Zendesk connection
- Topics:
- Destinations
CREATED FOR:
- Admin
- User
Zendesk is a customer service solution and sales tool.
This Adobe Experience Platform destination leverages the Zendesk Contacts API, to create and update identities within an audience as contacts within Zendesk.
Zendesk uses bearer tokens as an authentication mechanism to communicate with the Zendesk Contacts API. Instructions to authenticate to your Zendesk instance are further below, in the Authenticate to destination section.
Use cases
The customer service department of a multichannel B2C platform wants to ensure a seamless personalized experience for its customers. The department can build audiences from their own offline data to create new user profiles or update existing profile information from different interactions (for example purchases, returns etc.) and send these audiences from Adobe Experience Platform to Zendesk. Having the updated information in Zendesk ensures the customer service agent has the recent information of the customer immediately available, enabling quicker responses and resolution.
Prerequisites
Experience Platform prerequisites
Before activating data to the Zendesk destination, you must have a schema, a dataset, and segments created in Experience Platform.
Refer to Experience Platform documentation for Audience Membership Details schema field group if you need guidance on audience statuses.
Zendesk prerequisites
In order to export data from Experience Platform to your Zendesk account you need to have a Zendesk account.
Gather Zendesk credentials
Note down the items below before you authenticate to the Zendesk destination:
| Credential | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
Bearer token | The Access token you have generated in your Zendesk account. Follow the documentation to generate a Zendesk access token if you do not have one. | a0b1c2d3e4...v20w21x22y23z |
Guardrails
The Pricing and Rate Limits page details the Zendesk API limits associated with your account. You need to ensure that your data and payload are within these constraints.
Supported identities
Zendesk supports update of identities described in the table below. Learn more about identities.
| Target Identity | Example | Description | Mandatory |
|---|---|---|---|
email | test@test.com | Email address of the contact. | Yes |
Export type and frequency
Refer to the table below for information about the destination export type and frequency.
| Item | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Export type | Profile-based |
|
| Export frequency | Streaming |
|
Connect to the destination
IMPORTANTTo connect to this destination, follow the steps described in the destination configuration tutorial. In the configure destination workflow, fill in the fields listed in the two sections below.
Within Destinations > Catalog search for Zendesk. Alternatively you can locate it under the CRM category.
Authenticate to destination
Fill in the required fields below. Refer to the Gather Zendesk credentials section for any guidance.
- Bearer Token: The Access Token you have generated in your Zendesk account.
To authenticate to the destination, select Connect to destination.
If the details provided are valid, the UI displays a Connected status with a green check mark. You can then proceed to the next step.
Fill in destination details
To configure details for the destination, fill in the required and optional fields below. An asterisk next to a field in the UI indicates that the field is required.
- Name: A name by which you will recognize this destination in the future.
- Description: A description that will help you identify this destination in the future.
Enable alerts
You can enable alerts to receive notifications on the status of the dataflow to your destination. Select an alert from the list to subscribe to receive notifications on the status of your dataflow. For more information on alerts, see the guide on subscribing to destinations alerts using the UI.
When you are finished providing details for your destination connection, select Next.
Activate audiences to this destination
IMPORTANT-
To activate data, you need the View Destinations, Activate Destinations, View Profiles, and View Segments access control permissions. Read the access control overview or contact your product administrator to obtain the required permissions.
-
To export identities, you need the View Identity Graph access control permission.
Read Activate profiles and audiences to streaming audience export destinations for instructions on activating audiences to this destination.
Mapping considerations and example
To correctly send your audience data from Adobe Experience Platform to the Zendesk destination, you need to go through the field mapping step. Mapping consists of creating a link between your Experience Data Model (XDM) schema fields in your Experience Platform account and their corresponding equivalents from the target destination.
Attributes specified in the Target field should be named exactly as described in the attribute mappings table as these attributes will form the request body.
Attributes specified in the Source field do not follow any such restriction. You can map it based on your need, however if the data format is not correct when pushed to Zendesk it will result in an error.
To correctly map your XDM fields to the Zendesk destination fields, follow these steps:
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In the Mapping step, select Add new mapping. You will see a new mapping row on the screen.
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In the Select source field window, choose the Select attributes category and select the XDM attribute or choose the Select identity namespace and select an identity.
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In the Select target field window, choose the Select identity namespace category and select a target identity, or choose the Select attributes category and select one of the supported schema attributes.
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Repeat these steps to add the following mandatory mappings, you can also add any other attributes you want to update between your XDM profile schema and your Zendesk instance:
Source FieldTarget FieldMandatoryxdm: person.name.lastNamexdm: last_nameYesIdentityMap: EmailIdentity: emailYesxdm: person.name.firstNamexdm: first_name -
An example using these mappings is shown below:
-
IMPORTANTAttribute: last_name and Identity: email target mappings are mandatory for this destination. If these mappings are missing, any other mappings are ignored and not sent to Zendesk.When you are finished providing the mappings for your destination connection, select Next.
Schedule audience export and example
In the Schedule audience export step of the activation workflow, you must manually map Experience Platform audiences to the custom field attribute in Zendesk.
To do this, select each segment, then enter the corresponding custom field attribute from Zendesk in the Mapping ID field.
An example is shown below:
Validate data export
To validate that you have correctly set up the destination, follow the steps below:
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Select Destinations > Browse and navigate to the list of destinations.
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Next, select the destination and switch to the Activation data tab, then select an audience name.
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Monitor the audience summary and ensure that the count of profiles corresponds to the count within the segment.
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Log in to the Zendesk website, then navigate to the Contacts page to check if the profiles from the audience have been added. This list can be configured to display columns for the additional fields created with the audience Mapping ID and audience statuses.
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You can alternatively drill down into an individual Person page and check the Additional fields section displaying the audience name and audience statuses.
Data usage and governance
All Adobe Experience Platform destinations are compliant with data usage policies when handling your data. For detailed information on how Adobe Experience Platform enforces data governance, see the Data Governance overview.
Additional resources
Additional useful information from the Zendesk documentation is below:
Changelog
This section captures the functionality and significant documentation updates made to this destination connector.
- We updated the use-cases section with a clearer example of when customers would benefit from using this destination.
- We updated the mapping section to reflect the correct required mappings. The
Attribute: last_nameandIdentity: emailtarget mappings are mandatory for this destination. If these mappings are missing, any other mappings are ignored and not sent to Zendesk. - We updated the mapping section with clear examples of both mandatory and optional mappings.