Set up a Zendesk connector

C1 provides identity governance for Zendesk. Integrate your Zendesk instance with C1 to run user access reviews (UARs) and enable just-in-time access requests.

This is an updated and improved version of the Zendesk connector!

If you’re setting up Zendesk with C1 for the first time, you’re in the right place.

Capabilities

Resource	Sync	Provision
Accounts
Groups
Organizations
Roles

The Zendesk connector supports automatic account provisioning and deprovisioning.

Role provisioning scope. Granting and revoking custom roles (Enterprise plan) is fully supported and switches a user between Zendesk custom roles. Revoke clears the user’s custom role and reverts them to the base agent role. The built-in agent and admin role entitlements cannot be revoked directly — to downgrade a user, assign them a lower role instead.

Organization entitlements. Every organization exposes the same agent and admin access-level entitlements. These are defined once as shared templates rather than per organization, so an entitlement appears as e.g. Organization Admin instead of being prefixed with each organization’s name. This lets the connector scale to tenants with very large numbers of organizations without a per-organization entitlement fetch.

Connector actions

Connector actions are custom capabilities that extend C1 automations with app-specific operations. You can use connector actions in the Perform connector action automation step.

Action name	Additional fields	Description
enable_user	user_id (string, required)	Unsuspend a Zendesk user account by setting suspended to false
disable_user	user_id (string, required)	Suspend a Zendesk user account by setting suspended to true

External ticketing

C1 can create and track Zendesk tickets as part of access request workflows (external ticket provisioning). To enable this capability, turn on Enable external ticket provisioning in the connector’s settings, or pass --ticketing to a self-hosted connector.

• Each active Zendesk ticket form is exposed as a ticket schema containing that form’s active custom fields, plus Priority and Type selectors.
• On Zendesk plans without ticket forms support, a single default schema containing all active custom fields is used instead.
• A ticket is considered complete when its status reaches solved or closed.

Ticketing limitations. Number-type (integer and decimal) custom fields are not exposed as schema fields, and Zendesk custom ticket statuses are not supported — the six system statuses are used. The API token must be able to read ticket fields and ticket forms and create and read tickets.

Gather Zendesk credentials

Configuring the connector requires you to pass in credentials generated in Zendesk. Gather these credentials before you move on.

A user with System Admin access and the permission to create and delete users in Zendesk must perform this task.

Locate the subdomain for your Zendesk account

1. In your Zendesk account, navigate to the Admin page by clicking the gear icon in the left menu bar.

2. Locate your Zendesk subdomain in the top right corner of the page. Your subdomain is whatever precedes zendesk.com.

3. Make a note of your subdomain.

Create an API token

1. Log in to your Zendesk account at yoursubdomain.zendesk.com, then click the gear icon (⚙️) in the left sidebar and click Go to Admin Center.

2. Navigate to Apps and integrations > APIs > API configuration.

3. Make sure both Token Access and Password Access are toggled on.

   Password Access is required to list group memberships. Without it, the connector will return authentication errors when syncing groups.

4. Navigate to Apps and integrations > APIs > API tokens and click Add API token.

5. Optionally add a description, then copy the token immediately — it won’t be shown again.

6. Click Save.

Done. Next, move on to the connector configuration instructions.

Configure the Zendesk connector

To complete this task, you’ll need:

• The Connector Administrator or Super Administrator role in C1
• Access to the set of Zendesk credentials generated by following the instructions above

Cloud-hosted

Follow these instructions to use a built-in, no-code connector hosted by C1.

1. In C1, navigate to Apps > Connectors and click Add connector.

2. Search for Zendesk v2 and click Add.

3. Choose where to add the connector: Create a new app, or Add to an existing app (then select the app).

   If you’re creating a new app, choose whether to link it to an application discovered from your identity provider: select Yes and pick the IdP application, or No to continue with just the connector.

4. Set the connector’s Name and, optionally, a Description.

5. Click the pencil icon next to Owners to choose who can configure and manage this connector.

6. Click Add. The connector is created and its configuration page opens.

7. Find the Settings area of the page and click Edit.

8. In the Subdomain field, enter the subdomain.

9. In the Email field, enter the email address associated with your System Admin account in Zendesk.

10. Paste the token into the API Token field.

11. Optional. Enter a comma-separated list of the organizations you want to sync in the Organizations field. If this field is left blank C1 will sync all available organizations.

12. Click Save.

13. The connector’s label changes to Syncing, followed by Connected. You can view the logs to ensure that information is syncing.

Done. Your Zendesk connector is now pulling access data into C1.

Self-hosted

Follow these instructions to use the Zendesk connector, hosted and run in your own environment.

When running in service mode on Kubernetes, a self-hosted connector maintains an ongoing connection with C1, automatically syncing and uploading data at regular intervals. This data is immediately available in the C1 UI for access reviews and access requests.

Resources

• GitHub repository: Access the source code, report issues, or contribute to the project.

Step 1: Set up a new Zendesk connector

1. In C1, navigate to Apps > Connectors and click Add connector.

2. Search for Baton and click Add.

3. Choose where to add the connector: Create a new app, or Add to an existing app (then select the app).

   If you’re creating a new app, choose whether to link it to an application discovered from your identity provider: select Yes and pick the IdP application, or No to continue with just the connector.

4. Set the connector’s Name and, optionally, a Description.

5. Click the pencil icon next to Owners to choose who can configure and manage this connector.

6. Click Add. The connector is created and its configuration page opens.

7. In the Settings area of the page, click Edit.

8. Click Rotate to generate a new Client ID and Secret.

   Carefully copy and save these credentials. We’ll use them in Step 2.

Step 2: Create Kubernetes configuration files

Create two Kubernetes manifest files for your Zendesk connector deployment:

Secrets configuration

# baton-zendesk-secrets.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: baton-zendesk-secrets
type: Opaque
stringData:
  # C1 credentials
  BATON_CLIENT_ID: <C1 client ID>
  BATON_CLIENT_SECRET: <C1 client secret>
  
  # Zendesk credentials
  BATON_API_TOKEN: <Zendesk API token>
  BATON_EMAIL: <Email address associated with your System Admin account in Zendesk>
  BATON_SUBDOMAIN: <Zendesk subdomain>

  # Optional: include if you want C1 to provision access using this connector
  BATON_PROVISIONING: true

See the connector’s README or run --help to see all available configuration flags and environment variables.

Deployment configuration

# baton-zendesk.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: baton-zendesk
  labels:
    app: baton-zendesk
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: baton-zendesk
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: baton-zendesk
        baton: true
        baton-app: zendesk
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: baton-zendesk
        image: public.ecr.aws/conductorone/baton-zendesk:latest
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        env:
        - name: BATON_HOST_ID
          value: baton-zendesk
        envFrom:
        - secretRef:
            name: baton-zendesk-secrets

Step 3: Deploy the connector

1. Create a namespace in which to run C1 connectors (if desired), then apply the secret config and deployment config files.

2. Check that the connector data uploaded correctly. In C1, click Apps. On the Managed apps tab, locate and click the name of the application you added the Zendesk connector to. Zendesk data should be found on the Entitlements and Accounts tabs.

Done. Your Zendesk connector is now pulling access data into C1.