Setting up your X (formerly Twitter) channel

All Zendesk Suite and Zendesk Support customers can add at least one X (formerly Twitter) account so that public messages, such as public mentions, public replies to your tweets, and public likes to tweets, become tickets. Your agents will be able to see and respond to these tickets from the agent interface, just like any other ticket.


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Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise










Location: Admin Center > Channels > Messaging and social > X
Corp accounts


All Zendesk Suite and Zendesk Support customers can add at least one X (formerly Twitter) account
so that public messages, such as public mentions, public replies to your tweets, and
public likes to tweets, become tickets. Your agents will be able to see and respond
to these tickets from the agent interface, just like any other ticket.
Additionally, Zendesk Suite customers can add multiple accounts and they can receive public
messages and private messages from those accounts.









Zendesk Support plans
One X handle with public messages only. Private messages are not supported.


Zendesk Suite plans
Up to 5 X handles with public and private messages.





You must be an administrator to add an X (formerly Twitter) channel.

This article describes adding an X (formerly Twitter) channel for public
messaging with your customers. To set up a channel for
private messaging with your customers, see Adding X (formerly Twitter) DM
channels.
This article includes these sections:

How the X (formerly Twitter) channels works
Adding X (formerly Twitter)
accounts to Support
Editing X (formerly
Twitter) account settings
Removing X (formerly Twitter) accounts
Appending ticket links to
outgoing tweets
Managing X (formerly
Twitter) tickets with business rules
Understanding why your X
(formerly Twitter) account might be deauthorized



How the X (formerly Twitter) channels works

Zendesk monitors X (formerly Twitter) accounts and converts tweets to
tickets as needed. All tweet activity between agents and X (formerly
Twitter) users is added as ticket comments. You can do the
following:


Convert a tweet into a ticket and respond to the user
with a tweet, or move the conversation to email
Bulk convert multiple tweets into tickets in one
step
Convert tweets to tickets outside of Zendesk by liking a
tweet
Automatically capture public mentions and direct
messages as tickets
Append ticket links to outgoing tweets
Select which of your accounts agents are allowed to use
when sending outgoing tweets
Monitor and take action on activity using business
rules


Only administrators have access to the incoming tweets. However, once
tweets have been converted to tickets, all agents have access to the
tickets, unless you have restricted agent access to certain types of
tickets.
Once a tweet becomes a ticket, it behaves just like any other ticket in
Zendesk, except that you have the option of replying back to the
user with a public tweet or moving the conversation to email.
You can control if and how incoming tweets become tickets. The approach
you take might be based on your overall traffic or the number of
agents you have available. Here are several scenarios for managing
incoming tweets:



Likes. Convert tweets outside of Zendesk by
liking them in your X client. This approach allows
you to manually choose tweets to convert before they
ever reach Zendesk.

Mentions and direct messages. Automatically
create tickets from public tweets that contain your
X handle or from direct messages. Sometimes, tickets
that are not support requests and that don't need
follow-up are created. You can manage these out of
your ticket queue by manually solving and closing or
deleting them. Group direct messages are not
supported and do not create tickets.

Triggers. Use one or more triggers to monitor new
support requests that originate from your X channel.
You can use the trigger condition Ticket Channel,
which has the following three sources: X Corp, X
Corp DM (direct message), and X Corp Like. The
advantage to this approach is that you have much
more control over the creation and management of
X-based tickets. See Managing X (formerly Twitter) tickets with
business rules.


Note the following limits:

It can take up to 15 minutes for a ticket to be created from a
tweet.
Each X ticket has a limit of 5,000 comments. After reaching the
limit, Zendesk stops importing new tweets as comments on the
ticket.




Adding X (formerly Twitter) accounts

You can add an X (formerly Twitter) account to your Zendesk account so
that tweets become tickets, and your agents can see and respond to
these tickets, just like any other ticket.
The number of handles and the type of messaging supported by your
account depends on your plan type.









Zendesk Support plans
One X handle with public messages only.
Private messages are not supported.


Zendesk Suite plans
Up to 5 X handles with public and
private messages.





To add an X (formerly Twitter) account


In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Messaging and social > X Corp
accounts.
Select the X Corp accounts tab.
Click Add your first X Corp account.
You'll be prompted to log in to X Corp and then
authorize Zendesk to use your account. Enter your
login information and then click Authorize
App.


You'll want to edit the account's settings to control how tweets to this
account are handled (see Editing X
(formerly Twitter) account settings).



Editing X (formerly Twitter) account settings

After you've added an X (formerly Twitter) account, you can edit the
account's settings to control how tweets to this account are
handled.
You can choose to automatically convert public mentions and direct
messages into tickets. If you enable these, the option to manually
convert tweets to tickets will no longer be available for that
account.
By default any responses to a tweet will be from the account the tweet
was directed to. You can select a different account from the
Reply as drop-down list under the ticket reply box.
If you want to automatically respond from one account, you can
disable Allow replies via this account when editing your
other X accounts.
To edit settings for an X (formerly Twitter) account


In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Messaging and social > X Corp
accounts.
Select the X Corp accounts tab.
Click Edit beside the account you want to
edit.
Update settings as needed. The settings are described
in the following table.

Click Update X Corp account.











Setting
Description





Allow replies via this account


This setting allows agents to use this account
when replying to an X ticket.
Agents can select the account below the reply
box on an X ticket:

Replies to tickets from X retain the original
inbound format.
For example, if the ticket was created from a
public message, then the agent's reply from within
Zendesk will also be a reply to that public
message. If the ticket was created from a tweet
mentioning your X handle (for example @Zendesk),
then the agent's reply from within Zendesk will be
a reply tweet, threaded to the sender's original
mention.




