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
Sign in to Zendesk, copy your URL from your URL bar, and enter it into Glean (for example: https://YourZendeskDomain.zendesk.com)
Go to Admin (gear icon) → Go to Admin Center → Apps and integrations → Zendesk API.
Enable Token Access.
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
Input the data source name in the Name text box and select an icon
Complete any outstanding setup in Show setup instructions
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
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.