Question
Bots, crawlers, and other integrations are blocked from accessing my help center. Error logs show that they were blocked with an HTTP 403 error. Why is that happening?
Answer
Bot Management is applied only to user paths, not API paths. In general, integrations should use API paths rather than user paths. If your integration is using a non-API path, use an appropriate API path as documented in the developer portal.
Is the integration a registered bot?
Check in Cloudflare to see if your bot is registered as a verified bot. If so, your bot shouldn't be blocked unless it is accessing Zendesk through a proxy that is changing the source IP that Cloudflare sees. If this is the case, follow the recommendations in this article: Accessing Zendesk with a reverse proxy.
If the bot is not a registered bot, or your integration is still being blocked contact Zendesk Customer Support.
Is the bot checking your help center status or uptime?
Zendesk offers several methods for checking platform status:
- Email or SMS notifications of status issues.
- You can use the Status API to check the status of a subdomain. The Help Center API can also be used if you want to directly query your help center. Neither APIs are subject to Bot Management.
4 comments
Leslie Johnson
In the Answer above, you provide a link to the developer portal documentation. Upon landing on that page, I search for API Path and find nothing useful. Can you provide a specific link?
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JR Lausin
If you're referring to our API reference you can try this link.
https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/
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Leslie Johnson
Hi JR Lausin,
Yes, I'm familiar with the API Reference. I'm referring to the "Answer" paragraph above which does not provide a useful link. It says:
"Bot Management is applied only to user paths, not API paths. In general, integrations should use API paths rather than user paths. If your integration is using a non-API path, use an appropriate API path as documented in the developer portal."
So if applications should use API paths rather than user paths, then what is the API path to send the application to the help center?
In our specific case, if I want the Google Play store to link to a specific article that is published in a publicly accessible Zendesk Help Center, what the correct API path to use for this?
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JR Lausin
I believe you have already moved this request into a ticket. Which is the best approach so we can assist you with API inquiry without worrying of disclosing any of your sensitive data.
Best,
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