The Answer Bot API provides Help Center article suggestions for an enquiry. Answer Bot uses machine learning to return articles that might potentially help solve the issue. To learn more, see Answer Bot on the Zendesk website.

To use the Answer Bot API, your organization must be on the Guide Professional or Enterprise plan and have an Answer Bot monthly subscription. API usage is billed by request volume, with one resolution consumed for every 100 API requests. The API is also available on the trial.

Topics covered:

• Using Answer Bot article suggestions
• Authentication
• Interaction Access Tokens
• Get Article Suggestions
• Record Article Viewed
• Record Article Rejection
• Resolve Enquiry
• Resolve Enquiry in Help Center

Requesting an article suggestion from Answer Bot creates a suggestion. A suggestion is a collection of articles with content that might be related to the enquiry. The response also contains metadata that allows further access to Answer Bot API actions, such as resolving the request or providing feedback on the suggestion. See Get Articles Suggestions.

You can then use the suggested articles to provide a UI to your end users that allows them to self-solve their issue. If the user finds an answer to their question, you can use the API to mark the enquiry as resolved. The feedback helps Answer Bot improve its suggestions. See Resolve Enquiry. You can also let the end user self-resolve an enquiry in Help Center. See Resolve Enquiry in Help Center.

You can provide other feedback with the following API endpoints:

• Record Article Viewed
• Record Article Rejection

Authentication works as described in the Security and Authentication in the Zendesk v2 API documentation.

Only the Get Article Suggestions requires authentication. Other endpoints require an interaction access token. The next section explains this type of token.

The response from the API includes an interaction_access_token that is required for further actions in the API. The token uses the JWT standard and contains encoded and signed internal information.

{
  "interaction_access_token": "GciOiJIUzI1NiJ9eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhb.0aWNsZXMiO...",
  ...
}

The decoded JWT token contains the following information:

{
  "id": 65731,
  "account_id": 1682103,
  "brand_id": 626052,
  "article_ids": [],
  "exp": 1525410034
}

You can read more about the JWT standard and decoding the token on the JWT IO website if you're debugging the integration.

Don't confuse the interaction_access_token with the auth_token in the same response. The auth_token is used in article URLs for resolving enquiries in Help Center. See Resolve Enquiry in Help Center.

POST /api/v2/answer_bot/answers/articles

Returns Help Center articles based on the user's enquiry.

• Authenticated requests

curl https://mondocam.zendesk.com/api/v2/answer_bot/answers/articles -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -u {email_address}:{password} -d
'{
    "enquiry": "Consectetur adipiscing elit",
    "reference": "sdk-mobile-uid-customer-id",
    "locale": "en-us",
    "labels": ["magna"],
    "user_segment_ids": [100111, 100112, 100113]
}'

{
  "id": 4,
  "interaction_access_token": "GciOiJIUzI1NiJ9eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhb.0aWNsZXMiOlsxMDEwMiwxMDE5Ml0sInRva2VuIjpudWxsLCJleHAiOjE1MjA2NjE1MTR9eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjo0MiwidXNlcl9pZCI6MTAwMDIsInRpY2tldF9pZCI6NSwiYXJ.VzS91dP0cLjXw_3pZd2tcEdru8xoOXQe7ZfqzA9uL3s",
  "auth_token": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjo0MiwidXNlcl9pZCI6MTAwMDIsInRpY2tldF9pZCI6NSwiYXJ0aWNsZXMiOlsxMDEwMiwxMDE5Ml0sInRva2VuIjpudWxsLCJleHAiOjE1MjA2NjE1MTR9.VzS91dP0cLjXw_3pZd2tcEdru8xoOXQe7ZfqzA9uL3s",
  "articles": [
    {
      "article_id": 10192,
      "title": "Lorem ipsum",
      "snippet": "Consectetur adipiscing elit...",
      "html_body": "<p>Consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque sit amet magna id tellus volutpat aliquet et nec lorem. </p>",
      "html_url": "https://mondocam.zendesk.com/hc/lorem",
      "url": "https://mondocam.zendesk.com/article",
      "label_names": ["magna", "tellus"],
      "brand_id": 10016,
      "locale": "en-us",
      "score": 0.38012391328882646
    },
    {
      "article_id": 10192,
      "title": "Proin sit amet",
      "snippet": "Cras vehicula ipsum...",
      "html_body": "<p>Cras vehicula ipsum at maximus ullamcorper. Maecenas scelerisque ultricies dignissim.</p>",
      "html_url": "https://mondocam.zendesk.com/hc/proin",
      "url": "https://mondocam.zendesk.com/article",
      "label_names": ["magna"],
      "brand_id": 10016,
      "locale": "en-us",
      "score": 0.88826463801239132
    }
  ]
}

POST /api/v2/answer_bot/viewed

Records that the user viewed an article from the list of suggested articles.

• Requests with a valid interaction_access_token

curl https://mondocam.zendesk.com/api/v2/answer_bot/viewed -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d
'{
    "article_id": 12345,
    "interaction_access_token": "GciOiJIUzI1NiJ9eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhb.0aWNsZXMiOlsxMDEwMiwxMDE5Ml0sInRva2VuIjpudWxsLCJleHAiOjE1MjA2NjE1MTR9eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjo0MiwidXNlcl9pZCI6MTAwMDIsInRpY2tldF9pZCI6NSwiYXJ.VzS91dP0cLjXw_3pZd2tcEdru8xoOXQe7ZfqzA9uL3s"
}'

200 SUCCESS

POST /api/v2/answer_bot/rejection

Records the article that the user found irrelevant.

• Requests with a valid interaction_access_token

curl https://mondocam.zendesk.com/api/v2/answer_bot/rejection -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d
'{
    "reason_id": 2,
    "article_id": 12345,
    "interaction_access_token": "GciOiJIUzI1NiJ9eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhb.0aWNsZXMiOlsxMDEwMiwxMDE5Ml0sInRva2VuIjpudWxsLCJleHAiOjE1MjA2NjE1MTR9eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjo0MiwidXNlcl9pZCI6MTAwMDIsInRpY2tldF9pZCI6NSwiYXJ.VzS91dP0cLjXw_3pZd2tcEdru8xoOXQe7ZfqzA9uL3s"
}'

200 SUCCESS

POST /api/v2/answer_bot/resolution

Solves the request if the user indicates the question was answered.

You can also let an end user self-resolve an enquiry in Help Center. See Resolve Enquiry in Help Center.

• Requests with a valid interaction_access_token

curl https://mondocam.zendesk.com/api/v2/answer_bot/resolution -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d
'{
    "article_id": 12345,
    "interaction_access_token": "GciOiJIUzI1NiJ9eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhb.0aWNsZXMiOlsxMDEwMiwxMDE5Ml0sInRva2VuIjpudWxsLCJleHAiOjE1MjA2NjE1MTR9eyJhY2NvdW50X2lkIjo0MiwidXNlcl9pZCI6MTAwMDIsInRpY2tldF9pZCI6NSwiYXJ.VzS91dP0cLjXw_3pZd2tcEdru8xoOXQe7ZfqzA9uL3s"
}'

200 SUCCESS

You can let an end user self-resolve an enquiry when they view a suggested article in Help Center.

First, retrieve the auth_token property returned by the initial request for the article suggestions. See Get Article Suggestions. Don't confuse the auth_token with the interaction_access_token in the same response.

Second, append the auth_token property as a URL parameter to the url (html_url) of each suggested article you present to the end user. Example:

href="https://mondocam.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/43264532?auth_token="eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOi..."

If the end user follows the URL, they can self-resolve the enquiry in Help Center if the article answers their question.