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About Zendesk

Zendesk is a customer-service platform for support ticketing and self-service knowledge. Serval connects to a single Zendesk instance and, through one connection, covers both Zendesk Support (tickets, comments, users, organizations, custom statuses) and Zendesk Guide (Help Center categories, sections, and articles). Zendesk is registered in Serval as both a ticket source and a knowledge source. Authentication: OAuth 2.0 client credentials - you create an OAuth client in Zendesk Admin Center and give Serval its Client ID and Client Secret. Serval requests tokens with the read write scopes; within those, everything Serval can do is bounded by the role of the Zendesk user who created the OAuth client.
Zendesk is retiring API tokens as an authentication method: new Zendesk accounts cannot create tokens after July 28, 2026, no one can create new tokens after October 27, 2026, and all API tokens stop working on April 30, 2027. New Serval connections therefore use OAuth. If you connected Zendesk with an email + API token, switch the connection to OAuth before April 30, 2027 - see Migrating an API-token connection to OAuth.
Data sync: Workflow API calls run on demand. Ticket sync is a two-way background sync - Serval checks connected channels for new and updated tickets every 30 seconds and pushes Serval-side changes (new tickets, comments, status, priority, and field updates, including custom statuses) back to Zendesk. Zendesk Guide knowledge sync discovers all Help Center categories, sections, and articles, then ingests article content per item - newly discovered items start out excluded from sync, so you opt in exactly the content you want indexed.

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What the Zendesk integration enables

Anything defined in the Zendesk API can be accessed through Serval.

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Get your credentials

You need an OAuth client created in your Zendesk instance. You must be a Zendesk administrator to create one. See Zendesk’s OAuth guide for full details.
Zendesk attributes every API action performed with a client-credentials token to the user who created the OAuth client - ticket comments, audit log entries, everything. Create the client while signed in as a dedicated service account (e.g. “Serval Integration”) rather than a personal admin account, so attribution stays stable when people leave and actions are clearly labeled in your audit trail. Serval’s access mirrors that user’s Zendesk role, so it should be an admin or an agent whose permissions cover reading and updating tickets and reading the Help Center.
1

Open the OAuth clients page

In Zendesk Admin Center, click Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select APIs → OAuth clients (labeled “Zendesk API OAuth clients” in some accounts).
2

Create the client

Click Add OAuth client and give it a recognizable name, e.g. “Serval Integration”. A confidential client is required - client credentials is a server-to-server flow, and no redirect URL is needed.
3

Save and copy the credentials

Click Save to generate the client. Copy the Unique Identifier (the Client ID) and the Secret immediately - Zendesk shows the full secret only once.
Zendesk displays the client secret only once, at creation time. Copy it before closing the window - Serval never displays it again either (it is shown obfuscated, with only the last 4 characters visible).

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Connect in Serval

Open the Zendesk integration in Serval and fill in the connect form.
1

Instance Name (optional)

A friendly name for this Zendesk integration instance (e.g., “Production Zendesk”); if empty, we will use the domain. When set, the connection displays as “Name (domain)”.
2

Domain

Your Zendesk subdomain or domain - company and company.zendesk.com both work, and a pasted Zendesk URL is normalized automatically. Host-mapped or vanity domains will not authenticate; the connection always targets the canonical .zendesk.com address.
3

Client ID

The Unique Identifier of the OAuth client you created in Zendesk Admin Center. This is a password field.
4

Client Secret

The Secret of that OAuth client. This is a password field.
5

Submit

Save the connection. If saving fails, the error begins with “Failed to install integration” (first-time connect) or “Failed to update integration” (editing an existing connection), followed by details when available.
When you edit an existing connection, the form opens pre-filled with your saved settings; secrets appear masked with only the last 4 characters visible. Masked values are ignored when you save, so stored secrets are preserved unless you paste in a new one - and if you clear the Domain or Instance Name, the stored value is kept too.

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Migrating an API-token connection to OAuth

Connections created before OAuth support use an email address + API token. Those keep working for now, but Zendesk disables all API tokens on April 30, 2027, so every token-based connection must be switched to OAuth before then. The migration is being rolled out to teams with existing Zendesk connections - if you don’t see the authentication-method selector yet, contact support@serval.com.
1

Create an OAuth client in Zendesk

Follow Get your credentials above - remember to create the client as a dedicated service account.
2

Switch the existing connection

Edit your existing Zendesk connection in Serval (don’t create a new one - your ticket sync, knowledge sync, and workflows all stay attached to the existing connection). Set Authentication method to OAuth 2.0, paste the Client ID and Client Secret, and save.
3

Verify

Re-run the health checks. All four should pass exactly as before.
4

Roll back if something breaks

Your API token stays stored (until Zendesk’s final cutoff): switching Authentication method back to API token (legacy) and saving reverts the connection without re-entering the token. Fix the OAuth client, then switch forward again.
After switching to OAuth, ticket comments and audit entries in Zendesk are attributed to the OAuth client’s creator instead of the email/token user - another reason to create the client from a dedicated service account.

