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Complying with Privacy and Data Protection Law in Zendesk Support

Charles Nadeau
  • Edited
Zendesk Documentation Team

This guide describes how certain features and functionality in Zendesk Support can assist with your obligations under privacy law.

To learn more about meeting your obligations in other Zendesk products, see Complying with GDPR in Zendesk products.

In this guide, users can be End-Users or Agents as the terms are defined in the Master Subscription Agreement.

Topics covered in this guide:

Meeting an access obligation

Individuals from certain regions have a right of access. On request, you may have an obligation to inform an end user or agent where their personal data is being held and for what purposes.

If a data subject requests a copy of their personal data, you can export the data from Zendesk Support as described in Meeting a data portability obligation.

Meeting a correction obligation

Individuals from certain regions have a right to rectification, or the right to have inaccuracies in their personal data corrected. On request, you may have an obligation to provide the individual with their personal data and fix inaccuracies or add missing information.

Both agents and administrators can access and update user data in Zendesk Support. End users can also access and update some of their personal data.

The following topics describe how to access and update user data:

If an end user or agent requests their personal data, you can export the data from Zendesk as described in Meeting a data portability obligation.

Updating personal data

To update an end user's or agent's personal data as an agent or administrator

  1. Navigate to a user's profile in Zendesk Support (see Viewing a user's profile in Zendesk Support).
  2. Click the user's name to enter a new profile name.
  3. Click the down arrow next to the +New ticket button at the top right of the profile to merge, suspend, delete, or assume the identity of the user.
  4. To edit a user's details, click the field box you would like to edit. You can also add user's contact information from this location.

For details of the default user fields, see the table in Viewing a user's profile in Zendesk Support. The sidebar may also include custom user fields.

For more information, see the following topics in the Support Help Center:

Letting end users update some personal data

In some cases, end users can use Help Center to view or update certain personal data in their Help Center community profile. You must meet the following account requirements:

  • Help Center is activated in your Support account
  • You have the Zendesk Suite Growth plan or above or the Guide Professional or Enterprise plan
  • User profiles are enabled in Help Center

If you meet these requirements, the end user can use Help Center to change their community profile, which includes their name, profile photo, email address, phone number, and the short description of themselves. This also updates the corresponding data in the user profile in the agent interface.

Note: If the name, avatar, phone number, and email were set in the user profile in the agent interface, the fields are grayed out in the community profile. The fields must be updated in the agent interface. See Updating personal data.

To update personal data as an end user

  1. Sign in to Help Center.
  2. Open your profile by clicking your name in the upper right corner of any page in Help Center and selecting My profile.

    You can also click your name in an article, post, comment, or search result in Help Center.

  3. On your profile page, click Edit Profile.
  4. Make changes and click Close.

Updating personal data with the API

Administrators and agents can use the Users API to update the personal data of end users or agents. When an agent or admin makes the API request, the user records returned have the attributes described in JSON Format for Agent or Admin Requests.

Zendesk also has a User Identities API for updating the identities of end users or agents. An identity is something that can be used to identify an individual. It's typically an email address, a phone number, or a Twitter handle. See the JSON format table in the User Identities doc for the attributes of each record.

The following endpoints take one or more user ids as parameters. See Getting the id of an end user or agent.

To update the personal data of a specific end user or agent

  • PUT /api/v2/users/{user_id}.json
  • PUT /api/v2/users/{user_id}/identities/{identity_id}.json

See Update User and Update Identity in the developer documentation. Use the List Identities endpoint to get the id of the identity you want to update.

To update the user record of multiple users or agents

  • PUT /api/v2/users/update_many.json
  • PUT /api/v2/users/update_many.json?ids={user_ids}

See Update Many Users in the developer documentation.

Getting the id of an end user or agent

Use any of the following endpoints to get a user id:

You can also get a user id from the profile page of the end user or agent in Zendesk Support. The id appears in the URL of the profile page:

Meeting an erasure or deletion obligation

Individuals from certain regions have a right to erasure, or the right to be forgotten or deleted. On request, you may have an obligation to delete the personal data of an individual.

