Ingest Zendesk tickets, comments, and Help Center articles into CortexDB.

Zendesk Connector

Captures support ticket activity as CortexDB experiences. Webhooks for real-time; incremental export API as a fallback.

Info

Two ways to run this connector:

  • Run it yourself (Free + paid) — pip install 'cortexdb-connectors[zendesk]' then cortexdb-sync sync zendesk. The connector reads your token from ~/.cortexdb/state.json (written by cortexdb init) or from env vars.
  • Managed sync (Starter and up) — CortexDB runs the connector as a worker on its infrastructure. Configure it once from your dashboard; CortexDB handles webhook registration, retries, backfill, and idempotency.

1. Prepare credentials in Zendesk

Admin Center → Apps and integrations → APIs → Zendesk API → Token access → Add API token. Note your Zendesk subdomain (the acme in acme.zendesk.com).

2. Configure in your CortexDB dashboard

  1. Sign in at cortexdb.ai/login.
  2. Settings → Connectors → Add Connector → Zendesk.
  3. Paste the subdomain, token-owner email (Zendesk wants the form email@domain/token), and API token.
  4. Pick which sources to enable: tickets, Help Center articles, or both.
  5. Set the scope template. Default: org:<your-org>/source:zendesk.
  6. Pick sync mode: Real-time (webhook) or Polling.
  7. Click Start sync.

What gets written

EventModalityNotes
Ticket created/updateddocumentSubject + description; status/priority as labels
Public commentconversationrole=user for requester, assistant for agent
Internal noteconversationrole=assistant; labels include ["internal"]
Help Center articledocumentTitle + body

idempotency_key shape: zd:<ticket_id>:<event_id>.

Run it yourself

If you'd rather host the connector yourself instead of using CortexDB's managed worker, every connector ships in the cortexdb-connectors PyPI package:

pip install 'cortexdb-connectors[zendesk]'

# Step 1: get a CortexDB token + actor (one-time, free tier)
pip install cortexdb-cli
cortexdb init

# Step 2: supply the connector's third-party credentials
export ZENDESK_SUBDOMAIN=...                # required
export ZENDESK_EMAIL=...                # required
export ZENDESK_TOKEN=...                # required

# Step 3: one-shot sync, or `watch` for a poll loop
cortexdb-sync sync zendesk
cortexdb-sync watch zendesk --interval 60

cortexdb-sync reads your CortexDB token + actor from ~/.cortexdb/state.json automatically. Cursor state is persisted in ~/.cortexdb/connectors-state.json, so re-running picks up where the last cycle left off.

See also