Keep your Zendesk API scripts: changing one base URL
How the Zendesk-compatible API lets internal services, SDK clients and help-centre widgets keep working after a move to ChaosDesk.
Over the years, every support team accumulates small programs that talk to the Zendesk API: a service that opens tickets from the shop, a nightly export, a back-office button that looks up a customer’s requests, an FAQ widget on the marketing site. Rewriting them is often the hidden cost of leaving.
ChaosDesk avoids that cost with a compatible API at /zd/api/v2.
Same requests, same responses
The compatibility layer accepts Zendesk request shapes and answers with Zendesk response shapes. A ticket created through it gets one audit, runs your triggers and SLAs, and records the token’s owner as the actor, exactly like a ticket created in the agent workspace.
It is tested against the requests of the clients teams actually use: the official PHP SDK, the C# clients, plain HTTP clients with OAuth client credentials, and anonymous help-centre readers.
What you change
- Create an API token for the integration user in ChaosDesk.
- Change the base URL from
https://yourcompany.zendesk.com/api/v2tohttps://yourcompany.chaosdesk.io/zd/api/v2. - Keep the authentication style:
{email}/token:{token}Basic auth, a bearer token, or OAuth client credentials.
Ids stay stable: imported tickets keep their Zendesk numbers, and users, organizations and groups keep their ids, so the references your systems store still point at the right records.
What is covered
| Area | Endpoints |
|---|---|
| Tickets | create, show, update, delete, show many, update many, count, find by external id |
| Conversations | comments, audits, tags, uploads |
| Search | the Zendesk query syntax, with counts |
| Exports | incremental ticket and user exports, cursor and time based |
| People | users (create, create or update, search), organizations, groups |
| Help centre | public sections, articles and article search |
The endpoint list has the details.
What it does not cover
The compatible API is for software you control. Integrations you did not write and that are hard-wired to *.zendesk.com cannot be pointed at a new address: the Zendesk app for Zapier, Fivetran’s Zendesk connector, the Zendesk mobile SDKs. For those, use ChaosDesk webhooks, the REST API or the messenger.
A tip for the PHP SDK
The PHP SDK builds its URL from a subdomain and hostname. Either set the API base path to zd/api/v2/, or give integrations a dedicated host whose proxy rewrites /api/v2/* to /zd/api/v2/*. The second option needs no code change at all.
Ready to try it with your own scripts? Get early access.
Zendesk is a trademark of Zendesk, Inc. ChaosDesk is not affiliated with Zendesk.
