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Zendesk

With the Zendesk integration, your ChatNorris agent handles support questions with your Help Center content and, when that isn’t enough, opens the case in your Zendesk without the visitor leaving the chat. Depending on what you turn on, the agent:
  • answers with the articles from your Zendesk Help Center, without you having to copy them by hand or index them by URL one by one;
  • creates a support ticket in your account, only after the visitor confirms the details;
  • tells the status of a ticket it created itself, after verifying that it belongs to the visitor.
A single connection per agent covers both: the knowledge base and the tickets. The Action works in the web widget, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, Email, and the API.

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Requirements

  • A ChatNorris account on the Standard or Premium plan. You can see the plans at chatnorris.ai/pricing.
  • At least one agent created in ChatNorris. If you don’t have one yet, follow Create an agent.
  • A Zendesk account and your account’s subdomain (yourcompany.zendesk.com). To import articles, the account must have the Help Center active.
  • The Owner or Admin role in your ChatNorris organization.

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Connect Zendesk

The connection uses OAuth: you sign in with your Zendesk account and don’t enter any credentials by hand. You connect it only once per agent, from Integrations, and the Zendesk Tickets Action and the Zendesk knowledge source share it.
1

Open the agent's Integrations hub

In ChatNorris, go to My agents → [your agent] → Integrations and choose Zendesk.
2

Enter your subdomain

In Subdomain, enter the part of your Zendesk address that comes before .zendesk.com (for example, yourcompany if you sign in at https://yourcompany.zendesk.com).
3

Click Connect and sign in to Zendesk

Zendesk opens. Sign in with your account and accept the permissions ChatNorris requests (see Permissions). Zendesk sends you back to ChatNorris with the connection saved.
4

Test the connection

Click Test connection. ChatNorris checks access to the knowledge base and to tickets, and shows you what it was able to verify.
Connecting Zendesk doesn’t turn anything on by itself. For the agent to use the account, create the Zendesk Tickets Action or add the knowledge source.
If you already had Zendesk connected from the Action itself, before the Integrations hub existed, you don’t need to reconnect: the connection was migrated automatically and you’ll find it there. Only reconnect if it shows as Needs attention.

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Permissions

When you connect, ChatNorris asks Zendesk for the permissions of both capabilities: If the connection was made with fewer permissions than the capabilities need, the integration card shows the notice “Missing permissions for: …”. Click Reconnect to update them.

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Configure the Action

The Zendesk Tickets Action lets the agent create support tickets and check their status without leaving the chat.
1

Create the Zendesk Tickets Action

Go to My agents → [your agent] → Actions, click New action, and choose Zendesk Tickets. The Zendesk account section shows the connected account; if you haven’t connected one yet, the Manage connection in Integrations link takes you to the hub.
2

Choose what it can do

In What it can do, turn on Create tickets, Check status, or both (see below).
3

Define when it should be used

In When to use this action, tell the agent in which situations it should offer to create a ticket. The field comes with default text that you can adapt or restore with Restore default text. Confirmation and verification remain mandatory even if you change this text.
4

Configure verification and ticket values

Fill in Verification to check tickets and Ticket defaults (see below).
5

Turn on the Action and save

Turn on Enabled and save. From then on, the agent uses your Zendesk in its new conversations.
Claude Sonnet or higher is recommended as the agent’s main model (Settings → AI). The Action asks for explicit confirmation before creating a ticket or revealing data from a verified ticket, and in our testing Haiku sometimes ignores that confirmation and answers as if the ticket already existed, even though it wasn’t created. The Action’s form shows this notice with a link to the AI settings.

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Create tickets

To create a ticket, the agent collects the visitor’s subject, description, name and email (and phone, if you turn on that detail in verification). Then it shows them a summary and creates the ticket only when the visitor explicitly confirms: it never creates it automatically in the middle of the chat. See which replies count as confirmation in Visitor confirmations. The ticket is created with the name and email the visitor wrote in the conversation. If the agent can’t verify that the visitor wrote those details, it asks for them again before creating the ticket. In Ticket defaults you choose what tickets are created with in Zendesk:
  • Priority: Not set, Low, Normal (default), High, or Urgent.
  • Tags: comma-separated. By default, chatnorris.