The workflow for deleting the personal data of an end user or agent is as follows:

  1. Delete personal data from ticket comments, which is also known as the ticket conversation.
  2. Delete the end user or agent from Zendesk Support.

The order of operations is important because user data might be required to find the tickets containing personal data. For details instructions, see Forgetting a user in Zendesk.

To delete personal data in ticket conversations

You can use the agent interface to find personal data in ticket conversations. You can then use the Ticket Redaction app to delete the personal data. See the following topics in this guide:

You can also delete personal data in tickets by permanently deleting the tickets themselves. Permanently deleting tickets also deletes attachments, call recordings, and images in the ticket. See the following topics in this guide:

At this stage, you can ignore any personal data in ticket fields that the system retrieves from the user profile, such as the requester's name. The data will be replaced with the placeholder string "Permanently Deleted User" when you delete the user in the next step of the workflow.

To delete the end user or agent

After deleting personal data from ticket conversations, you can delete the end user or agent from Zendesk Support. See the following topics in this guide:

Searching for personal data in ticket conversations

Before you start, create a list of possible search terms to find the user's personal data in tickets. Go through your list of search terms to find personal data in ticket conversations.

Note: Inline images, attachments, and call recordings may contain personal data that isn't searchable. Make sure to manually check any image, attachment, and call recording in the tickets in your search results.

To search for personal data

  1. In the agent interface, click the Search icon () in the upper-right of the top toolbar and search for each of your search terms to find tickets that contain the information.

  2. Select a ticket from the results and review the conversation, including any inline images, attachments, and call recordings.

    If during your review you discover other identifying information that your organization defines as personal data, add it to your search list. For example, if you find out that the user included their home address in a comment, add it to the list.

    Note: Your organization decides what personal data is.
  3. Confirm that the personal data in the conversation belongs to the user.

    Make sure to positively identify the user before deleting data. The conversation may be referring to another person with the same name or alias.

  4. Delete the personal data as follows:

Deleting personal data in ticket conversations

You can redact personal data in ticket conversations. With redaction, you specify a text string to redact from the conversation, and it replaces the characters in the string with a replacement character. For example:

Note: Redaction may have limitations when used with rich text or languages containing non-ASCII characters.
  • In the standard agent interface, you can use the Ticket Redaction app to redact personal data in ticket conversations. To download and install the app, see Ticket Redaction app in Zendesk Marketplace.
  • In the Zendesk Agent Workspace, you can use native ticket redaction to redact personal data. You don’t need to install a separate app. See Redacting ticket content.
Some notes about ticket redaction:
  • Redaction completely deletes the string from Zendesk databases, but it doesn't purge it from any existing logs of when the ticket was originally created. The logs are automatically deleted after a period of time.
  • Similarly, you can redact phone numbers in strings, but it doesn't delete the phone numbers used as identities in the system.
  • In the Zendesk Agent Workspace, you can use redaction to delete inline attachments. With the Ticket Redaction app, redaction can remove links in the ticket to inline attachments, but it doesn't delete the attachments themselves in the system. You must permanently delete a ticket to delete the attachments.

Permanently deleting tickets

Both administrators and agents with delete permissions can delete tickets in the agent interface in Zendesk Support. Deleted tickets are moved into a Deleted Tickets view, where you then permanently delete them.

Agents must have permission to delete tickets.

For reporting purposes, several anonymous attributes of a permanently deleted ticket are stored as a record. See Effects of permanently deleting a ticket in Forgetting a user in Zendesk.

To delete one or more tickets

  1. If you want to delete one ticket, open the ticket you want to delete in the agent interface, click the Ticket options menu in the upper right, then select Delete.

    The Ticket options menu looks slightly different in the Zendesk Agent Workspace (shown on the left) and the standard agent interface (shown on the right).

  2. If you want to delete more than one ticket, open one of your views, select the tickets you want to delete, then select Delete from the toolbar at the bottom of the list.

