Zendesk Help Center Article Sync

Keep your Zendesk Guide (Help Center) knowledge base continuously up to date by syncing content from an Apify Dataset into Zendesk Help Center sections as articles. This is built for teams who scrape docs, release notes, product pages, or internal sources and want Zendesk Guide to always reflect the latest truth.

Why this matters: Zendesk Help Center content is often used by support teams, self-service workflows, and chatbot/AI layers that search or retrieve knowledge. Updating the Help Center ensures customers and agents see the latest answers, and that any search-based or KB-grounded assistant stays aligned with current policies and product info.

What this Actor does

• Reads source items from an Apify Dataset (datasetId).
• Renders title and body from your templates (Handlebars), so you can map any dataset shape into Zendesk’s required fields.
• Creates articles in a target Zendesk section.
• Prevents duplicates by finding an existing article and updating it via Translations API instead of creating a new one.

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Requirements

Zendesk

• A Zendesk account with Guide/Help Center enabled.
• Zendesk API access with API token, recommended for server-to-server integrations
• Admin to manage permissions and users

Apify

• A dataset containing items you want to publish.
• Understanding: each Actor run gets its own default dataset unless you explicitly write to a named/selected dataset.
  1. Run your scraper Actor or use an existing dataset from your storage.
  2. Copy the datasetId
  3. Input it to datasetId

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Find Apify datasetId

1) What happens after a scraper run?

By default, each Actor run gets a new default dataset (created when the run first stores an item). So if you run a scraper multiple times, its output typically goes to a different dataset each run (unless you explicitly configure it otherwise).

2) Where to copy the datasetId

In Apify Console: open the scraper run → find Dataset details and copy the dataset ID. If you trigger runs via API: the run response includes defaultDatasetId.

3) Can I automatically pass datasetId to this Actor after each scraper run?

Yes, common patterns:

• Use the scraper run’s defaultDatasetId to trigger this Actor with that value.
• Or schedule both Actors and have this Actor read from a stable dataset you control

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Zendesk setup

1) Enable API token access (Admin)

1. Open Zendesk Admin Center
2. Go to Apps and integrations → APIs → API configuration
3. Enable Allow API token access and save

2) Create an API token

1. In Admin Center → Apps and integrations → APIs → API tokens
2. Click Add API token
3. Give it a description (example: Apify Zendesk Help Center Article Sync)
4. Save and copy the token securely

3) Find the Help Center sectionId, (where articles will be published)

You can get sectionId in two ways:

A. From the Zendesk API (recommended) Zendesk provides section listing endpoints.

Example (curl):

curl -u "YOUR_EMAIL/token:YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  "https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.zendesk.com/api/v2/help_center/sections.json"

B. From the Zendesk Guide UI From the Zendesk Guide (Help Center) admin UI, open the Section you want to publish into.

The URL typically contains the section id, for example:

• /sections/1234567890-Section-Name

4) Find permission_group_id (Management permission group)

You can get permission_group_id in two ways:

A. From the Zendesk API (recommended) Management permission groups define which agents can create, update, archive, and publish articles.

Example (curl):

curl -u "YOUR_EMAIL/token:YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  "https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.zendesk.com/api/v2/guide/permission_groups.json"

B. From the Zendesk Guide UI From the Zendesk (Help Center) Knowledge Admin, go on User Permission and click on the Management Permissions.

The URL typically contains the user_segment_id, for example:

• permissions/1234567890

5) Find user_segment_id (Management permission group)

You can get user_segment_id in two ways:

A. From the Zendesk API (recommended) User segments control end-user visibility of Help Center content.

Example (curl):

curl -u "YOUR_EMAIL/token:YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  "https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.zendesk.com/api/v2/help_center/user_segments.json"

B. From the Zendesk Guide UI From the Zendesk (Help Center) Knowledge Admin, go on User Permission and click on the User segment you want to use.

The URL typically contains the user_segment_id, for example:

• user_segments/edit/1234567890

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Templates (title/body mapping)

Zendesk requires a title and body when creating an article. Your dataset might not have those exact fields, so this Actor lets you generate them via templates.

Example Template(json):

{
  "titleTemplate": "{{authorMeta.nickName}} - Created: {{createTimeISO}}",
  "bodyTemplate": "<p>{{text}}</p><strong>Plays: {{playCount}} Comments: {{commentCount}}</strong>"
}

Tips:

• Keep bodyTemplate as valid HTML .
• Set defaultTitle to avoid empty output.