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Using the API dashboard

Charles Nadeau
  • Edited
Zendesk Documentation Team

The Zendesk API is supported by a dashboard in the Admin Center. The API dashboard lets you do the following tasks:

Only Zendesk Support admins can access the API dashboard.

Note: Trial accounts are limited to a maximum of two targets.

For information on using the Zendesk API itself, see the following pages:

Enabling password or token access

  1. In Admin Center, click Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select APIs > Zendesk API.
  2. In the Settings tab, enable password or token access.

Creating and managing API tokens

  1. In Admin Center, click Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select APIs > Zendesk API.
  2. Make sure the Settings tab is selected.
  3. To create a token, click the Plus (+) icon on the right side.
  4. 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

  1. In Admin Center, click Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select APIs > Zendesk API.
  2. Select the OAuth clients tab.
  3. 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.

To track API activity

  1. In Admin Center, click Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select APIs > Zendesk API.
  2. 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

activity tab

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.

Note: The chart doesn't address any end-point-specific rate limits like those for Incremental Exports.

Getting information about URL target failures

If you're having trouble with a URL target, you can view the information returned by the third-party service or REST API that the target tried to access.

To view target failure information

  1. In Admin Center, click Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select APIs > Zendesk API.
  2. Click the Target Failures tab.
Example:

Click an item in the list to see more detailed information about the failure.

Note: The failure information is from the response sent by the third-party service. See the service's documentation for troubleshooting help.
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11 Comments

  • Dave Dyson

    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

    0
  • GoFundMe

    @... - Is there any way to see larger time frames than just 24 hours? I'd like to see our API fire rate for the past 7 days.

    Thanks!

    0
  • Dave Dyson
    Hi Rudolph, I don't think there's a way to monitor your rate limit beyond the most recent 24 hour timeframe. We do have some best-practices information on how to avoid running up against your rate limit, in case that helps: Best practices for avoiding rate limiting
     
    If you'd like to see additional options for monitoring your API usage, please create a post in our Feedback - Platform: Apps & Integrations topic in the community forums, using this template so that our product team can better understand your use case. Thanks!
    0
  • dave.passaro

    Is there an API a support app can use to check if the rate limit has been reached? I am not able to receive the 429 too many requests signal in my app, it appears in the console but the actual call being paused gets no feedback until the limit is up and it completes. 

    0
  • Dave Dyson
    Hi Dave,
     
    There's information about the current state of your rate limit in the API response headers – see Best practices for avoiding rate limiting
    0
  • dave.passaro

    Hi Dave,

    Thanks for that link, I see it demonstrates getting the headers via a curl, however using the following request can I receive these headers or error? I am not getting a 429 or any of this info in the response, but I might get it if I avoid using the client request?  

    options = {
    url:"/api/v2/tickets/" + this.ticketId + ".json",
    type:"PUT",
    contentType:"application/json",
    data:'',
    dataType:"json",
    };
    client.request(options); 
    0
  • Eric Nelson
    Zendesk Developer Advocacy
    Hey Dave,
     
    You can receive these headers via zaf by adding in the httpCompleteResponse parameter. 
     
            options = {
              url: "/api/v2/tickets/" + this.ticketId,
              httpCompleteResponse: true,
              type: "PUT",
              contentType: "application/json",
              data: JSON.stringify({
                "ticket": {
                  "comment": {
                    "body": "Thanks for choosing Acme Jet Motors.",
                    "public": true
                  }
                }
              }),
              dataType: "json",
            };
    0
  • Alexandre Dias

    Hello

    How can I know the API Rate usage by endpoint?

    Also is the Request Limit calculated base on the Average? or Peak requests?

    Thanks

     
    1
  • Dane
    Zendesk Engineering
    Hi Alexandar,
     
    For more information about API rate limits please refer to Usage limits. The normal rates will be based on calls per minute. 
     
    Hope this helps!
    0
  • Ian

    Hi, 

    Would it be possible to add the ability to monitor API activity beyond 24 hours? At the moment if you wanted to monitor stats like your peak API usage in an hour or a day, there's no real way to do this. This data is really useful for monitoring the effectiveness of add-ons like the "High Volume API", or it can allow you to notice trends around peak periods for API requests. 

    5
  • Asaf Max

    The API dashboard is not helpful at all in monitoring API usage. While it shows the peak RPM usage, it is limited to 24 hours. It also doesn't provide any information on usage for the individual endpoint rate limits being reached; as these are different from the 400/700/whatever is included with the various plans. I view this dashboard daily and don't see an peak usage but it's clear that a rate limit is still being reached and there is no way to identify which one, when it occurs and how often.

    Zendesk needs to give us better metrics to monitor these.

    0

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