Upload attachment to an existing ticket comment (multiple attachments).
- To upload multiple attachments to a ticket comment, you need to paste the previous token in the Token property of the Upload attachment operation.
- Copy the token received in the Upload attachment response.
- Add the token that is received from step (i) to the current Upload attachment's Token property.
- Paste the token received from the Upload attachment response into the Uploads property of the Create ticket comment operation.
Scenario 2: Create an incident or problem in ServiceNow when a ticket is created in Zendesk Service
Consider the sequel scenario; when a ticket is created in Zendesk Service, an incident or problem is created in ServiceNow, and a Slack notification gets sent to the relevant squad.
The steps involved in this event-driven flow are as follows:
- The event-driven flow is triggered whenever a new ticket is created in Zendesk Service. In this flow, Zendesk Service checks for new tickets every 5 minutes.
- Include an If and Else conditional statement node from the Toolbox.
- If the Zendesk Service ticket type is ‘incident’, an incident is created in ServiceNow. A Slack message is sent to the intended channel with the incident details.
- Else if the Zendesk Service ticket type is ‘problem’, a problem is created in ServiceNow. A Slack message is sent to the intended channel with the problem details.
Resources
Try out our templatesYou can view the Templates gallery in your IBM App Connect Designer instance.
The following use cases will be made available in the Templates gallery on IBM App Connect.
- Create a ticket in Zendesk Service when a new email is received
- Create an incident or problem in ServiceNow when a ticket is created in Zendesk Service
For more information on Templates gallery, see the Example section in the How to use IBM App Connect with Zendesk Service documentation.
Make work easier with templates
Build flows with hundreds of prebuilt connectors for SaaS products, APIs, message queues and mainframes. For more information, see IBM® App Connect connectors.
Acknowledgement and thanks to Deepak Ayilliath for providing valuable input to this article.