Guides and resources

Resources to get the most of out of your Help Center

About Zendesk Guide

Creating a Help Center for one of your brands
This feature has the following plan restrictions:
- Support Enterprise and Guide Lite or Professional: Five brands, one Help Center
- Support Enterprise and Guide Enterprise: Five brands, five Help Centers
- Support Enterprise with Multibrand add-on: 300 brands, 300 Help Centers
If you have added multiple brands, you can create one or more Help Centers, depending on your Support and Guide plans. A brand’s Help Center is completely separate from any other brand’s Help Center, if you have multiple. End users who visit the Help Center for a specific brand see tickets for only that brand.

If you’re using ticket forms, all ticket forms will be available in all of your Help Centers, if you have multiple.

Adding a Help Center for a brand

You can create one or more Help Centers for multibrand, depending on your plan types:
- Support Enterprise and Guide Lite or Professional: Five brands, one Help Center
- Support Enterprise and Guide Enterprise: Five brands, five Help Centers
- Support Enterprise with Multibrand add-on and any Guide plan: 300 brands, 300 Help Centers
To add a Help Center for a brand
1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Brands.
2. If you haven’t already done so, click Add brand to add your brand (see Adding multiple brands).
3. On the Brands management page, click the menu icon beside the brand you want to set up a Help Center for, then select Edit.
4. Under Help Center, click Create.
5. Click Create yours today.
6. Select a theme or click Skip for now.
  
  When finished, you’ll see confirmation that your new Help Center has been created.
To access a branded Help Center, see Viewing a Help Center for one of your brands.

Understanding user authentication with multiple Help Centers

When you have multiple Help Centers to support multiple brands, you cannot restrict users to a specific Help Center. All of your Help Centers are accessible to all of your end-users. If you are using remote authentication or SSO, each Help Center will redirect users to the same single sign-in protocol and database. This is because users belong to the account, not to a specific brand.

When users receive a welcome email, password reset email, or identity verification email, it will include a list of all of your Help Centers. This ensures that users understand that any changes to their account affect their access to these multiple Help Centers.
About the Zendesk Guide plan types
You must have Zendesk Support to have Zendesk Guide. The Zendesk Guide plans are available on any Zendesk Support plan.

Current Guide plans

The Zendesk Guide plans are:
- Guide Lite, a simple self-service solution, included at no extra cost with all Zendesk Support plans.
- Guide Professional, advanced knowledge features and customization options, available as a paid plan with any Zendesk Support plan.
- Guide Enterprise, strategic self-service experience, with advanced knowledge management and collaboration, customization options, and artificial intelligence features, available as a paid plan with any Zendesk Support plan.
You can view the features available by plan type on the Guide plan comparison page. The Guide documentation includes the plan availability for each feature.

About the Guide Legacy plan

Zendesk Support customers who were subscribed to the Team, Professional, or Enterprise plan (or the equivalent legacy Support plan) prior to May 2, 2017 are on the Guide Legacy plan, unless they have manually moved to another Guide plan.

Guide Legacy includes all existing Help Center functionality prior to the Guide release on May 2, 2017, plus any Guide Professional features released since that date. Some of those features include:
- Article History view
- Knowledge Capture app
- SEO XML sitemap
- Answer Bot compatibility, as an add-on feature
Guide Legacy customers remain on the Legacy plan, regardless of any changes to their Zendesk Support plan. Guide Legacy customers must upgrade to Guide Enterprise, to receive Guide Enterprise functionality.

Viewing your plan type

Only account owners can view their plan subscription information. If you do not have permission to view the plan subscription, ask your account owner for the plan name.

To view your plan name and features by plan type
- Click the Admin icon (), then select Settings > Subscription to see a summary of your current plan.

Launching your Help Center

Activating your Help Center
When you’re ready, you can activate your Help Center and make it live for end users. You must be a Zendesk Support administrator to enable Help Center. Guide Managers who are not Support administrators cannot enable Help Center.

Check out Phil Hansen’s Fine Tuning: Best practices for ticket deflection for tips on how to best promote self-service during your Help Center launch.

To activate Help Center
1. In Guide, click the Settings () icon in the sidebar.
2. In Guide settings, click the Activate button.
3. Click Activate again to confirm that you want to activate your Help Center.
4. Click Enable spam filter (see Using the spam filter to prevent Help Center spam).
5. Read the agreement, then click Enable spam filter again to agree to the terms.
Your Help Center is activated and is now visible to end users. If you need to disable your Help Center, see Disabling your Help Center.

