Problem statement:

We are used to receiving the odd user query on a 3rd party public forum like StackOverflow every now and then and Support engineers have to monitor their inbox to watch out for Google alerts which have been set to notify us.

This was not the best approach and the effort could not be tracked in ZenDesk. There is no way to import RSS feed from the 3rd party forum into ZenDesk.

Solution:

Found this amazing site : https://ifttt.com . It expands out as "If This Then That.."

Here we were able to create an applet which did the following:

If the specific RSS feed for discussion on StackOverflow was updated then the applet should email our support alias using a specific email id.

Here are the detailed steps to do it:

1.) Go to IFTT.com and sign up

2.) Navigate to : https://ifttt.com/create

3.) Click on the + sign and select RSS feed

4.) Choose the second option. This trigger fires every time a new item in the feed you specify contains a particular keyword or simple phrase.

5.) Click on Create trigger. You will now come to the following screen:

6.) Repeat the same procedure and select Gmail from the list:

7.) Click Connect

8.) Follow on screen instruction. They are pretty intuitive :-)

9.) End by Clicking "Create Action" and you are all set. This applet will now send email notifications to the inbox monitored on ZenDesk and show up as a ticket.