    Tip: You can create a view consisting only of tickets you want to delete. See Adding views.
  3. When prompted, click OK to confirm the deletion.

    The tickets are deleted and moved to the Deleted tickets view. The next step is to permanently delete them.

  4. Click the Views icon () in the sidebar, then click Deleted tickets in the Views list.
  5. Click the checkbox beside the ticket or tickets you want to permanently delete.

    A toolbar appears at the bottom of the list.

  6. Click Delete permanently.
  7. Confirm that you want to permanently delete the selected tickets.

Permanently deleting tickets with the API

You can use the Tickets API to delete tickets that contain personal data. Your application logic can start by using the Search API to find the tickets with the personal data, then use one of the following endpoints to delete the ticket or tickets.

To delete a single ticket permanently

  • DELETE /api/v2/deleted_tickets/{id}.json

See Delete Ticket Permanently in the developer documentation.

To delete multiple tickets permanently

  • DELETE /api/v2/deleted_tickets/destroy_many?ids={ids}

The endpoint accepts a comma-separated list of up to 100 ticket ids.

See Delete Multiple Tickets Permanently.

To get ticket ids for the delete endpoints

Use any of the following endpoints:

You can also get a ticket's id from several places the ticket page in Zendesk Support:

Deleting end users or agents

After deleting personal data from ticket conversations, you can proceed to delete the end user or agent from Zendesk Support. Deleting the user in Support also deletes the user in Guide, Chat (for agents), Message, Talk, and Explore. The user is also deleted from all product reports. For details, see Forgetting a user in Zendesk.

Both agents and administrators can delete end users or agents in the agent interface in Zendesk Support. Agents can delete end users while administrators can delete all users except the account owner. Zendesk retains information about the account owner to continue providing its services. When the account is terminated, Zendesk follows its Data Deletion Policy to purge remaining profile data.

You can't delete an end user or agent who's a requester on a ticket that hasn't been closed yet. See What is the difference between a Solved ticket and a Closed ticket? First, the ticket must be solved before it can be closed. Second, the solved ticket must be closed by a trigger or an automation. The ticket can't be closed directly in the agent interface. To close the ticket immediately, you can create a trigger for the specific purpose of closing the ticket. For details, see the tech note How can I manually close a ticket?

To delete an end user or agent

  1. In the agent interface, click the Search icon () in the upper-right of the top toolbar and search for the user's name or other identifying information.

  2. On the results page, switch to the Users tab and select the user to open their profile page.
  3. Make sure the user is in fact the person requesting to be deleted.
  4. In the user's profile, click the User options arrow in the upper right, then select Delete.

  5. When prompted, click OK to confirm the deletion. If you want to cancel the deletion, click Cancel instead.

The user is soft deleted, meaning the user is still in the Zendesk database for 30 days and accessible on a limited basis to Zendesk employees with certain database privileges. Zendesk permanently deletes soft-deleted users after 30 days automatically. If you'd like to permanently delete the user before the 30-day timeframe, continue to Permanently deleting an end user or agent.

Permanently deleting an end user or agent

To permanently delete a user

  1. Soft delete a user as described in Deleting end users or agents.
  2. In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Deleted users > Deleted users.
  3. Click the user you want to delete permanently from the list. A page appears with the user's name and their associated tickets.
  4. Click Delete User.

Deleting end users or agents with the API

You can use the Users API to delete an end user or agent from your account. You can also use the User Identities API to delete the identities of an end user or agent. An identity is something that can be used to identify an individual. It's usually an email address, a phone number, or a Twitter handle.

A user must be soft deleted before you can permanently delete them.

The following endpoints take one or more user ids as parameters. See Getting the id of an end user or agent in Accessing or updating personal data with the API.

To soft delete a single end user or agent before permanently deleting them

  • DELETE /api/v2/users/{user_id}.json

See Delete User in the developer documentation. You can permanently delete the user after soft deleting them.

