Zendesk In-Product Cookie Policy

This In-Product Cookie Policy (“Policy”) provides information about how and when Zendesk uses Cookies within the Zendesk Services. For the purposes of this Policy, the term, “Services,” shall have the meaning as defined in the Zendesk Customer Agreement.

If you are seeking information about the Cookies used on www.zendesk.com and other Zendesk websites, please refer instead to the Zendesk Cookie Policy.

What is a Cookie?

In general, a cookie is a small text file that is placed on a user’s browser by a web page server. Cookies and related web technologies (which we refer to herein collectively as “Cookies”) contain information that can later be read by a web server in the domain that issued the Cookie. Some of the Cookies referenced in this Policy will only be used if you use certain products, features, or if you select certain preferences, and some Cookies will always be used. You can find out more about each Cookie by viewing the lists below.

Does Zendesk use Cookies within its Services?

Yes, the Zendesk Group, our affiliates and service providers use Cookies to ensure Zendesk users can securely, quickly, and reliably use the Services.

Why does Zendesk use Cookies?

When users engage with the Services, we may place a number of Cookies in the user’s browser. For example, we use Cookies within the Services to enable Agent and End-User activity, to improve user experience, and to allow our Customers to track and analyze usage, navigational, and other statistical information to continuously improve our Service.

When we collect this information, Zendesk only uses this data to provide the Services or in aggregate form, and not in a manner that would identify a Customer's End-Users personally.

Users can control the use of Cookies at the individual browser level. If a user elects not to activate a given Cookie or disables certain cookies, users may still interact with the relevant Services, but their ability to use some features or areas of the Services may be limited.

How to disable Cookies

Users can generally activate or later deactivate the use of Cookies through functionality built into their web browser, or by means of Cookie consent mechanisms. To learn more about how to control Cookie settings through a browser:

Click here to learn more about the “Private Browsing” setting and managing Cookie settings in Firefox;

Click here to learn more about “Incognito” and managing Cookie settings in Chrome;

Click here to learn more about “InPrivate” and managing Cookie settings in Internet Explorer and Edge; or

Click here to learn more about “Private Browsing” and managing Cookie settings in Safari.

If you want to learn more about Cookies, or how to control, disable or delete them, please visit http://www.aboutcookies.org for detailed guidance. Further, certain third party advertising networks, including Google, permit users to opt out of or customize preferences associated with your internet browsing generally. To learn more about this feature from Google, click here.

Many jurisdictions require or recommend that website operators inform users/visitors as to the nature of Cookies they utilize and, in certain circumstances, obtain the consent of their users to the placement of certain types of Cookies. Options for enabling consent mechanisms for the Zendesk End-User Cookies are discussed further below.

Zendesk’s in-product Cookies all fall within one of the three following categories:

Category | Description
Essential cookies | Essential Cookies are sometimes called “strictly necessary” as without them we cannot provide the functionality required to use the Services. For example, essential Cookies may support authentication or other features, bolster security, or help with load balancing as users navigate through the Services.
Analytics cookies | Analytics Cookies track information about visits to the Services so that we or our Customers can make improvements and report on performance. For example, some Cookies help analyze Agent and End-User behavior so as to provide additional functionality or suggest certain activities. These Cookies collect information about how visitors use the Services, which site or page the user came from, the number of each user’s visits and how long a user stays on the Services. We might also use analytics Cookies to test new features to see how users react to them.
Functionality or preference cookies | During users’ interaction with the Services, Cookies are used to remember information users have entered or choices they have made. They also store user preferences when personalizing the Services to optimize the use of Zendesk, for example, preferred language. These preferences are remembered through the use of the persistent Cookies, and the next time a user engages with the Services they will not have to set them again.

End-User Cookies

If you are a Zendesk Customer and use Zendesk products to engage with your customers (we refer to our Customers' customers as "End-Users"), depending on the products and features you use and how you have configured them, Zendesk may place Cookies on End-User browsers during such interactions. To understand which specific Cookies are used in your implementation and how and why they are used, review the table below.

While only some of the Zendesk products include pre-built Cookie consent-management solutions, non-essential End-User Cookies are capable of being controlled by most Cookie bots, which Customers can configure to their own standards and in accordance with the functionality provided by the third party Cookie bot. To learn more about implementing a Cookie bot within your help center, see Implementing cookie consent in your help center.

Definitions for the Services identified below are as follows:

Ticketing System Functionality: means Zendesk Support and help desk functionality, email support functionality and agent workspace functionality available within Zendesk Suite.