Make this the default account



Note: This setting appears when Allow replies
via this account is set to yes.
Use this account by default to reply to tickets
that were created from tweets to your other X
accounts that don’t allow replies.
When yes, the Reply as drop-down
list shows the name of this account by default.
However, agents can still choose a different
reply-enabled account from the drop-down list, if
desired and available.
You can only have one default account at a
time. Your old default account becomes a
non-default account when set to no.
Bulk updating tickets
Setting a default X account can affect bulk
ticket updates in a few ways.
When a customer replies to an X account that
allows replies:

If the X account is the default account, agent
replies are sent from that account.
If a different, separate X account is the
default account, agent replies are sent from the
default account instead of the account that the
customer initially replied to.

When a customer replies to an X account that
doesn't allow replies:

If there is a default X account, agent replies
are sent from the default account.
If there is no default X account, an error
appears because the account doesn't allow
replies.

For information about how to bulk update
tickets, see Bulk updating
tickets.




Capture public mentions as tickets


This automatically converts any public tweet
containing your X handle (for example, @mondocam)
to a ticket.




Capture incoming direct messages as tickets


This automatically converts incoming direct
messages into tickets so that your customers can
contact you privately rather than publicly.
Depending on your X account settings, you can
either receive direct messages from anyone
or only from users you follow. You can
reply to anyone who sends you a direct
message.
If you add an X (formerly
Twitter) DM channel, disable this setting.
Otherwise duplicate tickets are created when a
private message is received.




Track Likes


This automatically converts a tweet that you
like to a ticket. For example, if you're managing
your X stream using X.com, you have the option of
manually liking the tweet by clicking the heart
icon.









Removing X (formerly Twitter) accounts

You can remove an X (formerly Twitter) account by deactivating it or
unlinking it. If you deactivate an account, it is inactive in
Zendesk but you can reactivate it at any time. If you unlink an
account, it is removed from Zendesk.
To deactivate an X (formerly Twitter) account


In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Messaging and social > X Corp
accounts.
Select the X Corp accounts tab.
Click Deactivate beside the account you want to
deactivate.
The account is deactivated. It will not
turn tweets into tickets and you cannot reply
using it. You can reactivate account at any
time.



To unlink an X (formerly Twitter) account


In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Messaging and social > X Corp
accounts.
Select the X Corp accounts tab.
Click Unlink beside the account you want to
remove from your X (formerly Twitter) channel.
Click OK to confirm. The account is
unlinked.






Appending ticket links to outgoing tweets


Note: You must have an account with an activated help center
to use this feature and you must have enabled Twitter social
SSO for end users.
Another option for your outgoing tweets is to append a shortened URL to
the ticket you created from the tweet. This allows the X (formerly
Twitter) user to access the help center ticket page via their X
(formerly Twitter) account. In other words, remote authentication is
used to log in through X (formerly Twitter) to Zendesk (end users
must sign in to Zendesk to see the ticket page).
Once an X user has access to the ticket page, they can add a longer
comment than the 280 character limit of a tweet. They can also
update their user profile (adding their email address for
example).
You have the option of allowing the agent to decide if a shortened or the
original URL is used in the response. And, you can choose one of
several URL shortening services to use.
To append ticket links to outgoing tweets


In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Messaging and social > X Corp
accounts.
Select the General settings tab. You must have
activated help
center to see this tab.

Click Yes next to Append ticket links to
outgoing tweets? to enable the ticket
links. You must have enabled Twitter
social SSO for end users to see this
setting.

If you want agents to decide when to use shortened URLs,
deselect the Always include shortened ticket
URL option. It is selected by default.
Click Save tab.





Managing X (formerly Twitter) tickets with business rules

A number of conditions are available to manage your X (formerly Twitter)
tickets using business rules.
As with other channels, you can detect a ticket's source using the Ticket
Channel condition in automations, reports, triggers, and views.
There are three source types you can use in the Ticket Channel
condition: X Corp, X Corp DM (direct message), and X Corp Like.
If, for example, you wanted to create separate views of each of the
source types, you simply choose the Ticket Channel condition and
then select the type.

In addition to the channel source types, three other X conditions are
available in triggers:


Requester's number of X Corp followers...
Requester's number of tweets...
Requester is verified by X Corp

The first two conditions help you to determine how active and
potentially influential a user is, which may influence how you
manage their tweets. For example, you might want to set X tickets
from more highly visible users to Urgent so that you respond as
quickly as possible. Here's an example of what a trigger like that
might look like:

The Requester is verified by X Corp condition is a special type of
X account that has had its identity verified. Knowing that an
account has been verified may be important to you in determining how
to handle tickets from that account.



Understanding why your X (formerly Twitter) account might be deauthorized

Zendesk constantly monitors your X (formerly Twitter) accounts for new
public mentions and direct messages. If Zendesk cannot connect with
your account, it will send an email notification to all admins on
your Zendesk account.
Common reasons your X (formerly Twitter) account might become
deauthorized include:


The password on your account has changed.
The account no longer permits Zendesk to view its
timeline and tweet on its behalf. This can happen if
Zendesk has been removed from the list of allowed
apps in your X account.
Zendesk receives a consistent response from X Corp
indicating that Zendesk is not authorized to access
your X account’s content. This should only happen
due to an error in the X Corp platform.
Zendesk removes all X handles that have had no traffic
in the last 20 days. "Traffic" is defined as either
an X comment or post on a public channel that
results in a ticket, or a direct message (DM) sent
using Zendesk’s legacy DM system through the
channels integration.


If you receive notification that an X account has become deauthorized,
you need to reauthorize the affected account in Zendesk.

To reauthorize your X (formerly Twitter) account
In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Messaging and social > X Corp
accounts.