If you are using the community, make sure that is also activated (see Getting started with Gather).

Be sure to check out our Help Center guide for end users and also our complete list of Guide resources.

Developer resources

Allowing Zendesk to send email on behalf of your email domain

You can set up your custom email domain to verify that Zendesk can send email on behalf of your email server.

For example, if you receive email from your customers at help@mycompany.com, and you’ve set up an automatic redirect to forward all email received there to Support, you can authorize Zendesk to send out notifications as if it originated from your own email address (for example: help@mycompany.com).

Setting up records for your domain can be confusing because it’s something most of us rarely do. Consult your system administrator, if you have one, before proceeding.

You don’t have to configure your email domain this way, but it’s recommended if you use your own custom email domain and have set up forwarding to an external email address. If you use a non-custom domain, such as addresses ending in @gmail.com or @yahoo.com, you can’t use this feature, as you won’t have access to the account DNS settings.

The advantages of this configuration

When Zendesk sends an email message using your email address (which is what happens if you’ve set up a support address with forwarding) the message identifies the sender as zendesk.com to avoid getting rejected. However, if you allow Zendesk to send email on behalf of your email domain, Zendesk stops sending messages from zendesk.com, and sends them from your domain, preserving your branding.

If you don’t complete the tasks described in this article, your customers might see something like this:

The following warning will also appear in the agent interface next to your external support addresses:

Setting up records for your domain

You will need to set up an SPF record and several CNAME records. Make sure you do both.

Setting up an SPF record

If this is the first time doing this task, keep in mind that you should also set up your CNAME records when you’re done.

The process of setting up an SPF record is different for different domain registrars. For example, here are the instructions for GoDaddy, Namecheap, 1&1, Network Solutions, and Google Domains.

Don’t forget to set up your CNAME records when you’re done.

To create or edit an SPF record to reference Zendesk

Edit your domain’s DNS settings to add a TXT record. The steps vary depending on your domain registrar. A TXT record is required for your SPF record to be validated.

Zendesk recommends using the following SPF record:

v=spf1 include:mail.zendesk.com ?all

While we recommend using ?all because it’s the least intrusive qualifier, you can use whichever qualifier you are comfortable with.

If you’ve already set up an SPF record for another purpose, you can simply add a reference to Zendesk to it. The SPF specification requires that you only have one SPF record on your domain, if you have multiple records, it may cause issues, and cause rejections of your email.

For example, instead of having two separate records, such as v=spf1 include:\_spf.google.com ~all and v=spf1 include:mail.zendesk.com ~all you can combine them into one, like this:

v=spf1 include:\_spf.google.com include:mail.zendesk.com ~all

In the past, Zendesk suggested alternate formulations for SPF records, including include:smtp.zendesk.com and include:support.zendesk.com. These are both outdated SPF records. While they might still work, they’re not the best option. If you’re still using them, you’ll see a warning flag indicating you’ve set up an outdated record.

Setting up CNAME records

In order for Zendesk to send email on your behalf, you must add four CNAME (Canonical Name) records to your DNS server that give Zendesk domain-level email authorization.

The CNAME records redirect SPF checks to mail*.zendesk.com, which is a Zendesk server that includes an SPF record that is maintained by Zendesk. This SPF record is used for mail sent from zendesk*.customer.com. This means that Zendesk maintains SPF records for a subset of mail delivered from your domain, and ensures they are always up-to-date.

To authorize Zendesk to deliver your email using CNAME records

Edit your domain’s DNS settings and add each of these CNAME records:

Type	Name/Host/Domain	Value/Target/Destination	TTL
CNAME	zendesk1	mail1.zendesk.com	3600 or use default
CNAME	zendesk2	mail2.zendesk.com	3600 or use default
CNAME	zendesk3	mail3.zendesk.com	3600 or use default
CNAME	zendesk4	mail4.zendesk.com	3600 or use default

If you’re unsure about any of the above, consult with your DNS provider.

Consider making an additional update to digitally sign outbound email from Zendesk to prevent your customers’ email clients from blocking email. Digitally signing email provide that an email actually came from your organization and not someone pretending to be your organization. For instructions, see Digitally signing your email with DKIM or DMARC.

