When data export is enabled, you can export data to a JSON, CSV, or XML file. Export generates fresh data each time you export. You cannot run multiple exports for the same type of data (tickets, organizations, users) at the same time.
Data export is available on Professional and Enterprise plans. You must be an administrator or an Enterprise agent with permission to view and edit reports to export data.
Enabling and disabling data export
To protect the data in your Zendesk, data export is not automatically enabled in all accounts. If you do not have this feature, contact Zendesk Customer Support to activate it. You must be on Professional or Enterprise.
When data export is enabled, administrators in a specific email domain can export data from your Zendesk. The account owner's email domain is used as the default, but the account owner can change the domain if necessary.
- Contact Zendesk Customer Support. Be sure to include your Zendesk Support subdomain name.
To change the email domain for admins to export data
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > Reports.
If necessary, click the Export tab to display data export options. Some legacy versions of Zendesk show export options on a separate tab.
Note: You will not see the export option unless you are on Professional or Enterprise and contacted us to enable data export. - Replace the domain in Approved email domain
For example, mycompany.com.
If you do not put any value in this field, the ability to export data will not be limited to admins in a specific domain. In that case, any Zendesk Support admin will be able to export data, regardless of their email domain. If you include a value here, admins must sign in using the approved email domain to use the data export option.
- Click Save.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > Reports.
If necessary, click the Export tab to display data export options. Some legacy versions of Zendesk show export options on a separate tab.
- Click Disable exports.
- Click Ok to confirm.
Exporting your data to a downloadable file
You can export data to a JSON, CSV, or XML file to get a snapshot of the data at the moment you select that option.
When you request a file, a background job starts and you are notified via email when it's complete. You can then download a zip file containing the data report(s). The download link is valid for at least 3 days.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > Reports.
If necessary, click the Export tab to display data export options. Some legacy versions of Zendesk show export options on a separate tab.
If you are an admin on account with data export enabled, but you do not see this option, it might be because you have email domain restrictions set up and you are not signing in from an approved email domain.
- Select an export option.
-
For JSON exports, select the date range and type of data to export, then click Export.
JSON export is recommended for accounts with more than 200,000 tickets. Accounts with more than 1 million tickets are downloaded in JSON format only in 31-day increments.
- For CSV or XML exports, click Request file beside the appropriate export option.
For more details on the export options, see Understanding the data export options.
-
For JSON exports, select the date range and type of data to export, then click Export.
- A background job is started and you are notified via email when it's complete.
- Click the link in your email notification to download a zip file containing the report.
The download link is valid for at least 3 days.
If you have not received the email notification, you can click latest beside Full JSON export, CSV export, Full XML export, or User XML export to download the most recently generated report. The latest report displays your account data from the file you last requested, not your current account data. See Delays in receiving the email with the downloadable data export file for more information.
Understanding the data export options
You can request and download each of the following data reports:
-
Full JSON Export: Exports full data as a list of objects in JSON format. The JSON export enables you to export most data from your Zendesk, including ticket, user, and organization information. Accounts with more than 1 million tickets are downloaded in JSON format only in 31-day increments.
If you want to import these JSON objects into another app, you’ll need to wrap the objects in an array, and comma-separate each line.
Example: Support exported the following objects:
{"ticket":{"id":....}} {"ticket":{"id":....}} {"ticket":{"id":....}}
To create a valid JSON file, you’d wrap the objects into an array as follows:
{"tickets":[ {"ticket":{"id":....}}, {"ticket":{"id":....}}, {"ticket":{"id":....}} ]}
The date ranges for these exports use a system-generated timestamp. Typically, these timestamps match the most-recent update recorded on the ticket, user, or organization (not the creation date). There are some exceptions for system updates that don't generate ticket events. In these cases, you may see a few unexpected tickets in the output.
- CSV export: Exports ticket data in CSV format. Does not include deleted tickets, ticket comments, or ticket descriptions. See Understanding which ticket data is in the CSV export for the ticket data included in CSV exports.
-
Full XML export: Exports data in XML format. The file includes:
- Accounts, which is all the settings for your account
- Entries, which is all the content added to your forums (including comments). This is a legacy Zendesk feature. For most accounts, data export will not include entries.
- Forums, which is detailed information about your forums. This is a legacy Zendesk feature. For most accounts, data export will not include forums.
