Connecting Zendesk
Zendesk connects to Flexivity AI from the cloud. There is nothing to download or run on your side: install the app, then connect.
Before you begin
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Zendesk edition | Zendesk Suite Team or higher. See Supported Platforms: Zendesk. |
| Modules | Zendesk Support and Zendesk Help Center, both enabled |
| Zendesk role | An admin, to install the app and allow Flexivity access |
| Help Center permission | To push Knowledge Builder drafts, the Zendesk user who connects must be allowed to create articles in the sections you push to |
| Network | Nothing to open. Zendesk and Flexivity talk cloud to cloud. |
1. Install the Flexivity AI app
- Sign in to Zendesk as an admin.
- Open the Marketplace: Admin Center → Apps and integrations → Zendesk Support apps → Marketplace, or zendesk.com/marketplace .
- Search for Flexivity AI, open the listing, and click Install.
- Review the permissions and where the app appears, and click Install again.
The install adds:
- the Flexivity panel in the ticket sidebar of the Agent Workspace;
- the webhooks and triggers that send Flexivity your ticket events.
Zendesk then opens the app’s settings. There is nothing to change: leave Flexivity AI base path at its default unless Flexivity support asks you to. There is no Connect button here either, because the connection is started from Flexivity.
Install the app before connecting. Connecting first shows a message asking you to install it.
2. Connect Flexivity to Zendesk
The connection is always started from the Flexivity admin console at app.flexivity.ai , not from Zendesk.
- Start from the setup card on your dashboard, or open Help Desk and choose Zendesk.
- Click Connect Zendesk and enter your Zendesk subdomain: the part before
.zendesk.com, such asacmeforacme.zendesk.com. - Zendesk asks you to sign in as an admin, if you are not already, and to allow Flexivity access. Sign in in the same browser, and only to the Zendesk account you are connecting: with several Zendesk accounts open, Zendesk may show the wrong one. A private window avoids that.
- Click Allow. Zendesk returns you to the admin console, and the wizard’s Verify Connection step confirms the connection. If you click Cancel instead, the instance stays Pending and you can connect again at any time.
What Flexivity asks for
Zendesk offers two permissions, and Flexivity needs both:
- Read: tickets, comments, fields, users, groups and Help Center articles.
- Write: replies and internal notes, the ticket fields your attributes write, Knowledge Builder drafts in Help Center, and the signing secret in the app’s settings.
Zendesk has no narrower choice, such as read-only or tickets-only.
What connecting does
- Stores Zendesk’s access and refresh tokens, encrypted.
- Writes a signing secret into the app’s settings, so the sidebar panel can prove its requests come from your Zendesk.
- Reads your Zendesk brands, which become your brands in Flexivity.
- Starts syncing your solved tickets and your Help Center articles.
- Sets the instance to Active.
Zendesk’s access tokens last about 30 minutes, and Flexivity renews them by itself. If renewal ever fails, the instance shows Degraded; see When an instance is not Active.
Looking up and changing customer records
If you use data connectors (Stripe, Zapier or your own systems), the AI can look up a customer’s own record before it replies, and a change such as a refund is prepared for an agent to approve on the ticket (see Prepared Changes). Who the customer is always comes from Zendesk, never from what they type, and how sure Flexivity is of it decides which tools it may use:
| Where the customer wrote from | Counts as signed in? | What the AI may use |
|---|---|---|
| A chat (Messaging), signed in through your help center or your own sign-in | Yes | Every lookup you enabled for chat |
| A chat, not signed in | No | No lookups at all; the AI offers a person (and signing in, if you turned on Customers can sign in to chat) |
| Your help center’s web form, by a registered customer (one who has signed in before) | Yes | Every lookup you enabled |
| Email, or a web-form request from someone who has never signed in | No | Lookups that don’t require a signed-in customer |
Keep “Verify anonymous requests” on. In Admin Center, under People → Configuration → End users, this setting (on by default, and Zendesk recommends keeping it) holds an anonymous web-form request until the requester confirms it from their inbox. Flexivity relies on it: it is what stops someone from submitting a request with a registered customer’s email address and being treated as that customer. Flexivity cannot read this setting from Zendesk, so it assumes you have kept the default. If you turn it off, a web-form request is only as trustworthy as an email.
An email’s sender can be forged, so an emailed ticket never counts as signed in, even from a registered customer.
Changes such as a refund work the same way on every ticket when an agent approves each one: the agent reads the ticket and decides, and Flexivity only allows a change to the requester’s own record. Changes the AI would make on its own, without an agent, are planned for later and will need a signed-in customer, which is where “Verify anonymous requests” matters most.
3. Check the connection
On the instance’s Help Desk page, the status shows Active, and the Multibrand Domain card lists your brands. Open a ticket in Zendesk: the Flexivity panel appears in the sidebar. The first summary may take a few seconds.
If it does not, see Troubleshooting: Zendesk.
Next: Zendesk Messaging (optional)
To let the AI answer customers in your messaging channels too, connect messaging once this instance is Active. See Connecting Zendesk Messaging.
To disconnect later, or to remove the app, see Disconnecting and uninstalling.