Help Center Functionality: means Zendesk Guide and help center functionality available within Zendesk Suite.

Community Forum Functionality: means Zendesk Gather and community forum functionality available within Zendesk Suite.

Live Chat Functionality: means Zendesk Chat and live chat functionality available within Zendesk Suite.

Voice Functionality: means Zendesk Voice and call center software available within Zendesk Suite.

Analytics Functionality: means Zendesk Explore and reporting and analytics functionality available within Zendesk Suite.

Service | Name | Category | Purpose | Duration

Cloudflare (all products)

Cloudflare cookies are described here.

The following sections are in scope for Zendesk:

__cf_bm cookie for Cloudflare bot product

__cfruid to support Cloudflare Rate Limiting (previous version)

_cfuvid for Rate Limiting Rules

Additional cookies used by the Challenge Platform

Essential

Cloudflare uses various cookies to maximize network resources, manage traffic, and protect our customers’ sites from malicious traffic.

Duration for each applicable Cloudflare cookie is described here.

All products

_zendesk_session

Essential

Stores account ID, route for internal service calls and the cross-site request forgery token.

8 hours.

Session duration is configurable by the Customer using the Session Expiration config in Admin Center > Security Settings. Can be anything from 5 minutes to 2 weeks. Default is 8 hours.

All products

zendesk_thirdparty_test

Essential

Used during sign in on hostmapped accounts for cookie-restricted browsers. This is necessary for the workflow described here.

8 hours

Session duration is configurable by the Customer using the Session Expiration config in Admin Center > Security Settings. Can be anything from 5 minutes to 2 weeks. Default is 8 hours.

All products

_zendesk_shared_session

Essential

Authentication cookie - set to be anonymous

8 hours

Session duration is configurable by the Customer using the Session Expiration config in Admin Center > Security Settings. Can be anything from 5 minutes to 2 weeks. Default is 8 hours.

All products | _zendesk_authenticated | Essential | This is a flag set when a user is authenticated to display the most up to date content. | Session

All products

_zendesk_login_session

Essential

Used to maintain state between the browser and server for the login-ui-service and to help prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery

Session

5 minutes

Help Center Functionality

_gat

Analytics

Google Analytics (when enabled in Guide Settings) allows customers to gain insights into the use of their Help Center Functionality.

See here to enable or disable these Google Analytics Cookies: Enabling Google Analytics for your Help Center Functionality.

1 minute

Help Center Functionality | _gid | Analytics | Google Analytics (when enabled in Guide Settings) allows customers to gain insights into the use of their Help Center Functionality. | 1 day
Help Center Functionality | _ga | Analytics | Google Analytics (when enabled in Guide Settings) allows customers to gain insights into the use of their Help Center Functionality. | 2 years

Help Center Functionality

hc:{user_identifier}:recently_ visited_articles

Analytics and/or Essential

[LOCAL STORAGE] To help customers understand the resources an end-user has attempted in seeking support, this object tracks recently-viewed articles within the Help Center Functionality.

This Cookie allows Zendesk customers to identify an end-user's recently-viewed articles. If used exclusively by Customer for providing customer support purposes, this could be deemed Essential.

Forever (Local Storage)

Help Center Functionality | articleVotes | Essential | This is only dropped when anonymous end-users actually vote on articles. It is used to track the fact that an anonymous user has voted on an article, so that they are not repeatedly prompted to vote on an article that they have already voted on nor are they able to submit multiple votes relating to one article. | Forever (Local Storage)/Session (cookie)
Help Center Functionality | _help_center_session | Essential | Stores unique session key for Help Center Functionality. | Session

Help Center Functionality

GUIDE_REQUESTS_APP_
COLUMN_CONFIG

Functionality

This cookie is only used in the Request List App. This cookie saves the settings that end-users choose when they configure their own view in the Request List App. It saves which of the available custom values end-users want to filter by and which columns they want to see.

Local storage duration is decided by the browser policy.

Help Center Functionality | help_center_data | Analytics | Stores the text string of an end-user’s search term in the Help Center Functionality. It stores this so that it can check whether a ticket was created after that term was searched. A user identifier is not stored so it is not possible to specify which user completed the search at the time of reporting. | 48 hours

Help Center Functionality

_zdshared_user_
session_analytics

Analytics

Used to track information about visits for analytics purposes.