- Groups, which is detailed information about your groups
- Organizations, which is detailed information about your organizations
- Tickets, which are all the details (including comments) for all tickets
- Users, which is the list of all your users (end-users, agents, and administrators).
Note: Full XML export is not available for accounts with more than 200,000 tickets. Use Full JSON export instead. -
User XML export: Exports user data in XML format. The file includes:
- Groups, which is detailed information about your groups
- Organizations, which is detailed information about your organizations
-
Users, which is the list of all your users (end-users, agents, and administrators).
Important: When you export user information, tags are included, but custom user fields are not. To retrieve custom user fields, use this API endpoint.
Understanding which ticket data is in the CSV export
The ticket data in the CSV export includes the data shown in the following table. Multi-line text and multi-select fields, as well as custom date fields, are excluded from CSV exports, but can be included on full JSON and XML exports.
Data | Description |
---|---|
ID | The ticket number. |
Requester | The name of the requester. |
Requester ID | The requester's ID number. |
Requester external id | The ID from an external system. Optional for accounts that have enabled Professional or Enterprise single sign-on using JWT or SAML. |
Requester email | The requester's primary email address. |
Requester domain | The email domain of the requester's primary email address. |
Submitter | The name of the initial submitter. The requester's name is displayed if the requester submitted the ticket. If an agent submitted the ticket on behalf of the requester, the agent's name is used. If requester is changed, the submitter does not change. |
Assignee | The assignee at the time of export. |
Group | The group at the time of export. |
Subject | The subject of the ticket. |
Tags | The tags added to the ticket at time of export. |
Status | The status at time of export |
Priority | Priority at the time of export. |
Via | The ticket channel from which the ticket originated. |
Ticket type | The type at the time of export. |
Created at | The original creation time and date. |
Updated at | The time and date of the most recent update. |
Assigned at | The time and date of the most recent agent assignment (i.e. the time it was assigned to the current assignee). |
Organization | The organization of current requester (if any). |
Due date | The due date at the time of export. |
Initially assigned at | The time and date of first assignment to an agent (not to a group). |
Solved at | The time and date of the final or most recent change to solved status. |
Resolution time | The final or most recent resolution time in hours, rounded to the nearest whole hour. |
Satisfaction Score | The current satisfaction rating status (Not Offered, Offered, Good or Bad). |
Group stations | The number of group assignment changes made. The initial assignment upon ticket creation also counts as a station. |
Assignee stations | The number of agent assignment changes made. The initial assignment upon ticket creation also counts as a station. |
Reopens | The number of times a ticket has been changed from Solved to Open (whether by agent or end-user). |
Replies | The number of public agent replies on a ticket to a comment from an agent or end user. |
First reply time in minutes | The time between ticket creation time and the timestamp of the first public agent comment, displayed in minutes. |
First reply time in minutes within business hours | Same as above, but only time that elapses during listed business hours is counted. |
First resolution time in minutes | The time between ticket creation time and the timestamp of the first change of status to solved, displayed in minutes. |
First resolution time in minutes within business hours | Same as above, but only time that elapses during listed business hours is counted. |
Full resolution time in minutes | The time between ticket creation time and the timestamp of the final or most recent change of status to solved, displayed in minutes. |
Full resolution time in minutes within business hours | Same as above, but only time that elapses during listed business hours is counted. |
Agent wait time in minutes | The total time spent in the Pending status, displayed in minutes. |
Agent wait time in minutes within business hours | Same as above, but only time that elapses during listed business hours is counted. |
Requester wait time in minutes | The combined total time spent in the New and Open statuses. If the ticket is reopened after being solved, time spent in Solved status is counted as well. Time after final change to Solved status is not included. |
Requester wait time in minutes within business hours | Same as above, but only time that elapses during listed business hours is counted. |
On hold time in minutes | The total time spent in the On-hold status, displayed in minutes. |
On hold time in minutes within business hours | Same as above, but only time that elapses during listed business hours is counted. |
107 Comments
HI,
Whether an agent can be given rights to export json data? If yes where can I find the option?
Thanks,
Santhosh Suvarna
Hi Santhosh -
Agents in an enterprise account should be able to make API calls; there's not a setting to turn this on or off.