Verifying your domain

In order for Zendesk Support to send emails on your behalf, you must verify that you own the domain that you want Support to use. This is done by adding a TXT record (a domain verification record) to your DNS server that Support will check. The domain verification record is unique for each Support account and domain combination.

If you don’t add the domain verification record, Support sends emails from a Zendesk-provided email address. If you want to give your customers a white label experience, hiding all Zendesk branding, you must add this record.

To verify that a domain belongs to you

After you have finished setting up your CNAME records, go to Support and click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, and then navigate to Channels > Email.
Locate the DNS records (located outside of Zendesk) for your Support address, then click See details to see the domain verification value.

If you are an agent with permissions to manage support addresses, you can use the Support Addresses API endpoint to find the domain verification code for your support address instead, if you prefer. Look for the domain_verification_code value.
Edit your domain’s DNS settings and add this TXT record:

Type Name/Host/Domain Value TTL

TXT zendeskverification 3600 or use default

You can find the value next to the Domain verification TXT record check. In this example, the value is abcdef123456:
After you add the TXT record, click the Verify DNS records button to confirm that all of your records are now valid. If they are, the red error messages will be gone.

After your domain is verified, leave the domain verification record in-place.

Type	Name/Host/Domain	Value	TTL
TXT	zendeskverification		3600 or use default

If you decide to change your Support subdomain or host mapping later, you don’t need to update your domain verification records.

Understanding SPF checks

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a domain level email authorization protocol that allows you to declare which IP addresses are allowed to send email as if it originated from your domain.

This is accomplished by adding Domain Name System (DNS), TXT, or CNAME records. Think of DNS as a publicly accessible record for the internet. These records enable you to state publicly that Zendesk is an authorized sender for your domain.

When an email client receives a message, it performs an SPF check on the sending domain to verify that the email came from who it says it did. If this check fails, or there isn’t a DNS record that says that Zendesk is a permitted sender, some receivers might consider that email spam or a phishing attempt, and flag it as untrustworthy or not display it to your customers at all.

Zendesk avoids this by sending email using our own domain when we’re not authorized to use your domain, and by using your domain only when you authorize Zendesk with a proper SPF record. Either way, email sent from Zendesk should never be marked as spam.

Enabling search across multiple Help Centers
If you have multiple Help Centers, you can enable users to search across multiple Help Centers. You can decide which Help Centers to include in the search results. You can also decide if you want to include community content from those Help Centers.

You must have Guide Enterprise and Support Enterprise to support multiple Help Centers. You must be a Guide Manager to enable search for multiple Help Centers.

All of our themes support sidebar filters and results for multiple Help Centers on the Search Results page, introduced on September 25, 2019

To enable users to search across multiple Help Centers
1. In Guide, click the Settings icon () icon in the sidebar, then click Search settings.
2. Under Search across multiple Help Centers, click Show results from other Help Centers.
3. Click the Show community posts from selected Help Centers in search results if you’d like to include community posts from the selected Help Centers in the search results.
  
  Knowledge base articles are included by default and cannot be excluded.
4. Select the name of each Help Center you want to include in the search results.
  
  The name of each Help Center that’s been activated for a brand appears in the list. You might not have a corresponding Help Center for each of your brands.
5. Click Save in the Help Center Search settings page when you are finished.
Setting up the GitHub integration
The GitHub integration enables you to develop and maintain a theme collaboratively in GitHub, then preview or publish it in Guide. To set up the integration, make sure your theme is stored in GitHub, then set up the integration in Guide.

You must be a Guide Manager to set up the GitHub integration in Guide.

Preparing your theme in GitHub

You need to ensure that your theme is in GitHub before you set up the integration in Guide. If you’re new to Git and GitHub check out this tutorial. If your theme is already in GitHub, and it meets the following requirements, see Setting up the integration in Guide.

The integration has the following requirements for your GitHub repo:
- The manifest file must be at the root of the GitHub repo
  
  The file manifest.json should be placed at the root of your GitHub repository for Guide to be able to fetch your theme. You can still include extra files, such as tooling, which are ignored when importing to Guide.
- The GitHub repo can have only one theme
  
  You should only manage one theme in each repository. You can use the branch option during theme import to try out variations of your theme.
To get your theme into a GitHub repo
- If your theme is in Guide, export your theme from Guide and create a GitHub repo (if you don’t already have one) and push your theme to the GitHub repo.
- If your theme is not in Guide or GitHub, create a GitHub repo (if you don’t already have one) and push your theme to the GitHub repo.
After you’ve prepared your theme in GitHub, you are ready to set up the integration in Guide.

