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, register it with Cloudflare using the advice in this FAQ from Cloudflare's help center: I run a good bot and want for it to be added to the allowlist (cf.bot_management.verified_bot). What should I do?
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.