Pull from Zendesk

Zendesk is a service-first CRM company that builds software designed to improve customer relationships by providing support, chat, and community services that span channels.

Use the Zendesk Users API to pull customer support histories to Amperity, and then associate them to your customer profiles and transaction histories.

This topic describes the steps that are required to pull customer support histories to Amperity from Zendesk:

  1. Get details

  2. Add courier with empty load operation

  3. Run courier manually

  4. Review feed and domain table

  5. Add to courier group

Get details

Zendesk requires the following configuration details:

  1. The email address the customer uses to access Zendesk.

  2. The customer’s Zendesk API token.

  3. The subdomain for the customer’s Zendesk account, e.g. “acme” (in acme.zendesk.com).

Add courier

A courier brings data from an external system to Amperity.

To add a courier

  1. From the Sources page, click Add Courier. The Add Source page opens.

  2. Find, and then click the icon for Zendesk. The Add Courier page opens.

    This automatically selects zendesk-api-token as the Credential Type.

  3. Enter the name of the courier. For example: “Zendesk”.

  4. From the Credential field, select an existing credential or select Create a new credential.

    To add a credential, enter the name of the credential, a description, the email address used to access Zendesk, and the API token for Zendesk. Click Save.

  5. Under Settings enter the the subdomain for the Zendesk account. For example: “acme” is the subdomain in “acme.zendesk.com”.

  6. Under Select Data, enable Users.

  7. Click Create.

Run courier manually

Run the courier again. This time, because the load operations are present and the feeds are configured, the courier will pull data from Zendesk.

To run the courier manually

  1. From the Sources tab, open the    menu for the courier with updated load operations that is configured for Zendesk, and then select Run. The Run Courier dialog box opens.

  2. Select the load option, either for a specific time period or all available data. Actual data will be loaded to a domain table because the feed is configured.

  3. Click Run.

    This time the notification will return a message similar to:

    Completed in 5 minutes 12 seconds
    

Review feed and domain table

After running the Zendesk courier a feed is created automatically with a pre-defined list of fields. You may apply semantic tags to these fields and you may make the domain table available to Stitch, depending on your use cases. A domain table named Zendesk:Users will be added.

The feed and domain table will match the fields defined in the Zendesk Users API :

  • active

  • alias

  • chat_only

  • created_at

  • custom_role_id

  • default_group_id

  • details

  • email (assigned the email semantic tag)

  • external_id

  • iana_time_zone

  • id (assigned the pk semantic tag)

  • last_login_at

  • locale

  • locale_id

  • moderator

  • name (assigned the full-name semantic tag)

  • notes

  • only_private_comments

  • organization_id

  • phone (assigned the phone semantic tag)

  • photo

  • remote_photo_url

  • report_csv

  • restricted_agent

  • role

  • role_type

  • shared

  • shared_agent

  • shared_phone_number

  • signature

  • suspended

  • tags

  • ticket_restriction

  • time_zone

  • two_factor_auth_enabled

  • updated_at

  • url

  • user_fields

  • verified

Add to courier group

A courier group is a list of one (or more) couriers that are run as a group, either ad hoc or as part of an automated schedule. A courier group can be configured to act as a constraint on downstream workflows.

To add the courier to a courier group

  1. From the Sources tab, click Add Courier Group. This opens the Create Courier Group dialog box.

  2. Enter the name of the courier. For example: “Zendesk”.

  3. Add a cron string to the Schedule field to define a schedule for the orchestration group.

    A schedule defines the frequency at which a courier group runs. All couriers in the same courier group run as a unit and all tasks must complete before a downstream process can be started. The schedule is defined using cron.

    Cron syntax specifies the fixed time, date, or interval at which cron will run. Each line represents a job, and is defined like this:

    ┌───────── minute (0 - 59)
    │ ┌─────────── hour (0 - 23)
    │ │ ┌───────────── day of the month (1 - 31)
    │ │ │ ┌────────────── month (1 - 12)
    │ │ │ │ ┌─────────────── day of the week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday)
    │ │ │ │ │
    │ │ │ │ │
    │ │ │ │ │
    * * * * * command to execute
    

    For example, 30 8 * * * represents “run at 8:30 AM every day” and 30 8 * * 0 represents “run at 8:30 AM every Sunday”. Amperity validates your cron syntax and shows you the results. You may also use crontab guru to validate cron syntax.

  4. Set Status to Enabled.

  5. Specify a time zone.

    A courier group schedule is associated with a time zone. The time zone determines the point at which a courier group’s scheduled start time begins. A time zone should be aligned with the time zone of system from which the data is being pulled.

    Note

    The time zone that is chosen for an courier group schedule should consider every downstream business processes that requires the data and also the time zone(s) in which the consumers of that data will operate.

  6. Add at least one courier to the courier group. Select the name of the courier from the Courier drop-down. Click + Add Courier to add more couriers.

  7. Click Add a courier group constraint, and then select a courier group from the drop-down list.

    A wait time is a constraint placed on a courier group that defines an extended time window for data to be made available at the source location.

    A courier group typically runs on an automated schedule that expects customer data to be available at the source location within a defined time window. However, in some cases, the customer data may be delayed and isn’t made available within that time window.

  8. For each courier group constraint, apply any offsets.

    An offset is a constraint placed on a courier group that defines a range of time that is older than the scheduled time, within which a courier group will accept customer data as valid for the current job. Offset times are in UTC.

    A courier group offset is typically set to be 24 hours. For example, it’s possible for customer data to be generated with a correct file name and datestamp appended to it, but for that datestamp to represent the previous day because of the customer’s own workflow. An offset ensures that the data at the source location is recognized by the courier as the correct data source.

    Warning

    An offset affects couriers in a courier group whether or not they run on a schedule. Manually run courier groups will not take their schedule into consideration when determining the date range; only the provided input day(s) to load data from are used as inputs.

  9. Click Save.