Prerequisites

• Basic knowledge of Arm Treasure Data
• Zendesk account

Use the TD Console to create your connection

Create a new connection

Go to Integrations Hub > Catalog and search and select Zendesk.

 

Click Create. You are creating an authenticated connection.

The following dialog opens. 

 

There are three options for Auth method: basic, token, oauth.
Fill in all the required fields, the click Continue.

Name your new Zendesk connection. Click Done.

 

 

Transfer your data to Treasure Data

After creating the authenticated connection, you are automatically taken to the Authentications tab. Look for the connection you created and click New Source.

Source: specify the kind of object that you want to transfer from Zendesk: tickets, ticket_fields, ticket_forms, ticket_events, ticket_metrics, users, organizations, scores, recipients, object_records, relationship_records, user_events.

• object_records and relationship_records provide information about Zendesk custom objects
• scores and recipients provide information about Zendesk NPS

Incremental: allows the connector to run in incremental mode, which enables Start time and End time can be used.

Start time: enables you to select only objects, which have been updated since the 'start_time'

• If Start time is not specified, all the objects are retrieved from the beginning.

End time: enables you to select only objects, which have been updated up to the 'end_time'.

• If End time is not specified, all the objects up to now are retrieved.

• Start time and End time can combined to select only objects that have been updated within a specific period, from 'start_time' until 'end_time'

Preview your data. To make changes, click  Advanced Settings, otherwise click Next. 

 Advanced Setting:

Include Subresources: enables you to fetch sub-resource along with the main object. Click Add to add more sub resource by name and Add a correspondence column as well. The sub resource is considered as an JSON object, presented in a column, with the same name .
For example:

• In Zendesk, this endpoint is supported:  GET /api/v2/users/{user_id}/organizations.json That means we can consider organizations as a sub-resource of users. We can get all the information of organizations that a users belong to.
• To configure it, you must add 'organizations' as a sub-resource and also add one more column with the same name. The data type should be JSON.
  

De-duplicated Records: enables you to avoid duplicated records when running in incremental mode because the Zendesk API doesn't prevent duplication.

Retry Limit: indicates how many times the job should retry when error occurs.

Initial retry interval seconds: indicates the first waiting time before a retry. Measured in seconds.

Select a database and a table where you want to transfer your data:

Specify the schedule of the data transfer using the following dialog and click Next:

Name your source and click Done:

Use Command Line

 Install ‘td’ command

Install the newest Treasure Data Toolbelt.

Create Seed Config File (seed.yml)

Prepare seed.yml as shown in the following example, with your login_url, username (email), token and, target. In this example, you use “append” mode:

in:
  type: zendesk
  login_url: https://<YOUR_DOMAIN_NAME>.zendesk.com
  auth_method: token
  username: <YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS>
  token: <YOUR_API_TOKEN>
  target: tickets
  start_time: "2007-01-01 00:00:00+0000"
out:
  mode: append

token can be created by going to Admin Home –> CHANNELS –> API –> "add new token" (https://<YOUR_DOMAIN_NAME>.zendesk.com/agent/admin/api).

target specifies the type of object that you want to dump from Zendesk. tickets, ticket_events, ticket_forms, ticket_fields, users, organizations, scores, recipients, object_records, relationship_records and user_events are supported.

For more details on available out modes, see Appendix. 

Guess Fields (Generate load.yml)

Use connector:guess. This command automatically reads the target data, and intelligently guesses the data format.

$ td connector:guess seed.yml -o load.yml

If you open the load.yml file,  you see guessed file format definitions including, in some cases, file formats, encodings, column names, and types.

---
in:
 type: zendesk
 login_url: https://<YOUR_DOMAIN_NAME>.zendesk.com
 auth_method: token
 username: <YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS>
 token: <YOUR_API_TOKEN>
 target: tickets
 start_time: '2019-05-15T00:00:00+00:00'
 columns:
 - {name: url, type: string}
 - {name: id, type: long}
 - {name: external_id, type: string}
 - {name: via, type: json}
 - {name: created_at, type: timestamp, format: "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z"}
 - {name: updated_at, type: timestamp, format: "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z"}
 - {name: type, type: string}
 - {name: subject, type: string}
 - {name: raw_subject, type: string}
 - {name: description, type: string}
 - {name: priority, type: string}
 - {name: status, type: string}
 - {name: recipient, type: string}
 - {name: requester_id, type: string}
 - {name: submitter_id, type: string}
 - {name: assignee_id, type: string}
 - {name: organization_id, type: string}
 - {name: group_id, type: string}
 - {name: collaborator_ids, type: json}
 - {name: follower_ids, type: json}
 - {name: email_cc_ids, type: json}
 - {name: forum_topic_id, type: string}
 - {name: problem_id, type: string}
 - {name: has_incidents, type: boolean}
 - {name: is_public, type: boolean}
 - {name: due_at, type: string}
 - {name: tags, type: json}
 - {name: custom_fields, type: json}
 - {name: satisfaction_rating, type: json}
 - {name: sharing_agreement_ids, type: json}
 - {name: fields, type: json}
 - {name: followup_ids, type: json}
 - {name: ticket_form_id, type: string}
 - {name: brand_id, type: string}
 - {name: satisfaction_probability, type: string}
 - {name: allow_channelback, type: boolean}
 - {name: allow_attachments, type: boolean}
 - {name: generated_timestamp, type: long}
out: {mode: append}
exec: {}
filters:
- from_value: {mode: upload_time}
  to_column: {name: time}
  type: add_time

Then you can preview how the system parses the file by using preview command.