After updating a ticket, how long does it go before the CSV export will include the change?
Thank you for your answer
Andres
Hi Andres Figueroa,
I tested this on my end, I updated a few tickets and close and reopen my Zendesk support instance on a new browser after couple of minutes to refresh. Then, I exported the tickets via CSV and the changes were already included.
Please let me know how you go with this and if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to respond and I will do my best to help! :)
Hello folks!
This question may have already been answered but I wanted to ask anyway. Can I edit what data I'm exporting to a CSV? I only need certain information.
Thanks for any help with this question :)
Shane
Shane Decker There is not a way to edit 'pre-export'. You have to edit it after export.
Hi Shane Decker -
Unfortunately there's not a way to customize the export pre-download, but I would assume you could redact any information once the export is complete using Excel. Hope this helps!
Brandon
Brandon Tidd Andrew Soderberg Thank you both so much!
PJ Muller, thanks so much for posting your help center export code! We'll give it a try.
Can any Export file show Ticket Forms?
Hi Kamolchanok,
The ticket form isn't part of the data being exported in the bulk exports described in this article. It is something that could reported on in Explore, and then you could export that query as an alternative.
Hello,
I reviewed the instructions for exporting to CSV file but it looks like it exports Help Center items and not Guide Users, which is what we need. And would also be nice to know how to export Organization data.
Also, when I go to MANAGE (under Support), I see no option for REPORTS. Do I need to enable (I have admin privileges).
Thanks.
Folks -- I feel like I'm missing something here. All I am trying to do is get an export of our 5K+ organizations currently in our Zendesk tenant. Since we need it to contain our custom fields, the XML export is not an option since it does not provide any custom fields. And so I've been told that we have do use the JSON export instead.
When you do that, there are fields for a date range. When I cleared them and ran the export, I see the date range was set to one month. We are looking for a file containing ALL of our organizations, so date ranges don't apply here. There is no date dimension to this query.
We are not an API customer - we use ZD off the shelf. So the API options are not viable. But I am becoming shocked at how difficult ZD has made this - we are merely looking for a file containing our organizations that contains the custom fields. How do we accomplish this?
Hey Jeff. If you just need a CSV of the org and and custom fields, you might be able to get that out of Explore and export as a CSV. I'm fairly certain custom fields for orgs are supported.
Hi Jeff! You should be able to export the full list of organizations in JSON format. If you clear both date fields, it should include everything from the beginning of the account. The only exception is the JSON tickets export when you have more than 1 million tickets.
After you submit an export request, it automatically refreshes the page. That resets the fields to the default export, which is 30 days of ticket data. The new export won't show up in the recent exports section until it's finished processing either, which may take some time. That may have caused some confusion before. I'll pass your feedback on to our product team, so they can make that page clearer.
Fortunately, the UI behavior shouldn't change the export itself. You should have received a complete file after it was finished processing.
I hope this helps!
Thanks Dan/Amy -- Went back and forth with Dwight Bussman today in your support group. What I pointed out and what he agreed with is that the date range fields are not clearly labeled as to what they represent. He had to test it himself to be sure, and confirmed that the date represents the date the record was updated last.
But when you're pulling a full organization list, there is no relevant date parameter other than perhaps create date, and last updated is certainly not useful. In what ended up being a very clumsy operation, Dwight gave me the date we became a ZD customer and said to use that as the backstop date.
In the end, I was able to get the JSON file. But the hassles continued as that file has to be converted to Excel. But Excel for Mac does not have the ability to convert JSONs - only Windows version.
We did ultimately get the file into Excel, but the whole process was a hassle. By comparison, I admin Salesforce and Zuora and could get a 100K row account CSV from either in under 2 minutes. There is something fundamentally dysfunctional about your reporting capabilities that I hope you will invest in and improve.
Ex: I can get a CSV export, but only for tickets. I can get an XML export, but it does not contain custom fields. To export a JSON file of our organizations, I have to determine our Customer Since date with you and use that in an unlabeled date range. And so on.
With respect, your current reporting functionality leaves much to be desired.
Hey Jeff -
I'm glad you were able to get some assistance, and that you got to connect with Dwight. He is super knowledgeable.
Thanks for your feedback; we definitely understand this pain point and will make sure to communicate it to the product team as well.
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