DocumentationAPI Reference

Glossary

Conversational Data Orchestration

A feature set for automating workflows based on events. Zendesk Integration Services (ZIS) powers Conversational Data Orchestration.

Flow

A flow specifies the business logic for the order of execution and the data passed between various actions. The syntax used to define a flow is based on the Amazon States Language.

Integration name

An integration name, or integration key, is a globally unique identifier for a ZIS integration. You specify this name when you register the integration using the Create Integration endpoint. An integration name can be up to 64 characters and can only include lower-case letters (a-z), numbers, hyphens (-), and underscores (_).

Job spec

A job spec specifies an event source, event type, and a flow that should be triggered when that event occurs. Each job spec defines a relationship between one event type and one flow. To associate multiple event types with the same flow, you can create multiple job specs.

Link

A link in ZIS is an association between two types of objects in an integration such as Zendesk ticket to JIRA issue or Zendesk ticket comment to Slack message. It is created by specifying a left object, right object, and link type.

ZIS

Zendesk Integration Services. A group of Zendesk core services to build an integration.

ZIS actions

An action performs a specific operation. There are two types of actions:

  • API calls to systems to manipulate data. For example, an API call to Slack.
  • Data transformations for transforming JSON from one system and transforming it for another system.

ZIS includes some built-in actions. Custom actions can be defined in a ZIS bundle.

ZIS bundle

A JSON file which declares the actions, flows, and job specs that make up your integration. Your integration is “deployed” in Zendesk by uploading the bundle using the Registry APIs.

ZIS Configs Service

A service that stores configuration settings for each customer’s installation of the integration. Examples: a customer’s AWS account ID, their Shopify storefront name, or their nominated field mappings between a Zendesk ticket and a JIRA issue.

ZIS Connections Service A service to securely store and manage credentials. You can use these credentials to authenticate REST API requests in a ZIS flow. See Understanding Connections.

ZIS Inbound Webhooks Service

A service that looks for Zendesk custom events and third party events sent via a HTTP service. These events are processed by ZIS and can invoke flows which are associated with them in a job spec.

ZIS Links Service

A service that stores links between a pair of objects. Example: links used to associate Zendesk tickets with related JIRA issues or Shopify orders. Links can also be used to easily retrieve and surface information from the related object. Example: displaying the status of the Shopify orders linked to a particular ticket.

ZIS Registry Service

A service that manages job specs, flows, and actions.