Setting up the integration

To set up the GitHub integration you need to make sure your theme is stored in GitHub, then fetch your theme from GitHub to Guide. This one-time fetch establishes the connection between your theme and GitHub.

After you set up the integration, you will work on the theme in GitHub, then update the theme in Guide when you’re ready. In Guide you can then preview or publish the theme live.

To set up the GitHub integration with your Guide theme
1. In GitHub, ensure that you have prepared your theme.
2. In Guide, click the Customize design icon () in the sidebar.
  
  The Themes page opens.
3. Click Add new theme in the upper-right corner.
4. Click Fetch from GitHub.
5. Enter the URL for the repo and, optionally, enter a branch name if you want to fetch from a branch other than the default branch, then click Import.
6. Log in to GitHub if prompted, then click Authorize Zendesk.
The theme thumbnail appears on the Themes page when the import is complete. If you have problems, see Troubleshooting the GitHub integration for Guide themes.

Once you’ve established the connection between your theme in Guide and GitHub, you will manage your theme in GitHub and update the theme in Guide as needed.
Setting up hosted SSL
SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is an encryption protocol that ensures secure communications with your website. You must configure an SNI-based SSL certificate for a host-mapped domain using one of the two methods below:
- Use the free SNI-based SSL certificate from Zendesk (recommended)
- Use your own SNI-based certificate
If you don’t upload a certificate when you use a host-mapped domain, all help center traffic will be redirected to your default zendesk.com subdomain.

Using a Zendesk-provisioned SSL certificate

We recommend using the Zendesk-provisioned SNI-based SSL certificate for your host-mapped domain or domains if you’re on the Team, Professional, or Enterprise plans. This is included for free with your Zendesk plan. The SSL certificate covers all your host-mapped domains. Zendesk automatically renews the SSL certificate before it expires.

Your host mapping must be set up correctly before you start.
1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, select Settings > Security, then click the SSL tab at the top of the Security page.
2. In the Hosted SSL section of the page, click Enable Zendesk-provisioned SSL.
3. Click Save.
  
  Zendesk requests a SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt, a third-party certificate service. It can take up to an hour to complete the request. If you have any issues, contact support@zendesk.com.
  
  When you add, update, or delete a host-mapped domain, Zendesk removes your current certificate and replaces it with a new certificate that covers the new host-mapped routes.
Providing your own SSL certificate

If you prefer not using Zendesk-provisioned SSL, you can get and upload your own SNI-based SSL certificate as described in this section. If you use your own certificate, Zendesk will not automatically renew it when it expires.

Because of potentially long lead times, consider your SSL options early in the process of setting up your Zendesk Support.

Getting your own SSL certificate

If you already have a SNI-based certificate for your host-mapped address, skip to Uploading the certificate below.

You can purchase a SSL certificate from a certificate authority such as DigiCert or Symantec, or from resellers such as Namecheap. You need to give the certificate authority a certificate signing request file (CSR) to create the certificate. You can generate the CSR, as described below.

Make sure any SSL certificate you purchase supports Server Name Indication (SNI) technology.

IP-based SSL certificates are not supported.

If you have multiple host-mapped brands, you only need one certificate for all of them – you don’t need a SSL certificate for each brand. However, if you add a host-mapped brand, you need to replace your existing certificate with a new one. Generate the new certificate as described in the procedure below. For more information on host-mapped brands, see Generating an SSL certificate for host-mapped brands.

To get a SSL certificate
1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, select Settings > Security, then click the SSL tab at the top of the Security page.
2. In the Hosted SSL section of the page, click I do not have a certificate, and then Generate a request. A certificate signing request file (CSR) is created and downloaded to your computer.
3. Provide the CSR file to the certificate authority.
  
  The certificate authority generates a SSL certificate and gives it to you so that it can be installed on our servers.
  
