The Zendesk API is supported by a dashboard in the Zendesk Support admin interface. The API dashboard lets you do the following tasks:
- Enable password or token access to the API
- Create API tokens
- Create and manage OAuth clients
- Track API activity against your rate limit
- Get information about HTTP target failures
Only Zendesk Support admins can access the API dashboard.
For information on using the Zendesk API itself, see the following pages:
- REST API introduction on developer.zendesk.com
- Zendesk API Guide on help.zendesk.com
- Zendesk API community
Enabling password or token access
- In Zendesk Support, select Admin > Channels > API.
- In the Settings tab, enable password or token access.
Creating and managing API tokens
- In Zendesk Support, select Admin > Channels > API, and make sure the Settings tab is selected.
- To create a token, click the Plus (+) icon on the right side.
- To delete a token, click the token in the list, then click Delete on the right side.
More than one token can be active at the same time. Deleting a token deactivates it permanently.
For more information, see API tokens on developer.zendesk.com
Creating and managing OAuth clients
- In Zendesk Support, select Admin > Channels > API, then select the OAuth clients tab.
- Create a client as described in Registering your application with Zendesk.
Tracking API activity against your rate limit
You can compare the activity in the last 24 hours with the Core API against your rate limit. In Zendesk Support, select Admin > Channels > API, then click the Activity tab.
The following requests are excluded from activity:
- Help Center and Talk API requests
- Requests using session authentication, such as requests by Zendesk apps or client-side requests from JavaScript code in Help Center
- Anonymous requests requiring no authentication
The page shows activity in the past 24 hours. The chart covers requests over time, while the table provides a breakdown of total requests by client. The clients are identified by the authentication credentials used. The table lists the names – or identities – of API tokens, OAuth clients, or users for basic authentication.
The chart scales based on the amount of activity, which can hide the rate limit line. With enough activity in the example, a horizontal line representing the rate limit would appear at the 700-requests mark.
The horizontal hourly scale is set to your local time, with the right-most mark the most recent hour.
Peak requests is the highest number of requests in a single minute in the hour. Average request/min is the average number of requests per minute during the hour.
Getting information about HTTP and URL target failures
If you're having trouble with an HTTP or URL target, you can view the information returned by the third-party service or REST API that the target tried to access. In Zendesk Support, select Admin > Channels > API, then click the Target Failures tab. Example:
Click an item in the list to see more detailed information about the failure.
22 Comments
Hi Charles,
Is there a way to download API activity and have an overview over a longer period of time?
Hi there Kevin-
Our REST API offers Incremental Exports on a number of Zendesk resources - Tickets, Users, Organizations to start. May I ask for an outline of your intended use-case(s), or which resources you are interested in?
Can I download a report created inside "Reporting" > "Insights" > "My Dashboards" via the API?
Hey Rodolfo,
There's no API endpoint that will allow you to download a report from your Insights project. You'll need to do so manually from the agent interface.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Hello!
Is it possible to check the Help Center and Talk API activity anywhere?
Hello Masha Patrakova,
For the Help Center API, you would want to look in the Help Center (guide) logs. As for the Talk API, you would find that in the classic logs. I hope this helps clarify things and addresses your question, but let us know if there is anything else we can explain for you.
Best regards.
Hi, Devan - Community Manager!
Thank you, but where do I find those guide logs exactly?
Hello Masha Patrakova,
Sorry for the delay with this response, but this is something that you won't be able to dig into on your end. If you're looking for a specific API call, then our Advocacy team should be able to dig into it for you via a ticket.
Best regards.
It seems that I can reach a limit on 700 call pr minute using social media.
It's suggested I update the API limit (to 2500 per minute) but I can't find where to see this Twitter/Facebook API activity.
Can somebody confirm using twitter, facebook will use the API call and where I can see this activity?
I don't see any twitter aPI activity in my activity (https://xxxx.zendesk.com/agent/admin/api/activity)
Thanks
Hi Frederic,
Our social integrations aren't considered part of the activity that counts towards your accounts rate limit, which is why you don't see their activity in the summary from the API channel. With our social integrations we're pulling from the Twitter (or Facebook) APIs as outbound traffic, while the rate limits apply to inbound traffic when accounts are sending API calls to Zendesk.
What are you testing where you see a limit on the social integrations?
Thanks for your answer but it's confusing.
The answer from Zendesk support on my issue is the following:
The previous issues are related to the API limit mentioned before.
Hello Frédéric,
Can you elaborate more on the answer you have received?
As stated previously, rate limits apply to inbound traffic when accounts are sending API calls to Zendesk.
Let me know if there is anything else we can explain for you!
Is there a means of changing a ticket's channel? Right now my team is having trouble because we want to create a ticket via the API, but then have agents respond via SMS. I am aware of some hacky uses of triggers to auto-respond and create a new text ticket, but this is a poor agent experience. Do you have suggestions as to a better means of accomplishing this?
Is there a way to create a custom role that will grant access to API dashboard to manage and not have to give them the Admin role?
The documentation states:
The following requests are excluded from activity:
Does the mean that Help Center API requests are not counted against the rate limit OR that they are just not reflected in this graph? Is there any throttling to API calls related to downloading article lists?
Hi Eric,
Requests in the Help Center API don't count against the rate limit of the Support API, but the Help Center API still has the same limits as the Support API and they also depend on your Support plan.
See https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/help_center/introduction#rate-limits in the Help Center API docs.
For the plan rate limits, see https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/support/usage_limits#plan-rate-limits in the Support API docs.
Hope this helps.
How can I enable access for Service API (Jira / Links) . I am unable to access that endpoint.
Hi Anuja Agarwal! You will need to be listed as an admin on your instance, as is outlined in our docs on this topic.
Hi Greg,
I have the admin rights. I am not sure on how to enable the Jira Links Access.
Hi Anuja Agarwal...can you confirm that your team has the JIRA app installed in your instance? If they do, could you please reach out to our Advocacy team by clicking on the Help button on the right side of your instance? They can direct you to the correct resources for help.
Currently the limit shows 400 in my account, why is this?
Hi Daniel.
The API Rate limit on the Zendesk Support Professional plan is 400 requests per minute - you can see the rate limits for different plan levels here:
Plan Rate Limits
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