Connecting Zendesk as an external knowledge source

You can connect a second Zendesk account to your primary Zendesk account to make its content availablewherever external content is used.


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Summary: ◀▼
You can connect a second Zendesk account to sync and use its knowledge base content in your workflows. Specify the account URL, and optionally an API token, email, and locale to sync public or non-public articles. Manage viewer permissions, manually resync content, or remove connections as needed. Syncs update every 24 hours, with manual resync available for immediate updates.




You can connect a second Zendesk account to your primary Zendesk account to make its
content available wherever external content is used.
When you set up your Zendesk connection, you specify your Zendesk URL for the Zendesk
knowledge base that you want to connect and optionally specify an API token, email, and
locale. If you specify an API token with email, you can sync non-public content. If you
select a locale, you can restrict your sync to articles for that locale only.
If you don't specify an API token with email and locale, then each connection contains
the publically available content in the all locales for that subdomain. All published
articles that meet this criteria are synced to the connection. If you want to sync
content from another Zendesk subdomain, you'll need to add a new connection for that subdomain.
You must be a Knowledge admin to set up and manage external content connections.
This article contains the following topics:
Setting up a Zendesk connection
Adding or removing content from your Zendesk connection
Managing Zendesk content connected to your Zendesk account



Related articles:
About connecting external content to Zendesk
for use across knowledge experiences
Knowledge product limits for your help
center




Setting up a Zendesk connection

You can set up a Zendesk connection to connect and sync content from the knowledge
base of another Zendesk account. After you connect a Zendesk knowledge base, you can
configure workflows to use this external
content.

To set up a Zendesk connection
In Knowledge admin, click Manage articles
( ) in the sidebar.
Click External content > Connections.

Under the Available sources section, click Connect on the Zendesk
source card.

Click Continue.

Enter the URL for your Zendesk account, then click Continue.

(Optional) Enter the following information:

Email (optional): Enter the email address associated with
your Zendesk account. This information is combined with the API
token to access and sync your internal content.

API token (optional): Enter an API token if you want to sync
non-public articles to your Zendesk account. If you leave this field
blank, then only content visible to anonymous users will be synced.

Locales (optional): Select a locale for articles that you
want to sync. If you leave this field blank, then articles
associated with all locales will be synced.




Zendesk is added to your Connections page and your site begins
syncing.







Adding or removing content from your Zendesk connection

To add or remove content from a Zendesk connection, you can add or delete the content
from the connected Zendesk knowledge base, then either wait for an automatic sync,
or manually resync your site.
The new content item will be reflected in the Items number for the Zendesk
connection on your Connections page.
Note: Syncs (manual or
automatic) can take up to 24 hours to complete.





Managing Zendesk content connected to your Zendesk account

Once you've created a Zendesk connection, you can view information about the
connection, set viewer permissions for content, and manually resync or remove the
connection.
This section contains the following topics:
Viewing Zendesk connection details
Managing viewer permissions for Zendesk content
Manually resyncing Zendesk content
Removing a Zendesk connection




Viewing Zendesk connection details

You can use the information panel to view information about the Zendesk
connection, when it was created and by whom, and when it was last synced.

To view Zendesk connection details
In Knowledge admin, click Manage articles
( ) in the sidebar.
Click External content > Connections.

Click the options menu ( ) on the row for the connection you want to
manage, then select Manage.

View details about the connection:

Created: When the connection was created

Connected by: Name of the Knowledge admin who created the
connection

Items: Number of pages synced for that connection

Status: Sync status

Last synced: When the last sync occurred. Syncs are
automatically performed every 24 hours, though they can also be
triggered
manually










Managing viewer permissions for Zendesk content

You can set the viewer permissions for who can view connected Zendesk
content in your Zendesk workflows.

To manage viewer permissions for Zendesk content
In Knowledge admin, click Manage articles
( ) in the sidebar.
Click External content > Connections.

Click the options menu ( ) on the row for the connection you want to
manage, then select Manage.
Under Viewing permissions, select one of the following options to
determine which user segments can view content
from this space:

Only visible to selected user segments: Select up to 10
user segments from any of the following (an Enterprise plan is
required to select multiple user segments):

Signed-in users: Includes internal and external
users who create an account and sign in to your help
center.

Agents and admins: Includes team members only, so
that you can create content that is internal-only.
Note: Light agents are included in
this segment. For a list of light agent permissions,
see Understanding and
setting light agent
permissions.


Custom user segment: Allows you to restrict
viewing access to specific users based on tags,
organizations, or groups by applying user segments. See
Creating user
segments to restrict access.



Visible to everyone: Includes anyone who visits your help
center and does not require sign in.




Click Save.





Manually resyncing Zendesk content

When you connect Zendesk as an external content source, a sync process runs every
24 hours to update new or changed content within the top level pages and their
subpages that you connected.

To manually resync Zendesk content
On the Connections page, click the options menu ( ) for the connection you want to
sync.

Select Sync again. The Zendesk connection syncs immediately,
and the Last synced column is updated with the most recent sync
time.






Removing a Zendesk connection

You can remove the connection to the second Zendesk account if you no longer want
to sync its content. If you remove a connection, all content within that
connection will be removed.
When you remove a connection, the related content is no longer available wherever external content is used.

To remove a Zendesk account
On the Connections page, click the options menu ( ) for the connection you want to
remove.

Select Remove connection.
Review the message, then click Remove.
The connection is removed from the Connection list, and is no
longer available as an external content source.





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