How it works
For a complete overview of how Fin for Zendesk tickets works, check out this walkthrough: Fin for Zendesk tickets: How does it work?
Integrate
Connect Fin with Zendesk
To setup Fin to answer your Zendesk tickets, the first thing you need to do is connect to the Zendesk API.
Go to Deploy > Zendesk tickets and select Connect, under the Connect to the Zendesk API dropdown.
You'll need the following from your Zendesk account:
Your Zendesk subdomain - You can get this from the address bar when in the home screen of your Zendesk account.
Your Zendesk email - The email you use to login to your Zendesk account.
Your API token - You can get this in the Admin center of your Zendesk account, under Apps and integrations > APIs, and selecting Add API token.
Once you have generated your Zendesk API and entered all of the above details, select Connect to the Zendesk API.
Note: If you've already deployed Fin to another channel, you should already have the Zendesk API connected to be able to skip this step.
AI Agent identity
After connecting to the Zendesk API, you will need to select an identity for the AI agent on Zendesk. Fin will reply as this agent when a ticket is assigned to it in Zendesk.
We suggest creating a new agent for Fin in your Zendesk account and making it explicit that it's an AI agent, rather than a human.
You can create a new agent from Zendesk Admin Center by going to People › Team members > Create team member. You can use your own email address by appending “+fin” to the name (e.g. dean+fin@examply.io).
You need to use a real email address because you'll need to verify the email address in Zendesk. Make sure to select “Agent” as the role since this account needs to be able to reply to tickets.
Once you've created a new agent account and verified it, you can select it under “Fin Zendesk agent” in Deploy > Zendesk tickets.
Build your Workflow
When you get to the "Build your workflow" step, you'll see that there' a simple workflow template been created for you, which ends with "Hand-off to Zendesk agent" when a customer asks to connect to an agent.
Managing your workflow
Hit "Manage workflow" to enter the workflow editor and make adjustments.
At the end of all paths (except for That helped ), Fin will un-assign itself from the ticket and apply the “routed-to-the-team” tag.
You can tailor the experience further by:
Creating different branches based on your conditions.
Choosing when Fin answers.
Having Fin send a message.
Providing reply buttons.
Collecting data.
Collecting the customer reply.
Adding internal notes.
Adding an AI generated summary of the conversation.
Auto-classifying ticket attributes based on what the customer said.
Once you’ve finished tailoring your workflow, click Save.
Test how Fin answers your tickets
Ensure Fin is ready
First you'll be asked to ensure you've given Fin sufficient training.
This is important before starting live testing.
We recommend reading our complete guide on all of the ways you can train Fin so its able to answer your customers questions as accurately as possible. | 
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Test Fin
Once you have added your content for Fin, you can test how Fin will respond to your Zendesk tickets by sending an email to your Zendesk support email, which you will find under Deploy > Zendesk tickets > Test > Test Fin.
When sending test emails, ensure that you add the "Fin Test" subject line.
Automatically assign tickets to Fin in Zendesk
This will create a new trigger in Zendesk that automatically assigns new tickets to Fin. The default trigger will assign all of your emails to Fin, but you can edit that trigger in Zendesk to define exactly which you'd like Fin to work on.
You'll find these settings in Deploy > Zendesk tickets under the "Assign" step.
Turn Fin on
Now you’re ready to set Fin live for your customers. Go to Deploy > Zendesk messaging > Go Live and select Go Live.
You'll see a list of all of the things that will happen when you set Fin live, and you can do any final checks if you wish.
Once you've set Fin live, you'll see the status update and Fin will start answering the tickets that you've assigned to it.
Customer experience
When a customer sends an email or submits a form, this creates a ticket in Zendesk. Using Zendesk Triggers, you have full control over which tickets are automatically assigned to Fin.
For any conversation that gets assigned to Fin, it'll apply the fin-involved tag.
If Fin has relevant knowledge available to answer, Fin will respond and cite the sources it used, mark the ticket as solved, and apply the following tags:
fin-resolved: Fin has resolved the ticket (for either a soft or hard resolution).
fin-soft-resolution: Fin has resolved the conversation, but the customer hasn't confirmed it.
