Using Claude actions in action flows

All Claude actions allow you to select from the following models:


What's my plan?







All Suites

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus










Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise







Summary: ◀▼
You can connect action flows to Claude models to automate tasks like sending prompts, summarizing text, analyzing sentiment, and extracting keywords. Choose from different Claude models based on task complexity and speed needs. Use a dedicated service account for secure API key management. These actions help improve collaboration and streamline workflows by integrating external AI capabilities into your support processes.




By connecting the action builder to external systems, such as Claude, admins
can integrate Zendesk with external systems in automated workflows, improving
collaboration and maintaining a seamless experience across multiple platforms.
Note: The steps associated with external systems in action flows are
referred to collectively as external actions.

All Claude actions allow you to select from the following models:


Claude Opus 4.6: Most capable model for complex reasoning
tasks


Claude Sonnet 4.6: Balanced performance and speed for most use
cases


Claude Haiku 4.5: Fastest model for simple tasks and high-volume
processing


Choose the model that best fits your use case based on the complexity of the
task and required response time.
This article contains the following topics:
Connecting Claude to action builder
Using Claude actions in action flows




Connecting Claude to action builder

Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the
action builder to the external system.
When connecting to external systems for use in action flows, the following best practices are recommended:
All external actions performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the
external system. Therefore, it's a best practice to use a dedicated service
account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each external
system.
All integrations request access to necessary scopes. However, it's important that you review and validate the scopes before authorizing the connection to the external system.
When managing credentials for API key-based tools, such as OpenAI, it's best to store keys in a secure vault or credential manager.


To create a new API key from the Anthropic Console

Open the Claude Console.
Navigate to the API Keys section.
Create a new API key with the appropriate permissions.
Save the API key or keep the window open so you can copy and paste it into
Zendesk. You'll need it when connecting Claude to action builder.


Important: Keep your API key secure and do not share
it. The API key grants access to your Anthropic account and will be used for all
Claude actions in your action flows. For detailed information about creating API
keys and getting started with the Anthropic API, see the Anthropic documentation.

To connect action builder to Claude
In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Actions > Action
flows.

Create or edit an action flow.
Open the step sidebar.
Under External actions, click Claude.
Click Connect.
Follow the prompts to enter your Anthropic API key and complete the
connection.
Note: All external actions performed by
an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the external
system. Therefore, it is a best practice to use a dedicated service
account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each
external system.



After you've connected to the system, you'll see an indicator that it's connected and
details about the instance you're connected to, as well as the actions available for
Claude.



Using Claude actions in action flows

Claude action steps can be used to look up forms and search for survey responses.
The following Claude actions are available:
Send prompt
Summarize text
Analyze sentiment
Extract keywords




Sending a prompt

Use the Send prompt action to send a custom prompt to a Claude model and
receive a response.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Model,
Prompt



Output
Response content from Claude








Summarizing text

Use the Summarize text action to generate a summary of provided text, such
as customer support conversations.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Model,
Text



Output
Original text, summary, and analysis explanation








Analyzing sentiment

Use the Analyze sentiment action to evaluate the sentiment of a given
text, helpful for understanding customer emotions.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Model,
Text



Output
Original text, sentiment classification (positive,
neutral, or negative), and analysis explanation








Extracting keywords

Use the Extract keywords action to identify and extract meaningful
keywords from text content.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Model,
Text



Output
Original text, array of extracted keywords, and analysis
explanation








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