Add or Edit a Zendesk Source

This is for:

Developer System Administrator

When you have the required privileges, you can add the content of a Zendesk instance to a Coveo organization.

Tip
Leading practice

The number of items that a source processes per hour (crawling speed) depends on various factors, such as network bandwidth and source configuration. See About crawling speed for information on what can impact crawling speed, as well as possible solutions.

Source Key Characteristics

Features Supported Additional information
Zendesk version Latest cloud version Following available Zendesk releases
Indexable content Organizations, users, groups, tickets, articles, article comments, and ticket and article attachments
Content update operations Refresh check

Takes place every hour by default.
Rescan check  
Rebuild check  
Content security options Same users and groups as in your content system check  
Specific users and groups check  
Everyone check  
Notes

  • Users may see limited results when performing searches against secured content while on Zendesk Guide sites (see Limitation).

  • If you set the content option to Everyone, we recommend that you apply additional filtering to ensure that your content is accessible by the intended audience.

Add or Edit a Zendesk Source

Follow the instructions below when adding or editing a Zendesk source.

Tip
Leading practice

It’s best to create or edit your source in your sandbox organization first. Once you’ve confirmed that it indexes the desired content, you can copy your source configuration to your production organization, either with a snapshot or manually.

See About non-production organizations for more information and best practices regarding sandbox organizations.

"Sign in to Zendesk" Window

When adding the source, you must first authenticate with Zendesk in the Sign in to Zendesk window to allow Coveo to access your content.

Note

Your source authentication access token can potentially expire and become invalid. See Update an Access Token for information on how to update an expired access token.

  1. Enter your Zendesk subdomain, and then click Sign In.

    Example

    Your Zendesk environment URL is https://apples.zendesk.com, therefore you must enter apples.

  2. Enter the Email and Password of a Zendesk administrator account that has access to the desired content.

  3. Click Allow.

"Configuration" Tab

In the Add/Edit a Zendesk Source panel, the Configuration tab is selected by default. It contains your source general information, as well as other parameters.

General Information

Source Name

Enter a name for your source.

Tip
Leading practice

A source name can’t be modified once it’s saved, therefore be sure to use a short and descriptive name, using letters, numbers, hyphens (-), and underscores (_). Avoid spaces and other special characters.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

If you want Coveo to extract text from image files or PDF files containing images, enable the appropriate option.

The extracted text is processed as item data, meaning that it’s fully searchable and will appear in the item Quick View. See Enable optical character recognition for details on this feature.

"Content to Include" Section

Options

Select the objects you want to make searchable. If you select Tickets, additional options appear:

  • Select Archived tickets and/or Deleted tickets if you want them to be indexed.

  • Under Filter by, select or enter the desired Organization or Tag if you want to index a subset of tickets.

Zendesk Locale

By default, Coveo indexes items in American English (en-us). If you want to index items in a different language, under Zendesk locale, enter the supported locale corresponding to this language.

Example

You enter de to index your content in German.

Note

The Zendesk source only supports one locale per source. Therefore, if you want to index content in two languages, you must create two sources.
Permissions

If you intend to select the Same users and groups as in your content system option in the Content Security section, in the Permissions tab, specify who should have access to the content. This parameter is ignored when you choose a different option.

"Content Security" Tab

Select who will be able to access the source items through a Coveo-powered search interface. For details on this parameter, see Content security.

"Access" Tab

In the Access tab, set whether each group (and API key, if applicable) in your Coveo organization can view or edit the current source.

For example, when creating a new source, you could decide that members of Group A can edit its configuration while Group B can only view it.

See Custom access level for more information.

Completion

  1. Finish adding or editing your source:

    • When you want to save your source configuration changes without starting a build/rebuild, such as when you know you want to do other changes soon, click Add source/Save.

      Note

      On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, you must click Launch build or Start required rebuild in the source Status column to add the source content or to make your changes effective, respectively.

    • When you’re done editing the source and want to make changes effective, click Add and build source/Save and rebuild source.

      Back on the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, you can follow the progress of your source addition or modification.

      Once the source is built or rebuilt, you can review its content in the Content Browser.

  2. Optionally, consider editing or adding mappings once your source is done building or rebuilding.

Required privileges

You can assign privileges to allow access to specific tools in the Coveo Administration Console. The following table indicates the privileges required to view or edit elements of the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page and associated panels. See Manage privileges and Privilege reference for more information.

Note

The Edit all privilege isn’t required to create sources. When granting privileges for the Sources domain, you can grant a group or API key the View all or Custom access level, instead of Edit all, and then select the Can Create checkbox to allow users to create sources. See Can Create ability dependence for more information.
Actions Service Domain Required access level

View sources, view source update schedules, and subscribe to source notifications

Content

Fields

View

Sources

Organization

Organization

Edit sources, edit source update schedules, and view the View Metadata page

Content

Fields

Edit

Sources

Content

Source metadata

View

Organization

Organization

What’s Next?

Schedule source updates.