To soft delete multiple end users or agents before permanently deleting them

  • DELETE /api/v2/users/destroy_many.json?ids={user_ids}

The endpoint accepts a comma-separated list of up to 100 user ids. See Bulk Deleting Users. You can permanently delete the users after soft deleting them.

To permanently delete an end user or agent

  • DELETE /api/v2/deleted_users/{user_id}.json

See Permanently Delete User. The user must be soft-deleted before running this endpoint.

To delete one of the user's identities

  • DELETE /api/v2/users/{user_id}/identities/{identity_id}.json

See Delete Identity. Use the List Identities endpoint to get the id of the identity you want to update.

Meeting a data portability obligation

Individuals from certain regions have a right to data portability. On request, you may have an obligation to provide an individual with their personal data or to transmit the data to another organization.

The following topics describe how to export user data:

Exporting user data

You can use the agent interface in Zendesk Support to export user data to a JSON file. The file lists all your users (end-users, agents, and administrators). The exported data doesn't include all the users' possible personal data in Zendesk.

You must be an administrator on a Zendesk Suite Growth plan or above or a Support Professional or Enterprise plan to export this data.

To protect the data in your Zendesk Support account, data export is not enabled by default in the account. You must contact Zendesk Customer Support to activate it. Be sure to include your Zendesk Support subdomain name.

To export user data to a downloadable file
  1. In Admin Center, click Account in the sidebar, then select Tools > Reports.
  2. If necessary, click the Export tab to display the data export options. Some legacy versions of Zendesk show the export options on a separate tab.
  3. Under Full JSON Export, set a date range and select "users" as Type.

  4. Click Export.

    A build starts, and you're notified by email when it's complete.

  5. Click the link in your email notification to download a zip file containing the report.

    The download link is valid for at least three days.

  6. Filter the JSON results for the person or persons requesting their data.

See Exporting account data for more information on exporting data from your Zendesk account.

Exporting user data with the API

You can use the Users API to export JSON data that can be transformed or imported into other systems. The JSON objects in responses have the attributes described in JSON Format for Agent or Admin Requests.

End users and agents can also use the Users API to export some of their own data. When an end user makes the API request, the user record has the subset of attributes described in JSON Format for End-user Requests.

Zendesk also has a User Identities API for accessing the identities of end users and agents. An identity is something that can be used to identify an individual. It's typically an email address, a phone number, or a Twitter handle. See the JSON format table in the User Identities doc for the attributes of the JSON objects in responses.

Most of the following endpoints take one or more user ids as parameters. See Getting the id of an end user or agent in Accessing or updating personal data with the API.

Your application logic can start by using the Search Users API to get the id of one or more end users or agents, then use the Users API to export their data.

To export the user data of a specific end user or agent

  • GET /api/v2/users/{user_id}.json
  • GET /api/v2/users/{user_id}/identities.json

See Show User and List Identities in the developer documentation.

To export the user data of multiple end users or agents

  • GET /api/v2/users/show_many.json?ids={user_ids}

The endpoint accepts a comma-separated list of up to 100 user ids.

See Show Many Users.

To let the end user or agent export their own personal data

  • GET /api/v2/users/me.json

The end user or agent must authenticate the request with their Zendesk email address and password. See Show the Currently Authenticated User.

Meeting the objection obligation

Individuals from certain regions have a right of objection, or the right to object to direct marketing. You may have an obligation to stop processing personal data for direct marketing purposes when you receive an objection from an individual.

If you get an objection from an individual about the notifications sent by Zendesk, you can stop all notifications by suspending the user in Zendesk Support. A suspended user is no longer able to sign in and any new support requests you receive from the user are sent to the suspended tickets queue.

To suspend a user

  1. Click the Search icon () in the top toolbar.
  2. Enter the name of the user you want to suspend in the search box and click the user's name when it appears.

    Alternatively, you can open a user's profile from one of their tickets.

  3. Click the Ticket options menu in the upper right, then select Suspend access.

For more information, see Suspending a user in the Support Help Center.

Disclaimer

This document is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should always seek legal advice before taking any action with respect to the matters discussed herein.

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