Zendesk Integration: Tickets and Help Center for Agents

Overview

OneCLI connects AI agents to Zendesk with OAuth. Agents can read and search tickets, reply to customers or add internal notes, solve tickets, and manage users, organizations, and Help Center articles. The gateway adds the token to every request, so your agent never sees it. This suits support agents: triaging new tickets, drafting a reply for a human to approve, or pulling a customer’s history before an escalation. Connecting takes about five minutes.

Zendesk is retiring API tokens. New tokens can’t be created from October 27, 2026, and existing ones stop working on April 30, 2027. OneCLI uses OAuth, so nothing changes for you.

Connect Zendesk

Copy the Redirect URI from OneCLI

In the OneCLI dashboard, open Connections > Zendesk and copy the Redirect URI shown in the connect window. Leave the window open.

Create an OAuth client in Zendesk

In Zendesk Admin Center, open Apps and integrations > APIs > OAuth clients and select Add OAuth client.

Field	Value
Name	`OneCLI`
Description	`AI agents through OneCLI`
Company	Your company name
Unique identifier	`onecli` (or any unique name)
Client kind	Confidential
Redirect URLs	The Redirect URI you copied from OneCLI

Select Save. Zendesk shows the Secret once, so copy it right away.

Finish in OneCLI

Back in the OneCLI connect window, fill in:

Field	Value
Subdomain	The part before `.zendesk.com`, such as `acme` for `acme.zendesk.com`
Client ID	The OAuth client’s Unique identifier
Client Secret	The secret from the previous step

Select Save & Connect, sign in to Zendesk if asked, and select Allow. OneCLI names the connection after the Zendesk user who approved it.

OneCLI connect screen reading 'OneCLI wants to connect to your Zendesk' with a link to the Zendesk setup guide and a Connect to Zendesk button. — OneCLI hands you off to Zendesk to sign in.

Zendesk consent screen asking to allow the OneCLI OAuth client to access the Zendesk account, listing create, update, and delete data and view data, with Deny and Allow buttons. — Zendesk asks you to allow access. The name and description are the ones you gave the OAuth client.

Agents act as the Zendesk user who approved the connection, with that user’s role and permissions. Connect with an agent or light agent account limited to what your AI agents should do, not a Zendesk admin.

What agents can do

Area	What agents can do
Tickets	List, read, and search tickets and their conversations, create tickets, and reply, add internal notes, change status, priority, assignee, or tags
Bulk and cleanup	Update many tickets at once, merge tickets, mark a ticket as spam, and delete tickets
Users and organizations	Read users and organizations, create and update users, and delete users
Help Center	Read articles and create new ones, as drafts or published

Zendesk access tokens expire after 30 minutes. OneCLI renews them automatically, so a connection keeps working without anyone signing in again.

Quick example

No Authorization header is needed. The gateway adds it:

# Your newest open tickets
curl -s "https://acme.zendesk.com/api/v2/search.json?query=type:ticket%20status:open&sort_by=created_at&sort_order=desc"

# Add an internal note to ticket 123 (agents only, the customer doesn't see it)
curl -s -X PUT "https://acme.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets/123.json" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"ticket": {"comment": {"body": "Checked the order: refund issued.", "public": false}}}'

For every endpoint and parameter, see the Zendesk API reference.

Controlling access

Grant the connection to each agent that needs it, and choose per tool what runs freely, what needs approval, and what’s blocked. A public reply reaches your customer right away. Approval cards say plainly whether a reply is public or an internal note, so you can let agents add notes freely and put public replies behind approval. Delete tickets, Merge tickets, Mark ticket as spam, and Delete user are tools of their own, so you can block them without blocking ordinary updates.

Update tickets also covers bulk updates (/tickets/update_many), which change many tickets in one request. Keep it behind approval unless you trust an agent with bulk changes.

Requests outside the tool list need approval by default, because some Zendesk endpoints return secrets, such as webhook signing secrets and the account’s OAuth tokens. Organization rules add guardrails on top. A blocked request never reaches Zendesk. To disconnect, remove the connection in Connections > Zendesk, then delete the OAuth client in Zendesk under Apps and integrations > APIs > OAuth clients.

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Zendesk Integration: Tickets and Help Center for Agents

Overview

Connect Zendesk

What agents can do

Quick example

Controlling access

​Overview

​Connect Zendesk

​What agents can do

​Quick example

​Controlling access

Overview

Connect Zendesk

What agents can do

Quick example

Controlling access