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Check status

The agent tells a ticket’s subject, status and last update date. It has no access to the ticket’s replies or resolution. In Verification to check tickets you choose which details the agent asks for before answering:
  • Ticket number: always required.
  • Email: on by default. It’s compared without storing its value in plain text.
  • Phone: optional additional verifier. It’s stored only as a hash.
If you turn on more than one detail, all of them must match.
For security, the agent can only check the status of tickets it created itself (not any ticket in your Zendesk account), and always after validating the ticket number together with the contact details. If the details don’t match, the agent doesn’t reveal whether the ticket exists. These controls are enforced on the server and can’t be relaxed by editing the When to use this action text. If you disconnect and reconnect the same Zendesk account, tickets created before can still be looked up.

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Resolve first, then the ticket

Ticket actions (Zendesk, Freshdesk and the Odoo Helpdesk) follow a fixed rule, above whatever you write in When to use this action:
  • If the visitor describes a problem or asks a question without asking for a ticket, the agent answers with the knowledge base. If it can’t solve it, or the visitor says the answer didn’t help, it offers to create the ticket.
  • If the visitor asks for a ticket directly, the agent first offers help (with the answer, if it has one, or by asking what’s going on) and asks whether they still prefer the ticket.
  • The ticket is started if the visitor insists, if the agent already tried and didn’t have the information, or if the answer didn’t help.
Checking the status of an existing ticket doesn’t go through this step. During a ticket flow, the agent also doesn’t offer the Lead Form or a transfer to a person, so as not to confuse the visitor.
If the visitor asks to open a ticket or a support case and the agent has the Zendesk Tickets Action active, the agent uses that action instead of transferring the conversation to a person with Human Handoff.
Tickets the agent creates in the Playground are real. If the agent has the Action active, before the first test message you’ll see the notice This test can create real data.

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Tickets from Google reviews

If you use the Google Reviews channel, you can have every negative review open a ticket in Zendesk. You need the Zendesk Tickets Action with Create tickets on. See Google Reviews → Support tickets.

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Import articles into the knowledge base

You can bring the articles from your Zendesk Help Center into the knowledge base, so the agent answers general questions with them.
1

Add the source

Go to My agents → [your agent] → Knowledge Base → Add source and choose Zendesk. If you haven’t connected the account yet, click Connect in Integrations and follow Connect Zendesk.
2

Choose what to import

Choose one of three options:
  • Whole KB: imports all public articles.
  • Categories and sections: choose specific categories and sections, and the Languages.
  • Advanced filters: in addition to categories, sections and languages, filter by Tags, Content tags, or Featured articles only.
Then click Import articles. For security, drafts and articles restricted to private segments are always excluded.
3

Wait for processing

Imported articles go through the same process as any other source (Pending → Processing → Ready).
  • The source resyncs on its own at your plan’s frequency: weekly on Standard and daily on Premium. See Automatic sync.
  • In All sources, you can filter by the Zendesk type to see only this source.
The source is independent of the Zendesk Tickets Action: the source brings Help Center content to answer general questions, while the Action creates and looks up specific support tickets. You can use one, the other, or both with the same connection.

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Pause or disconnect

In My agents → [your agent] → Integrations, the ··· menu on the Zendesk row has Test connection and Disconnect, and the Active switch pauses the integration:
  • Pausing keeps the connection. While it’s paused, the Action can’t call Zendesk and the source stops syncing, but content already imported is still used to answer. See Pause an integration.
  • Disconnecting deletes ChatNorris’s access. Before you confirm, ChatNorris shows you what depends on the connection. The Zendesk Tickets Action is turned off and keeps its configuration, and the knowledge source is deactivated and keeps the content already indexed. To use them again, connect Zendesk again and reactivate them.

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Frequently asked questions

Zendesk stopped accepting the saved access, for example because the connection went 30 days unused (no knowledge base syncs or tickets). Reconnect Zendesk from the Integrations hub with the same subdomain. While the connection needs attention, the source doesn’t sync and the agent doesn’t offer to create tickets.
No. It only checks the status of tickets it created itself, and only after verifying the ticket number and the contact details you configured. It doesn’t read the content of your team’s replies.
Only published articles are imported. Drafts and articles restricted to private segments are always excluded. If you use Categories and sections or Advanced filters, also check that the article meets the filter.
No. Each agent supports only one Zendesk connection, shared by the Action and the knowledge source. If you need different accounts, use separate agents.