  Certificate authorities charge a fee for each request so keep the following tips in mind:
  - Before you buy, make sure your certificate authority supports SHA-2 encryption. The CSR file generated uses SHA-2 encryption
  - Make sure the certificate supports Server Name Indication (SNI) technology
  - If prompted, specify “Nginx”, “Apache” or “Apache + mod_ssl” as the desired web server
  - After the certificate authority generates the certificate file, save it so you don’t have to make another request
  We strongly discourage using wildcard certificates. If your certificate is compromised anywhere on any of the services you use, the information on all your services is at risk. You also have to replace the certificate everywhere it’s used.
Once you have a SSL certificate, the next step is to upload it as described below.

Uploading the certificate

After purchasing the SSL certificate, the certificate authority will send you an email or direct you to a page where you can download the certificate. The instructions are often unclear about what files you really need or if you should prepare them before uploading them. For guidance, see Identifying and preparing your SSL certificate.

After obtaining or preparing the SSL certificate as a PEM file as described above, upload it to our servers as follows.
1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, select Settings > Security, then click the SSL tab at the top of the Security page.
2. In the Hosted SSL section of the page, click I have a certificate, then Upload certificate.
3. Navigate to the PEM file and select it.
4. If you have a private key associated with the certificate, click Upload private key and enter your passphrase if any. You don’t need a key if you generated the CSR file in Zendesk Support. For more information, see Getting a key file for upload.
5. Click Save.
  
  The certificate will be installed on our servers.
Update the CNAME record

For either SSL option – you provide your own SSL certificate or you use Zendesk-provisioned SSL – Zendesk requires that the DNS record be a CNAME record that points to subdomain.zendesk.com. DNS “A” records are not supported.

You must configure the DNS, refer to Changing the URL of your Help Center. If there is an error in the DNS, we will remove the invalid host mapping.

Reviewing the SSL status of a certificate

You can review the SSL status (CNAME check) of your host-mapped, SSL-enabled brands in the Zendesk Support interface.
1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, select Settings > Security, then click the SSL tab at the top of the Security page. The SSL page displays information about your certificates:
  
  This view of the SSL page is only displayed if you have a host-mapped, SSL-enabled domain.
2. Refresh the page to run the SSL status check again.
Replacing a certificate

You can replace a certificate installed on Zendesk Support.

Zendesk will notify you when the certificate you provided is about the expire. If it expires before you can replace it, Zendesk will automatically replace it with a free, SNI-based SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt, a third-party certificate service. See Getting a Zendesk-provisioned SSL certificate. You can keep the certificate or replace it with your own.
1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, select Settings > Security, then click the SSL tab at the top of the Security page.
2. Click I already have a certificate and follow the steps in Uploading the certificate above.
  
  This view of the SSL page is only displayed if you have a host-mapped, SSL-enabled domain.
3. If you don’t have a replacement certificate yet, click I do not have a certificate and follow the steps in Getting a SSL certificate above.
Extending HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to one year

HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) is enabled by default for host-mapped, SSL-enabled domains in Zendesk Support. HSTS instructs users’ browsers to access your host-mapped domain only over SSL.

When a user types http://shop.example.com or just shop.example.com to access a SSL-enabled site that doesn’t have HSTS, the user’s browser briefly accesses the non-encrypted version of the site before being redirected to the encrypted HTTPS version. The redirect makes the user vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack, where a hacker exploits the redirect to redirect the user to a malicious site.

When HSTS is enabled, the site instructs the user’s browser to never load the site using HTTP. The browser automatically converts all such attempts to HTTPS requests, skipping the redirect that hackers can exploit for man-in-the-middle attacks. As long as the user accessed the site once using HTTPS, the user’s browser will know to only use HTTPS to access it.

The browser remembers the site only for a specified period. By default for Zendesk SSL-enabled domains, the period is 1 day. You can increase the period to 1 year.

This feature is only available if you have a host-mapped, SSL-enabled domain.

To extend the period the browser remembers your site to one year
1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, select Settings > Security, then click the SSL tab at the top of the Security page.
2. Select the HSTS option to instruct browsers to remember the site for up to one year.
3. Click Save.
After setting up a host-mapped, SSL-enabled domain, you can perform any of the following management tasks:
- Reviewing the SSL status of a certificate
- Replacing a certificate
- Extending HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to one year
Enabling Google Analytics for your Help Center
You can use Google Analytics to track Help Center traffic. Enabling it involves getting the tracking ID from Google Analytics and then adding it to the Help Center.

