Create Zendesk Tickets

If you're already using Zendesk, set up your contact form and Contextual Help Widget (2.0) to automatically create tickets in your Zendesk account. The contact form will then create tickets as your specified user and include some helpful metadata in a private comment.

Zendesk setup

Before you can connect your contact form to Zendesk, you'll need to create an OAuth client. Be sure that you have admin access to your Zendesk account and then follow these steps:

1. Log into the Zendesk admin center (/admin/home).
2. Navigate to Apps and integrations.
3. In the APIs section, choose OAuth clients.
4. Select the button to Add OAuth client.
5. Give the OAuth client a Name, Description, and Company. The Identifier should be auto-populated. Take note of the Identifier as you'll need this for the KnowledgeOwl contact form setup.
6. Set the Client kind to Confidential.
7. Save. Once the save is complete, copy the Secret. This won't show again once you leave the page, so be sure to paste it somewhere you can refer back to when following the steps to complete the setup in KnowledgeOwl.
8. Save again.

KnowledgeOwl setup

Once your Zendesk OAuth client is set up, you can set up your KnowledgeOwl Contact Form to use Zendesk:

1. In KnowledgeOwl, go to Customize > Contact form.
2. Check the box next to Enable Contact Form.
3. Optional: If you don't want KnowledgeOwl to store any of your contact form submission details, check the box next to Do not store any collected ticket information within KnowledgeOwl. Refer to What data is collected in the Contact Form? for more information.
4. Optional, Recommended: If your knowledge base is public in any way, we recommend checking the box to Use spam protection on ticket submissions to try to prevent spam/bot submissions. This setting will add whichever spam protection method is set in Security and access > Spam protection.
5. Optional, Recommended: Add a Backup email. If the Zendesk integration isn't working for any reason, we will email contact form submissions to this backup email account.
6. Choose Zendesk as your Send Method.
7. Add your Zendesk domain, client ID, and client secret you previously copied.
8. Optional: If you'd like to include the Zendesk Priority field in your KnowledgeOwl contact form, check the box next to Enabled. You can make it Required by checking that box, too.
9. Optional: If you're using custom fields in Zendesk that you want included in your contact form, add them into the Custom Fields section:
   1. The label specifies how the field will be labeled in the contact form.
   2. The Type defines what kind of data it should accept.
   3. The ID is the ID as it appears in your Zendesk configuration.

      Widget compatibility issue
      Zendesk custom fields are not compatible with Contextual Help Widget (2.0).

10. Be sure to Save your changes.

Your Contact Form is live at /contact-us! You can Update wording in the Contact Form and/or Customize Contact Form Link to make it even more your own.

A completed setup might look like this:

Sample completed Zendesk Contact Form