If the question is ambiguous, Fin will ask clarifying questions and mark the ticket as pending. If the customer doesn't respond in 3 minutes, Fin will pass it to the team.
If Fin can’t find any relevant information in your knowledge to answer the question, it'll hand-off the ticket to the team by unassigning itself and marking the ticket as open.
Customers can ask follow-up questions and Fin will follow the same process.
If the customer says that it helped, the “fin-soft-resolution” tag will be removed and “fin-hard-resolution” applied.
If the customer asks to talk to the team, Fin will unassign itself from the ticket, remove the “fin-resolved” and “fin-soft/hard-resolution” tags and apply the “fin-routed-to-team” tag. Using this tag you can create additional Zendesk Triggers to route the ticket further.
How it works
The integration works by synchronizing Zendesk tickets to Intercom conversations. A ticket gets synced when it's assigned to a specified agent in Zendesk (e.g. Fin AI Agent). You can use Zendesk triggers to automatically assign tickets to Fin based on certain conditions.
By default the only user data attributes that get synced are name and email, but you can enable more attributes to be synced and further personalize the customer experience.
When a ticket is synced to Intercom, a customizable workflow will be triggered which lets Fin respond. Fin's response will get synced back to Zendesk.
Note:
From a customer and Zendesk agent perspective, Intercom powering Fin is not exposed or referenced in any way.
Find out how the Zendesk API will be used when integrating Fin. More information around data usage and processing can be found in our legal and security guide for AI Products/Features.
Zendesk API usage
The Zendesk API key provided to Intercom is stored as an encrypted record inside Intercom. This explains how the API token will used when integrating Fin with Zendesk.
During configuration, you must choose an admin or agent for Fin to reply as. This will use the Users API to list Agents and Admins from your Zendesk workspace for you to choose from.
Five new Zendesk Triggers are created using the Zendesk Triggers API:
A “Fin Test” trigger which looks for incoming tickets with “Fin Test” in the subject and triggers Fin to run without you having to activate Fin for all your customers.
An optional “Fin” trigger which assigns incoming Tickets to Fin. This is deactivated on creation, and can be optionally enabled when activating Fin. Alternatively, you can assign tickets to Fin through your existing assignment trigger setup.
A “Conversation updated” trigger – for tickets assigned to Fin, Intercom is notified that a new update has occurred.
A “Resolution” trigger which allows Fin to mark a Ticket as “solved” when it answers the question. Note: This trigger skips filling in any required fields you may have on tickets.
A “failsafe” trigger – in the rare occurrence that Intercom is down, and tickets are not being processed by Fin, this trigger will unassign tickets from Fin after a period of time to allow your support team to handle them.
When running the integration, Intercom uses the API token for the following:
When a ticket is assigned to Fin, Intercom is notified of an update to the ticket via a webhook. This uses the Tickets API to synchronize the Zendesk Ticket data into an Intercom Conversation object that Fin can operate on.
For new conversations, the end user’s name and the user’s email is synchronized into a User object in Intercom. You can also optionally synchronize specific User Fields to Intercom by choosing these fields in the Fin setup flow.
The Ticket’s comments are synchronized into equivalent Conversation Part objects in Intercom. You can also optionally synchronize specific Ticket Fields to Intercom.
When new comments or answers are added to the Intercom Conversation by Fin, the Tickets API is used to update the Ticket in Zendesk with Fin’s replies.
If an agent replies to a conversation while Fin is active, their comments to the customer are synchronized to the Intercom conversation. The agent name and avatar is also synchronized to Intercom in order to show a correct representation of the conversation within the Intercom workspace.
A request is made to the Zendesk Tickets API for every new update to a Ticket assigned to Fin in Zendesk. This allows the ticket to be mirrored correctly in an Intercom conversation.
Fin will try to update the ticket in Zendesk with a conditional update. This means if another automation in your system (e.g. another Zendesk Trigger) has updated the ticket concurrently, Fin will respect the changes that were made and try to apply it’s own updates after a short delay.
Intercom usage of the API is limited to 50 requests per minute. This represents 50% of Zendesk’s minimum API usage allowance. This limit will soon be configurable by you. Requests over this limit are retried after a delay.