Persistent cookie, 90 days

Help Center Functionality | request_method | Essential | Used by the Turbolinks library to determine request information and preload links and navigation on the login pages. | Forever (Local Storage)
Connect | ob-{public-api-key} | Essential | Connect js snippet | 3 years
Ticketing System Functionality | _zendesk_nps_session | Essential | Stores a unique key for a session, for landing page after responding to an NPS survey (if enabled) | Session

Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger

<integrationId>.appUserId

Essential

Stores the appUser ID for the current session.

Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger will not drop any Cookies until the widget is initiated by the End-User. If you wish to further control these Cookies using a third-party cookie solution, that is supported.

Forever

Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger | <integrationId>.clientId | Essential | Unique identifier of the SDK instance | Forever
Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger | <integrationId>.sessionToken | Essential | Session token to be used to authenticate requests on behalf of an anonymous user. Session tokens are linked to a client ID (see clientId) | Forever
Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger | lsid | Functionality | (From Stripe) | Session
Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger | ab_disable_remember_me | Preference | (From Stripe) | Session
Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger | cid | Analytics | (From Stripe) Stripe analytics "client ID" used for service improvement | Session
Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger | checkout-test-session / checkout-live-session | Preference | (From Stripe) Used to power Legacy Checkout's Remember Me function | 1 year

Web Widget (Classic)

ZD-zE_oauth

Essential

Stores the authentication token once the user has been authenticated.

Web Widget (Classic) offers pre-built API functionality for cookie consent; see here: Web Widget (Classic) Cookie Permission in Developer Center.

Alternatively, these Cookies respect external cookie bot functionality as well.

2 hours

Web Widget (Classic) | ZD-settings | Functionality | Stores a hash of settings so that we don't keep sending requests to our backend. | forever
Web Widget (Classic) and Web Widget | ZD-suid | Analytics | Used to create a sessionId and track analytics events for pages that load a Web Widget on them. | 20 minutes
Web Widget (Classic) and Web Widget | ZD-buid | Analytics | Used to create a deviceId and track analytics events for pages that load a Web Widget on them. | forever
Web Widget (Classic) | ZD-store | Functionality | Ensures consistent presentation of the Web Widget (Classic) when an End-User navigates to a new web page. | forever

Web Widget (Classic)

_answer_bot_service_session

Essential

Stores unique session key for Answer Bot product.

Used to uniquely identify a user session when using Answer Bot Article Recommendations.

Session

Web Widget

<integrationId>.appUserId

Essential

Used to identify the particular End-User that has started the conversation.

Web Widget offers pre-built functionality to manage cookie consent: see here.

Customers can choose to use either localstorage or sessionstorage.  Duration is decided by the End-User's browser policy.

Web Widget | <integrationId>.clientId | Essential | Used to identify the device from which the conversation is initiated. | Customers can choose to use either localstorage or sessionstorage.  Duration is decided by the End-User's browser policy.
Web Widget | <integrationId>.sessionToken | Essential | Used to authenticate requests and verify that the End-User is who they say they are. | Customers can choose to use either localstorage or sessionstorage.  Duration is decided by the End-User's browser policy.
Web Widget | ZD-widgetOpen | Functionality | Maintains the open/closed state of the Web Widget across page visits. | Forever

Web Widget

ZD-launcherLabelRemoved

Functionality

If the end user chooses to dismiss the launcher label, then we store this value to ensure that the message is not displayed again on other pages.

Forever

Web Widget | ZD-soundNotificationDisabledKey | Functionality | If the user chooses to disable sound notifications in the widget, we store this value to ensure sound notifications do not get played again after refreshing or changing tabs | Local storage duration is decided by the browser policy.
Web Widget | ZD-bannerDismissed | Functionality | If the user is using an Internet Explorer 11 browser, a banner is displayed to them in the widget to inform them that the support for IE11 is slowly being deprecated / ended. The user has the ability to dismiss the banner by clicking the close button. When the button is clicked, we store this information in storage so that we do not continue displaying the same banner every visit in the widget. | Local storage duration is decided by the browser policy.
Web Widget | ZD-campaigns | Functionality | If enabled, a "proactive message" is displayed to users on their first visit. Users can dismiss this proactive message by clicking on it. When they click dismiss, we store this information to have a reference of which proactive message had been dismissed along with the dismissed timestamp, to avoid repeatedly displaying the message. | Local storage duration is decided by the browser policy.

Web Widget

<integrationId>.
conversationStartedAt

Functionality

A messaging conversation can occur across multiple tabs. We synchronise these conversations and control the messaging conversation via a unique timestamp stored upon the conversation beginning.

Local storage duration is decided by the browser policy.

