Skip to main content
All CollectionsConnectors
Zendesk Connector
Zendesk Connector

This document covers all information related to Glean’s Zendesk connector

Dan Iacono avatar
Written by Dan Iacono
Updated over 2 weeks ago

Introduction

The Zendesk connector for Glean allows Glean to fetch and index content from Zendesk while ensuring users can search and access documents for which permissions have been authorized.

  • Authentication: Glean requires the Zendesk admin to authenticate to Glean during the Glean data source setup with an API Token.

  • Data Storage: All data is stored in the cloud project within the customer's cloud account, ensuring no data leaves the customer's environment

API Usage

  • Standard API: Glean uses Zendesk’s standard Apps REST API to ingest all data

Integration Features

  • Content Captured: Posts, Knowledgebase articles, and Tickets, including comments.

  • Permissions Enforcement: Glean respects all user access permissions, ensuring users only see search results for documents users can access. When a user clicks on a search result, they are taken to the Zendesk web application, which enforces the permission.

Versions Supported

There are no specific version limitations of the Zendesk connector.

Objects Supported

The Zendesk connector supports the following objects:

  • Knowledge base articles (including comments)

  • Tickets (including comments)

  • Posts and comments

Authentication Mechanism

The Zendesk administrator will create the Zendesk API token that Glean will utilize for the Zendesk connector. Please use a Service Account to create the token to ensure that Glean does not lose access if the employee who performed the authentication leaves the company.

Connection instructions

Disclaimer: The instructions below are updated periodically by Glean on our customer-facing documentation. For the latest instructions, refer to the Glean Admin UI

Create Zendesk API Token

  1. Sign in to Zendesk, copy your URL from your URL bar, and enter it into Glean (for example: https://YourZendeskDomain.zendesk.com)

  2. Go to Admin (gear icon) → Go to Admin Center → Apps and integrations → Zendesk API.

  3. Enable Token Access.

  4. Add a new token by clicking the Add API token button. Set the description to: Glean Access Token (Save API Token for setup in Glean)

Setup in Glean

  1. Input the data source name in the Name text box and select an icon

  2. Complete any outstanding setup in Show setup instructions

  3. Input the following information:

    • Input Zendesk domain name in Zendesk domain name text box (for example: https://YourZendeskDomain.zendesk.com)

    • Input Zendesk API Token in API Token name text box

    • Input the email of the service account that created the API token in the Email name text box

    • Check the following boxes that apply for the setup

      • Crawl articles

      • Crawl posts

      • Crawl tickets

  4. Click Save

Items crawled

Content Indexed

  • Knowledgebase articles (including comments)

  • Tickets (including comments)

  • Posts and comments

Identity

  • Users: Information about users within the Zendesk

  • Groups: Details about groups within Zendesk, including Organisations, user segments and permission_groups

The identity crawl operates with the following configurations:

  • Incremental Identity Crawls: These are performed to capture changes since the last crawl.

  • Full Identity Crawls: These are conducted periodically to ensure all identity data is up-to-date.

Webhook Events

The Glean Zendesk connector utilizes Webhooks for ticket creation, ticket updates, and comment creation.

Rate Limits

  • Queries per Second (QPS): The default rate limit is 12 queries per second, but it can be adjusted. Please contact your Glean representative for more information.

  • For more information regarding Zendesk’s rate limiting, see here

Update frequency

Content updates for the Zendesk connector in Glean can happen quite rapidly, depending on the type of update and the configuration settings. Here are the key areas:

  • People / Identity Crawls: The identity crawl, which runs every hour, detects changes to group memberships and ensures that updates to user groups and their permissions are reflected promptly.

  • Incremental Crawls: Occur every 1 hour and capture the difference between the previous incremental or full crawl

  • Full Crawls: The frequency of full crawls can be configured, but they are generally less frequent than incremental crawls at 28 days

Changes in data must be crawled, processed, and indexed before the data is reflected in the UI. Actual time may vary depending on the number of changes and corpus size. For the most up-to-date crawler refresh information, please refer to [External] Glean crawling strategy

How the crawl works

The Zendesk crawler follows the traditional crawler strategy, including utilizing the Zendesk API and the following ways to get and update data:

  • Identity Crawl: updating and adding of People data, including users, groups, and other information

  • Content Crawls: Full crawls the entire defined scope of the application, whereas incremental crawls only capture the changes from the previous full or incremental crawl

Known Limitations in Crawl

  • Glean does not support Departmental Spaces or Team Brand membership

API endpoints

Cloud Endpoint

api/v2/users.json

api/v2/groups.json

api/v2/groups/%s/memberships.json

api/v2/guide/permission_groups.json

api/v2/help_center/user_segments.json

api/v2/organizations.json

api/v2/organizations/%s/organization_memberships.json

api/v2/brands

api/v2/community/topics.json

api/v2/help_center/incremental/articles.json

api/v2/help_center/articles/%s/comments.json

api/v2/community/posts.json

api/v2/community/posts/%s/comments.json

api/v2/ticket_fields.json

api/v2/incremental/tickets/cursor.json

api/v2/tickets/%s/comments.json

api/v2/custom_roles.json

api/v2/triggers

api/v2/webhooks

api/v2/apps/installations.json

Content Configuration

Note: If Inclusion (Green-Listing) options are enabled, only content from the Inclusion category will be indexed. If Exclusion (Red-Listing) options are enabled, all content in the exclusion category will be removed. If both rules are applied to the same content, then the content will NOT be indexed, as the exclusion rule takes priority.

The rules below should be used MINIMALLY to preserve the enterprise search experience, as most end-users expect to find all content. Most customers do not apply any rules or apply red-listing rules sparingly for sensitive items.

Exclusion (Red-Listing) Options

Glean provides the ability to exclude the following content from the Zendesk connector crawl based on the criteria:

  • Posts

  • Articles

  • Brand ID

Note: Excluded items will not show in search results, chat, or any other Glean applications

Please contact your Glean representative to configure this in your Glean instance.

Inclusion (Green-Listing) Options

Glean provides the ability to include the following content from the Zendesk connector crawl based on the criteria:

  • Posts

  • Articles

  • Brand ID

Note: Only content specified to be included items will show in search results, chat, or any other Glean applications. Unspecified content will not be included in search results, chat, or other Glean applications.

Please contact your Glean representative to configure this in your Glean instance.

Did this answer your question?