If you previously obtained the JavaScript snippet from Google Analytics and added it to your Help Center pages manually, you should remove the snippet before enabling the setting described in this article.

Adding your Help Center to Google Analytics

To track traffic via Google Analytics, you’ll need a Google Analytics account.

To create a new Google Analytics account
1. Go to www.google.com/analytics and create an account.
2. On the New Account page, click Website.
3. Use your Help Center information to fill out the account options. For example, if you’re creating an account for your company, Mondocam, you’d enter the following:
  - Account Name: Mondocam
  - Website Name: Mondocam Help Center
  - Website URL: (Select https:// from the drop-down menu) mondocam.zendesk.com/hc
  Set the remaining options according to your preferences.
4. Click Get Tracking ID and accept the Terms and Conditions.
5. Copy and add the tracking ID to the Help Center as described in Adding the tracking ID to the Help Center, below.
Once you have a Google Analytics account, you can add your Help Center.

To add your Help Center to your Google Analytics account
1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
2. If this is the first website associated with this Google Analytics account, click Sign Up.
  
  If you have other websites associated with this Google Analytics account, click Admin at the top of the page, and in the Account column, click the existing account name and select Create new account.
3. Use your Help Center information to fill out the account options. For example, if you’re creating an account for your company, Mondocam, you’d enter the following:
  - Account Name: My Company
  - Website Name: My Company Help Center
  - Website URL: (Select https:// from the drop-down menu) mycompany.zendesk.com/hc
  Set the remaining options according to your preferences.
4. Click Get Tracking ID and accept the Terms and Conditions.
5. Copy and add the tracking ID to the Help Center as described below.
Adding the tracking ID to the Help Center

Once you have your Help Center added to your Google Analytics account, you need to update your settings with the tracking ID you generated in the previous section.

To add the tracking ID to the Help Center
1. In Guide, click the Settings () icon in the sidebar.
2. Under Integrations, select the option to enable the Google Analytics and enter your tracking ID.
3. Click Update on the upper-right side of the page.
Using Google Analytics with Help Center

See the following resources on using Google Analytics to create the best self-service experience possible for your customers:
Introduction to the Zendesk API
An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a tool for software applications that acts as an intermediary and allows them to talk to one another. Each time you use an app like Zendesk, send an instant message, or check the weather on your phone, you’re using an API.

An example of this in the API would be the List Users endpoint. It returns a list of all users in your Zendesk Support account. Some endpoints like the Show User endpoint are more focused and just return a single thing. You can also use the API to make changes to things in Zendesk.

The API is a powerful resource that many of our customers use to bulk-import resources, create apps, pull data to external sources, and more.

Most of the reference documentation for the Zendesk API is available in the Rest API section of the Zendesk Developer Portal, which describes all the available endpoints.

Why use the API?

You can use the API to add functionality that’s not available in the UI (either natively or at your plan level) at a much faster pace than attempting to do it all by hand.

For accounts currently on the Essential or Team plans, using the API allows you to have a direct method for exporting your data without needing to upgrade to Professional (which allows for automated data exports). Similarly, you may use the API to get ticket data for reporting purposes. The API can return all information related to a ticket, so you may use the API output to pass data into a third party reporting application.

The ability to quickly update many records is another benefit of using the API. For example, while you’re only able to create a single organization at a time in the agent interface, you could create up to 100 organizations at a time with the API. In the same vein, the restrictions on how many items you can update at a time is higher with the API. The interface allows for 60 tickets to be edited at once, while the API allows up to 100 tickets.

Other common tasks include:
- Creating tickets
- Migrating ticket data into Zendesk from another system
- Editing users in bulk
- Searching records
- And many more!
Now that we’ve outlined why you’d want to use the API, let’s look at how to make an API request.

Format

The Zendesk API returns data in a lightweight format called JSON, whichlooks like this:
```
{
  "posts": [
    {
      "id": 35467,
      "title": "How do I open the safe"
    },
    {
      "id": 35468,
      "title": "How do I reset the combination?"
    },
    ...
  ]
}
```
A typical endpoint looks like this:

subdomain.zendesk.com/api/v2/users/me.json

Endpoints can perform the following actions:
- GET - Retrieve items
- POST - Create items that didn’t exist before
- PUT - Update existing items
- DELETE - Remove items
In a browser, you can only make GET requests. You can perform the other actions using tools like cURL or the API console on the Zendesk Developer Portal.

cURL

The reference documentation uses cURL in all the endpoint examples. cURL is a command-line tool that lets you try API commands without a browser. For more information, see Installing and Using cURL in the Zendesk Help Center. You can use cURL for any of the 4 types of calls. It comes pre-installed on a Mac, but you’ll need to install it in Windows. For instructions, see Installing cURL in the Zendesk Help Center.

