Zendesk

Zendesk is a customer service platform for managing support tickets and customer profiles. Hightouch syncs users, organizations, tickets, custom objects, and organization memberships from your warehouse to Zendesk, so agents work with customer data that’s current and complete.

Supported syncing

Sync Type	Description	Supported Sync Modes	API Reference
Users	Create and update end users and agents	Upsert, Update	Create or update many users →
Organizations	Create and update the organizations your users belong to	Upsert, Update	Create or update organizations →
Tickets	Create and update support tickets	Upsert, Update	Create and update many tickets →
Organization Memberships	Add users to organizations	Upsert	Create many memberships →
Custom objects	Create and update records of the custom objects defined in your account	Upsert, Update	Manage custom object records →
Legacy custom objects	Create and update records of legacy (Sunshine) custom objects	Upsert, Update	Manage legacy object records →

For more information about sync modes, refer to the sync modes docs.

Connect to Zendesk

Connect with Sign in with Zendesk (OAuth, recommended) or a Zendesk API token.

Zendesk is retiring API token authentication: new API tokens can’t be created after October 27, 2026, and all remaining tokens stop working on April 30, 2027. If your destination uses an API token, migrate to OAuth before then to keep your syncs running.

Select Sign in with Zendesk, enter your Zendesk subdomain—for example, mycompany if your Zendesk URL is mycompany.zendesk.com—and complete the sign-in. The account you sign in with must be a Zendesk admin, since the connection needs read and write access to the API.

Zendesk issues Hightouch short-lived access tokens that refresh automatically. You don’t need to rotate any credentials.

API token

Zendesk is retiring this method; use Sign in with Zendesk instead. In Zendesk, go to Admin Center > Apps and integrations > Zendesk API and add a new API token for Hightouch. Make sure Token access is enabled.

Copy the API token and fill in the fields in the Hightouch destination setup:

API token: the token from Zendesk
Email: the email you use to log in to Zendesk
Support URL: the URL of your Zendesk support site, including https://—for example, https://hightouch.zendesk.com

Migrate from API token to OAuth

Open the destination’s Configuration tab in Hightouch, select Sign in with Zendesk, and complete the sign-in as a Zendesk admin. Your syncs and field mappings don’t change.

Sync configuration

Users

Use Upsert when Hightouch should create missing users and update existing ones. Use Update when Hightouch should only modify users that already exist. Zendesk may send a verification email when a sync creates a user, depending on your workspace settings. To suppress it, keep the default option that marks created users as verified; choose Use the Zendesk default behavior if you want Zendesk to decide whether to send verification emails.

Record matching

Match rows from your model to Zendesk users on external ID, Zendesk ID, email, or a custom field.

Field mappings

Map columns to Zendesk’s default user fields or to custom fields. To add custom fields to users, refer to the Zendesk docs.

Organizations

Use Upsert to create and update organizations, or Update to only modify existing ones. Match on external ID, Zendesk ID, or a custom field, and map columns to default or custom organization fields.

Tickets

Use Upsert to create and update tickets, or Update to only modify existing ones. Match on external ID, Zendesk ID, or a custom field, and map columns to default or custom ticket fields.

Organization Memberships

Organization memberships add users to organizations, so records are matched by both the user_id and organization_id.

The matching field should combine the user and organization columns you use in the field mappings. For example, if you match users by email and organizations by external_id, this field should be user_email:org_externalId. Your model should look similar to this:

Don’t edit the user or organization value of an existing membership row. To change a membership, remove the old row from your model and add a new one.

Custom objects

If your Zendesk account has custom objects, they appear in the object dropdown with the prefix (Custom).

Map columns to any property in the object’s schema.

You can also create associations between existing object records using a predetermined relationship type; the associations appear in the field mappings. For more details, refer to the Zendesk docs.

Legacy custom objects

Legacy custom objects appear in the object dropdown with the prefix (Legacy custom). Zendesk is sunsetting legacy custom objects in favor of the current custom objects framework, so prefer custom objects for new syncs.

Configure delete behavior

In Upsert mode, you can delete the Zendesk record or clear its synced fields when a row leaves your model. In Update mode, clearing synced fields is the only delete option. Organization membership syncs can delete the membership.

Configure search batch size

Zendesk’s search API can return up to 1,000 results, but by default Hightouch searches for 100 records at a time. You can increase this up to 500 for a faster sync. Larger batches increase the risk of a 414 - Long URI error. If you see these errors, lower the batch size.

Tips and troubleshooting

To see the exact API requests and responses from each sync run, use the live debugger. To get notified by Slack, PagerDuty, SMS, or email when a sync fails, set up sync alerts. If you run into an issue this page doesn’t cover, .

For Hightouch platform error codes related to Zendesk, see Error codes: other destinations.

Validate your setup

Synced users and organizations appear in Zendesk under Customers and Organizations in the agent workspace, and a user’s organization memberships appear on their profile. Custom object records appear in Admin Center > Objects and rules > Custom objects.

Last modified on September 24, 2026

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Supported syncing