Accessing your Zendesk account when your SSO service is down

If your single sign-on (SSO) service goes down, you can still access your account. The method depends on whether or not you disabled Zendesk passwords when setting up SSO in Zendesk.

This article contains the following sections:

• Accessing the account if passwords are disabled
• Accessing the account if passwords are enabled

Accessing the account if passwords are disabled

You can disable Zendesk passwords when you enable SSO for your account. See the related topics below for details.

If Zendesk passwords are disabled and your SSO service is interrupted, admins or the account owner can still access the account by requesting a one-time access link. Zendesk sends the link in an email.

Clicking the link grants you access with no password required. The link only works once and times out after 5 minutes.

Depending on the SSO settings for the account, this option is available only to the account owner, or to the account owner and admins. See the related topics below.

Note: If your email address is protected by certain spam filters, the filter may invalidate the access link by clicking it. If your spam filters perform this kind of email link-checking, you may not be able to use this option.

To receive a one-time access link

1. Browse to https://your_subdomain.zendesk.com/access/sso_bypass, where your_subdomain is your account name.
2. Enter and submit the email address associated with your Zendesk user profile.
3. Check your email, then click the link in the email to sign in.

Related topics

• Enabling social and business SSO
• Enabling JWT SSO
• Enabling SAML SSO

Accessing the account if passwords are enabled

If Zendesk passwords are still enabled, agents and admins with a Zendesk username and password can still access the account by browsing to a specific URL.

To sign in

1. Browse to https://your_subdomain.zendesk.com/access/normal, where your_subdomain is your account name.
2. Enter the username and password associated with your Zendesk account.

If you're still having trouble signing in, consider the following:

• If your company uses SSO, it's possible the username and password you use for SSO may differ from the username and password stored in the backup Zendesk authentication system. Your Zendesk username is listed as the primary email address in your Zendesk user profile.
• If you remember your username, but you do not remember your Zendesk password, reset your password, then try signing in again.