Status of your requests

For every API request you make, you receive a response that lets you know if it worked or not. If not, the response will provide clues as to why the request didn’t work. These responses are called status codes. Some of the most common ones are as follows:
- 200 - The request was successful
- 400 - Request was unsuccessful
- 409 - Merge or constraint error, try the call again
- 422 - Un-processible Entity
- 429 - Rate limit has been exceeded
- 500 - Warning or temporary state, contact support if it persists
See Response Codes in the API docs for more details about the status codes.

Troubleshooting

Ticket creation troubleshooting guide
Regardless of which channel your customers use to contact you, all support requests become Zendesk Support tickets. Tickets keep track of the conversations between your customers and your agents until the issue is solved.

This article provides a guide for identifying and resolving the most frequently encountered issues when creating or updating a ticket.
1. Learn how to send an email
  
  In Zendesk Support, the send button is the Submit as button. You can find this button at the bottom right-hand corner of your ticket. When you click the button, select the status applied to the ticket upon submission.
  
  By selecting a ticket status, the ticket is updated and your message is sent provided you have the right triggers in place.
2. Find out why a ticket is marked as Open
  
  The New status indicates that no action was taken on a ticket. Once a ticket’s status changes from New, it can never be set back to New. Find below the situations in which the status of a ticket can change to Open.
  - An agent manually changed the status of the ticket to Open.
  - A ticket was assigned to an agent. When a New ticket is assigned to an agent, the ticket status automatically changes to Open.
  - If your account only has one agent, all tickets are automatically assigned to that agent and the status of the ticket changes to Open.
  - When a ticket is assigned to a group with one member, that agent becomes the ticket’s assignee and the status of the ticket changes to Open.
  - When an end user replies to a Pending, Solved, or On-hold ticket, the ticket status changes to Open.
  - A business rule changed the status of the ticket to Open. To find out if a business rule acts on the group of the ticket, see Viewing all events of a ticket.
3. Learn the reason why statuses change
  
  The status of a ticket can change for multiple reasons. Besides the reasons described in the previous point, there are other possible causes for a change in ticket status.
  - An agent manually changed the status of the ticket.
  - A business rule changed the status of the ticket. To find out if a business rule acts on the group of the ticket, see Viewing all events of a ticket.
  - Tickets are automatically closed 28 days after they’re set to Solved, regardless of any triggers or automations.
4. Understand if a message should update or create a ticket
  
  When a new email is received, Zendesk checks the message to determine if the email should be added as an update to an existing ticket, or if it should create a new one. The process is as follows:
  1. User sends a message to Support.
  2. Zendesk searches for the email’s Message-ID.
    - If the Message-ID matches the Message-ID associated with an existing ticket, the email threads to that parent ticket.
    - If the Message-ID doesn’t match any Message-ID associated with an existing ticket, the email creates a new ticket.
  View the original email to confirm if the email Message-IDs match up.
  
  If the customer replies to a ticket on the Closed status, their reply creates a follow-up ticket.
5. Track ticket changes coming from different channels and users
  
  You can see all the updates and notifications that happened on a ticket if you check the ticket events. Whenever you are unsure why a property of your ticket changed, check the events of that same ticket.
  
  The events of the ticket can also be used to troubleshoot business rules.
6. Understand if you can edit system ticket fields
  
  The default ticket status field is not customizable. However, you can create a custom ticket field to track any custom status you want to include in your workflow. For more information, see Can I add custom ticket statuses?.
  
  The priority ticket field and its values can not be edited or modified either, but you can follow Can I edit the priority field? for a workaround.
Email troubleshooting guide
This article provides a step-by-step guide to identifying and resolving the most frequently encountered email issues.
1. Check your business rules
  
  Triggers and Automations, or business rules, are the features that control email notifications in Zendesk Support. A trigger that is not set up correctly can lead to an email notification at the wrong time, or not sent at all.
  