Live Chat Functionality

__zlcmid

Essential

Store visitor's machine-id for the Chat widget's authentication

Chat Widget offers out-of-the-box cookie consent management, see here: Adding a cookie banner.

Alternatively, these Chat Cookies respect external cookie bot functionality as well.

1 year

Live Chat Functionality | __zlcprivacy | Essential | Store visitor's decision on CookieLaw | 1 year
Live Chat Functionality | __zlcstore | Essential | [Local Storage] Store visitor's account settings locally | Forever
Live Chat Functionality | zte2095 | Essential | Used to identify the domain/subdomain the Chat Widget is located on. | Session
Live Chat Functionality | AWSALB | Essential | Used to ensure user session remains with the same AWS instance to improve performance and stability. | Session
Live Chat Functionality | AWSALBCORS | Essential | Used to ensure user session remains with the same AWS instance to improve performance and stability. | Session
Live Chat Functionality | __storejs__ | Functionality | Used to test if local storage can be written to/read from. | Local storage

Web Widget (Classic)

ZD-sendApiBlips

Functionality

Used to reduce the amount of analytics blips that we send in order to help us understand client side API usage.

Web Widget (Classic) offers pre-built API functionality for cookie consent; see here: Web Widget (Classic) Cookie Permission in Developer Center.

The storage duration is dependent on the End-User’s browser policy.

Ticketing System Functionality | _zendesk_cookie | Essential | Saves arbitrary preference settings. Two factor authentication, two step verification, and device tracking will not work without it. | 1 year

Ticketing System Functionality

support:{user_identifier}::
recently_searched

Functionality

[Local Storage] Captures recently-viewed search queries.

Used to enhance the search functionality by incorporating a recent search feature.

Forever (Local Storage)

Ticketing System Functionality

support:{user_identifier}::
recently_visited_organizations

Functionality

[Local Storage] Captures recently-viewed organizations.

Used to enhance the search functionality by incorporating a recent search feature.

Forever (Local Storage)

Ticketing System Functionality

support:{user_identifier}::
recently_visited_tickets

Functionality

[Local Storage] Captures recently-viewed tickets.

Used to enhance the search functionality by incorporating a recent search feature.

Forever (Local Storage)

Ticketing System Functionality

support:{user_identifier}::
recently_visited_users

Functionality

[Local Storage] Captures recently-viewed users.

Used to enhance the search functionality by incorporating a recent search feature.

Forever (Local Storage)

Ticketing System Functionality

support:{user_identifier}::
recently_visited_
side_conversations

Functionality

[Local Storage] Captures recently-viewed side conversations.

Used to enhance the search functionality by incorporating a recent search feature.

Forever (Local Storage)

Ticketing System Functionality | _zendesk_oidc_state | Essential | Used to maintain state between the client and provider during the Open ID Connect (OIDC) login process and help to prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. | Session

Voice Functionality

_zdsession_talk_
embeddables_service

Essential

Used for load balancing.

Session

AI agents - Advanced (Ultimate)
Widget

lastReadMessageId_
<BOT_ID>

Functionality

Used to remember the last message the user saw to calculate the amount of unread messages and show a notification when there are unread messages

Forever (Local Storage)

AI agents - Advanced (Ultimate)
Widget

platformConversationId_
<BOT_ID>

Functionality

Used to recover the ongoing conversation upon page reload.

Forever (Local Storage)

AI agents - Advanced (Ultimate)
Widget

isSoundToggleOn

Functionality

Used to remember if the user has actively turned their sound on/off.

Forever (Local Storage)

Cookies you add

Because Zendesk Guide allows customers to customize their own help center, it is possible to embed or use third party products that may require the placement of their own Cookies. If you add additional vendors to your help center (such as for analytics), or if you embed videos (such as from YouTube or Vimeo), you may want to confirm with these third parties whether any additional cookies are being placed in connection with these custom uses.

Agent Cookies

Zendesk also uses Cookies in the products it provides directly to Zendesk Agents. Across the Zendesk products, these Cookies span multiple purposes, including for authentication, security, remembering preferences, and analytics.

Cookies subject to change

The content of this Policy is for your general information and use only. These Cookies are subject to change and we may update this policy from time to time with new information. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law of your region, we expressly exclude liability for inaccuracies or errors in this Policy. If you identify a discrepancy, please report it to us.

Updating this policy

We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on the Policy, which we update from time to time. Given we update this list periodically, there may be time periods during which additional Cookies are in use before we update the Policy to include them. You may click the "Follow" button to receive notice of changes. Your continued use of the Services constitutes your agreement to be bound by such changes to this Policy.