$ td connector:preview load.yml

If the system detects your column name or type unexpectedly, modify the  load.yml directly and preview again.

Execute Load Job

Submit the load job. It may take a couple of hours depending on the data size. Users need to specify the database and table where their data is stored.

$ td connector:issue load.yml --database td_sample_db --table td_sample_table

The preceding command assumes that you have already created database(td_sample_db) and table(td_sample_table). If the database or the table do not exist in TD this command will not succeed, so create the database and table manually or use --auto-create-table option with td connector:issue command to automatically create the database and table:

$ td connector:issue load.yml --database td_sample_db --table td_sample_table --time-column created_at --auto-create-table

Incremental Load

You can load records incrementally from Zendesk by using the incremental flag. If False, the start_time and end_time in next.yml is not updated. The connector will always fetch all the data from Zendesk with static conditions. If True, the start_time and end_time is updated in next.yml. The default is True.

in:
  type: zendesk
  login_url: https://<YOUR_DOMAIN_NAME>.zendesk.com
  auth_method: token
  username: <YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS>
  token: <YOUR_API_TOKEN>
  target: tickets
  start_time: "2007-01-01 00:00:00+0000"
  end_time: "2008-01-01 00:00:00+0000" 
  incremental: true
out:
  mode: append

Scheduled execution

You can schedule periodic data connector execution for periodic Zendesk import. We carefully configure our scheduler to ensure high availability. By using this feature, you no longer need a cron daemon on your local data center.

Create the schedule

A new schedule can be created by using the td connector:create command. The name of the schedule, cron-style schedule, the database and table where their data is stored, and the data connector configuration file are required.

$ td connector:create \
    daily_zendesk_import \
    "10 0 * * *" \
    td_sample_db \
    td_sample_table \
    load.yml

List the Schedules

You can see the list of scheduled entries by td connector:list.

$ td connector:list
+----------------------+--------------+----------+-------+--------------+-----------------+--------------------------+
| Name                 | Cron         | Timezone | Delay | Database     | Table           | Config                   |
+----------------------+--------------+----------+-------+--------------+-----------------+--------------------------+
| daily_zendesk_import | 10 0 * * *   | UTC      | 0     | td_sample_db | td_sample_table | {"type"=>"zendes", ... } |
+----------------------+--------------+----------+-------+--------------+-----------------+--------------------------+

Show the Setting and History of Schedules

td connector:show shows the execution setting of a schedule entry.

% td connector:show daily_zendesk_import
Name     : daily_zendesk_import
Cron     : 10 0 * * *
Timezone : UTC
Delay    : 0
Database : td_sample_db
Table    : td_sample_table
Config
---
// Displayed load.yml configuration.

td connector:history shows the execution history of a schedule entry. To investigate the results of each individual execution, use td job <jobid>.

% td connector:history daily_zendesk_import
+--------+---------+---------+--------------+-----------------+----------+---------------------------+----------+
| JobID  | Status  | Records | Database     | Table           | Priority | Started                   | Duration |
+--------+---------+---------+--------------+-----------------+----------+---------------------------+----------+
| 578066 | success | 10000   | td_sample_db | td_sample_table | 0        | 2015-04-18 00:10:05 +0000 | 160      |
| 577968 | success | 10000   | td_sample_db | td_sample_table | 0        | 2015-04-17 00:10:07 +0000 | 161      |
| 577914 | success | 10000   | td_sample_db | td_sample_table | 0        | 2015-04-16 00:10:03 +0000 | 152      |
| 577872 | success | 10000   | td_sample_db | td_sample_table | 0        | 2015-04-15 00:10:04 +0000 | 163      |
| 577810 | success | 10000   | td_sample_db | td_sample_table | 0        | 2015-04-14 00:10:04 +0000 | 164      |
| 577766 | success | 10000   | td_sample_db | td_sample_table | 0        | 2015-04-13 00:10:04 +0000 | 155      |
| 577710 | success | 10000   | td_sample_db | td_sample_table | 0        | 2015-04-12 00:10:05 +0000 | 156      |
| 577610 | success | 10000   | td_sample_db | td_sample_table | 0        | 2015-04-11 00:10:04 +0000 | 157      |
+--------+---------+---------+--------------+-----------------+----------+---------------------------+----------+
8 rows in set

Delete the Schedule

td connector:delete removes the schedule.

$ td connector:delete daily_zendesk_import

Appendix

Modes for out plugin

You can specify file import mode in out section of seed.yml.

append (default)

This is the default mode and records are appended to the target table.

in:
  ...
out:
  mode: append

replace (In td 0.11.10 and later)

This mode replaces data in the target table. Any manual schema changes made to the target table remain intact with this mode.

in:
  ...
out:
  mode: replace

Include sub resources

You can specify includes option to get related objects.

For example, if you want to get tickets data with comments, use a configuration as follows:.

in:
  type: zendesk
  target: tickets
  includes:
    - comments
  ...
out:
  mode: replace

Further Information

• List of Options for Zendesk Data Connector