Tickets do not appear to be triggering your Zap

Zendesk uses a unique method to sort tickets. As a result, if you're using the "Recent Ticket" trigger, only tickets that find their way into the "Recent Tickets" view in Zendesk will trigger your zap. This can be confusing because the behavior that gets tickets into that view can be different than expected.

The easiest solution is to create a custom view for whatever tickets you want to have trigger your zap, then use the "New Ticket" trigger to get that zap to trigger. This eliminates the ambiguity of Zendesk determining what is "recent".

How to Create a Zendesk Custom View

In order to use Zendesk tickets as a trigger you'll need to create a new Zendesk view. This gives you a lot of flexibility in what tickets trigger your Zap.

After you've logged into your account you'll need to go to Admin -> Views and click the "Add View" link.

Use the Zendesk view creator to create whatever types of tickets you would like to trigger on.

The important part to get right for Zapier is the formatting options.

Choose the columns you want included in the view. Select Order By "ID" and select descending. Your formatting options should look similar to below.

Once done, click "Create View." Now when you select a Zendesk view for a Zendesk ticket trigger you should see your new view available in the Zendesk view dropdown menu like below.

NOTE: If you created your view in the middle of creating your Zap and it's not showing up, try recreating the Zap as that should refresh your options.

Missing required fields causes Create Ticket action to fail

If your Zap is trying to fill a required field of a new ticket using only fields from the trigger, sometimes you will see errors because the fields you chose from the trigger didn't contain any data. For example, say you map the body of an email to the first comment on the ticket. If an email without a body comes through, Zendesk will prevent Zapier from making the ticket.

An easy fix is to add some static text along with the trigger fields. For exampling, adding "Orig Email: " as a prefix for the first comment will ensure that field is never empty.

Trouble connecting Zendesk Account/Authorization Failed

Failed attempts to connect your Zendesk account to Zapier are usually because the account being connected isn't an admin account inside of Zendesk. You'll need to make sure you're connecting using a Zendesk user who is also an administrator for this to work.

It is also possible you have API access disabled inside Zendesk. To turn it on, go to your API Channel Settings (Channels > API) and enable the API.

Date is invalid error

Zendesk expects the date in ISO format: "2016-08-16". To fix this, there are two options:

1. If you control how the date is formatted in the trigger, you can change it to the correct format at the source.
2. If you do not control how the date is formatted in the trigger, you can use the Formatter app to convert the date to the format that Zendesk requires.

Custom Fields That I Didn't Select Are Being Added to New/Updated Tickets

The ticket may be getting picked up and modified by Zendesk Triggers. In Zendesk, Triggers are business rules that run immediately after tickets are created or updated. These can sometimes have conditions which can cause custom fields to be added to the ticket.

Extra Tags That I Didn't Select Are Being Added to New/Updated Tickets

If extra tags that are being added, check to see if Automatic Ticket Tagging is enabled.

Seeing a 404 Error When Searching for a New Sample with the New Ticket Trigger

This can happen when the View that is selected in the options is no longer available. You'll need to either select a new View or recreate the View and reselect it before attempting to pull in a new sample.

My Search Query Isn't Finding Any Tickets

Are you searching by description and using partial word in your search query? The Zendesk search will look for an exact match, so partial words won't return any results. For example, if there is a ticket with description "This is a ticket" and the search is for "This is a tick", nothing will be found, even though "This is a" may find that ticket.

A Requester Is Not Receiving Email Notifications of Newly Created Tickets

Check whether these email notifications are enabled in their account. A requester selected in a "Create Ticket" action template will only receive Zendesk's "Request Received" emails if those notifications enabled.

Zap Is Sending "Request Received" Emails to the Connected Zendesk Account Instead of the Selected Requester

You'll want to make sure that both the "Requester Name" and "Requester Email" fields been filled out. If only one of those fields has a value selected then it will default to the connected Zendesk account email.