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Verifying the connection

Serval runs four health checks against your Zendesk connection. Test Zendesk Connection - confirms the domain and credentials work by fetching the connected user’s profile.
  • Success: “Successfully authenticated with Zendesk as [name]”
  • Failure: “Unable to authenticate with Zendesk. Please verify your credentials (OAuth client ID and secret, or email and API token) are correct.”
List Zendesk Tickets - confirms the account can list tickets (a small sample of ticket fields is recorded for diagnostics).
  • Success: “Successfully listed tickets from Zendesk (sample size: [number])”
  • Failure: “Unable to list tickets from Zendesk. Please verify your API credentials have permission to read tickets. This is required for the integration to function.”
List Zendesk Organizations - confirms the account can list organizations.
  • Success: “Successfully listed organizations from Zendesk (sample size: [number])”
  • Failure: “Unable to list organizations from Zendesk. Please verify your API credentials have permission to read organizations.”
List Zendesk Knowledge Articles - confirms the account can read Zendesk Guide knowledge base articles.
  • Success: “Successfully listed knowledge articles from Zendesk Guide (sample size: [number])”
  • Failure: “Unable to list knowledge articles from Zendesk Guide. Please verify your API credentials have permission to read the knowledge base, or that Zendesk Guide is enabled for your account.”
If the first three checks pass but List Zendesk Knowledge Articles fails, the most likely cause is that Zendesk Guide is not enabled for your account, or the connecting user cannot read the Help Center. Ticket features continue to work - only knowledge sync is affected.

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Gotchas and troubleshooting

Zendesk disables all API tokens on April 30, 2027 (and blocks creating new ones from October 27, 2026). Token-based Serval connections stop working at that point. Switch your existing connection to OAuth using the migration steps above - editing the existing connection keeps your ticket sync, knowledge sync, and workflows intact, while creating a new connection would not.
With client-credentials OAuth, Zendesk attributes every API action to the user who created the OAuth client. Create the client from a dedicated service account so ticket comments and audit entries are clearly labeled and survive personnel changes. Serval’s permissions mirror that account’s Zendesk role.
The connect-form fields have minimal format checks (only the Domain is validated), so the form can save with missing or malformed credentials. If something is wrong, the health checks will tell you - start with Test Zendesk Connection, which validates the domain and credentials together.
Serval only sends credentials to *.zendesk.com addresses, and all traffic is routed to the subdomain derived from your configured Domain. Host-mapped or vanity Help Center domains will not authenticate - enter your canonical subdomain (company or company.zendesk.com).
Serval requests the read write OAuth scopes; within those, everything it can read or write is bounded by the Zendesk role of the OAuth client’s creator (or, for legacy connections, the agent or admin whose email and token you supplied). Writing tickets back to Zendesk (creates, updates, custom statuses, ticket fields) and syncing Guide knowledge each require the corresponding Zendesk permissions on that account.
Knowledge sync and the knowledge-articles health check both read the Help Center. If Guide is not enabled for your account (or the connecting user cannot read it), the ticket checks pass while the knowledge check fails - its failure message calls this out explicitly.
When Serval first discovers your Help Center content, every category, section, and article is created with sync turned off. Nothing is indexed until you explicitly include the items you want - so an empty knowledge base right after connecting is expected, not a failure.
Permission enforcement checks a requester’s segment membership through Zendesk’s user-segments API. When the connecting account is a non-admin agent, Zendesk only reports the segments that agent shares with the requester, so restricted articles can be withheld from users who are actually entitled to them (never the reverse). Connect with an admin account for full-fidelity enforcement.
Zendesk’s account-level “Require sign in” Help Center setting is not exposed through the articles API, so articles without a user segment are treated as unrestricted in Serval even when your whole Help Center requires sign-in. Restrict sensitive articles with user segments if you need Serval to enforce their visibility.
The edit form opens pre-filled, and clearing a field does not wipe anything: a cleared Domain keeps the existing domain, a cleared Instance Name keeps the existing display name, and masked secrets are ignored on save so stored credentials are preserved. To rotate a secret, paste the new value over the masked one and save. On a legacy connection, changing the Email Address alone also works - Serval recombines the new email with the stored API token.
Copy the OAuth client secret (or, for legacy connections, the API token) when you create it in Zendesk Admin Center. Serval never displays it again either - reads show it obfuscated, with only the last 4 characters visible. If a secret is lost, generate a new one in Zendesk and paste it into the connection form in Serval.
When Zendesk rate-limits a request, Serval retries automatically - waiting the time Zendesk specifies, or backing off progressively when no wait time is given. Very high-volume workflows can still exhaust your instance’s limit; workflows that fetch large amounts of data should use cursor pagination to minimize the number of calls.
The typed API action covers the 424 Zendesk Support endpoints from Zendesk’s official specification; Zendesk Guide (Help Center) endpoints are not part of that typed list. Guide content is still fully reachable - the built-in health check and the knowledge sync use it directly, and custom workflow calls to Guide work through the same authenticated connection, just without typed assistance.
Need help? Contact support@serval.com for assistance with your Zendesk integration.