Connect Zendesk with Smartcat

Learn how to integrate Zendesk help desk software with Smartcat to manage translations of your knowledge base articles in any language.

Learn how to connect, configure and use Zendesk within a Smartcat project.

Zendesk is a cloud-based help desk management solution for building customer service portals, knowledge bases and online communities. The Smartcat Zendesk integration allows you to manage the translation of your Zendesk help center content. The source and, optionally, translation data is automatically or manually pulled to Smartcat, and translated content is then sent to Zendesk.

1. Pre-requisites

Prior to setting up the Smartcat Zendesk integration collect the following parameters:

  • Zendesk URL

  • Zendesk email address

  • Zendesk API key

To collect this information, proceed as described below.

1.1. Zendesk URL

This is the URL of your Zendesk domain as displayed in the address field of your Zendesk instance homepage, for example, http://smartcat.zendesk.com/.

1.2. Zendesk email address

The primary email address associated with your Zendesk profile and specified in your Zendesk account. Note that in Zendesk content access permissions depend on the account. Therefore, the integration will have access only to the content available to the account whose primary email address you provide.

To find your Zendesk email address:

  1. Log in to Zendesk.

  2. Click your profile icon in the upper-right corner of the page header, then select View profile.

  3. On the left sidebar of your profile, you can view the information related to your account. Copy the address in the Primary email address field and save it.

1.3. Zendesk API Key

The API token used to as part of two-factor authentication for the integration. To generate an API token, complete the following steps:

  1. Log in as an administrator.

  2. Click the gear icon in the sidebar, then select Channels > API.

  3. Click the Settings tab, and make sure Token Access is enabled.

  4. Click Add API Token.

  5. Enter a name for the token, and click Create. The token is generated, and displayed in a pop-up window.

  6. Copy the token and paste it somewhere secure. Once you close this window, the token will never be displayed again.

Configuring the integration

To configure the Zendesk integration, log in to Smartcat and complete the following steps.

  1. Create a new integration project as described here.

  2. In the Integrations tab, click Connect in the Zendesk integration tile.

  3. Paste the Zendesk URL, Email address and API key that you collected as pre-requisites.

  4. Click Create Integration.

  5. The Import Translations page is displayed. If Smartcat finds pre-existing translations of source articles, you can review them by clicking Import Report.
    - To import a translation, check the respective checkbox and click Import.
    - To pull the source content only, uncheck all checkboxes and click Import.

1.4. Using the integration

If the integration is created successfully, the content of your Zendesk help center is synchronized with the current Smartcat project and all the documents stored in the folder appear as Smartcat project documents. If the landing page of your help center has buttons or tiles with section names, those names will appear in a separate file called headlines.json_en.

After an article translation is completed, return to the integration settings, open the Settings tab, enable the option Push translations back and click Sync Now. The target segments will be pushed to Zendesk.

If new source segments were added to the integrated space since the previous sync, the Smartcat documents will be updated accordingly.

By default, a sync disregards incomplete translations. You can, however, instruct the integration to include them in every sync by enabling the option Publish incomplete documents.

Instead of explicitly performing sync by clicking Sync Now, you can schedule a sync at the required intervals. To do this, click on Do not repeat and select the appropriate option from the drop-down menu.