  Steps to resolve
  
  First, confirm that the default triggers that send email notifications are active in your account. Then, confirm that the conditions and actions in those triggers are configured appropriately. Finally, check the events on an example ticket to make sure an email was sent to the right user. If events indicate that happened, and they still did not receive the message, they may be suspended or rejected by your end user’s inbox.
  
  Here is a video tutorial to help you go through the steps to resolve:
2. What to do if “this address is already used by…“
  
  When adding a new support address, you may encounter an error message that says “This address is already used by {user}.”
  
  Steps to resolve
  
  An email address cannot be used both as a support address and as an identity for an agent or end user. To use the email address as a support address, you must detach it from the user it is currently associated with.
  
  First, find the user that currently has this email address associated with it. Then, update or remove the user to free up the email address.
  
  Once you have updated or removed the user, you can return to Admin > Channels > Email to add the support address. See What does the error “This email address is already used by…” mean? for detailed troubleshooting steps.
3. SPF, DNS, CNAME and TXT set up
  
  You may want to add your company’s email address to Zendesk so you can receive and handle tickets sent to that address. Once you’ve added the address to Zendesk, you may find that the configuration steps outside of Zendesk, with your domain provider, can get a little complicated.
  
  We recommend having your system or network administrator configure settings in your domain provider, but this quick video tutorial shows you or them how to configure the records provided by Zendesk.
  
  Gmail address
  
  You may encounter an error that says “Please make sure you’ve updated your Gmail settings by following the steps above.” when adding a Gmail address. This error occurs when the Gmail address is a Google Group, alias, or distribution list. See Unable to add Gmail address as an external support address for detailed troubleshooting for this error.
4. Understanding and taking action
  
  Ticket suspension mechanisms in Zendesk protect your account from unwanted or malicious contacts that get in the way of your day-to-day work. It’s possible for you to spot a suspended ticket that you don’t want to be suspended, though.
  
  Understand the cause of suspension
  
  When this happens, first, check the suspended queue and find the suspended ticket in question. You’ll see a cause for ticket suspension listed.
  
  Once you know the cause for suspension, you can take action to prevent this type of ticket from being suspended in the future. See Understanding and managing suspended tickets and spam for more detailed information.
  
  Viewing, recovering, deleting
  
  You have the option to either recover or delete the suspended ticket in question. Viewing, recovering, and deleting suspended tickets explains how to do both.
5. Avoid and control spam
  
  Receiving spam can be daunting. Below are steps for resolving and deleting spam tickets, as well as advice for preventing future spam.
  
  Steps to resolve
  
  First, determine how the spam tickets were created by looking at the ticket events. Once you know the channel spam is coming from, you can take specific measures to stop it. See I was hit by a spam attack. What do I do now? for detailed troubleshooting steps.
  
  Bulk delete spam
  
  Once you’ve been hit with spam tickets, learn how to clean them up in How can I bulk delete spam tickets in Zendesk? so you can get back to legitimate tickets.
  
  Preventing future spam
  
  We recommend taking some precautions to prevent spam from happening in the first place. See Tips to combat spam and protect your business for more information.

Search

Guides and resources

About Zendesk Guide

Adding a Help Center for a brand

To add a Help Center for a brand

Understanding user authentication with multiple Help Centers

Current Guide plans

About the Guide Legacy plan

Viewing your plan type

To view your plan name and features by plan type

Launching your Help Center

To activate Help Center

Developer resources

The advantages of this configuration

Setting up records for your domain

Setting up an SPF record

To create or edit an SPF record to reference Zendesk

Setting up CNAME records

Verifying your domain

To verify that a domain belongs to you

Understanding SPF checks

To enable users to search across multiple Help Centers

Preparing your theme in GitHub

To get your theme into a GitHub repo

Setting up the integration

To set up the GitHub integration with your Guide theme

Using a Zendesk-provisioned SSL certificate

Providing your own SSL certificate

Getting your own SSL certificate

To get a SSL certificate

Uploading the certificate

Update the CNAME record

Reviewing the SSL status of a certificate

Replacing a certificate

Extending HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to one year

Adding your Help Center to Google Analytics

Adding the tracking ID to the Help Center

Using Google Analytics with Help Center

Why use the API?

Format

cURL

Status of your requests

Troubleshooting