Overview
In Canny Ideas, the Zendesk integration runs Autopilot on closed or solved tickets to create ideas on your Ideas dashboard, with the ticket attached as an Insight. The Canny sidebar widget in Zendesk also lets agents create or link ideas manually from a ticket.
The Zendesk integration is available on all plans, including Free.
Connecting the integration
Once connected, the Zendesk integration has two tabs:
Connection tab — controls Canny Autopilot:
Enable Autopilot — toggle Autopilot on to start capturing feedback from Zendesk tickets.
Backfill window — on connection, Canny pulls feedback from tickets closed in the past 30 days, then continuously processes newly closed tickets.
Settings tab — controls how ideas created from Zendesk behave:
Send new ideas to Portal — when an idea is created via Zendesk, also publish it to your Feedback Portal. Off by default.
Insights → Required fields — mark Insight fields as required when adding feedback from within Zendesk. Currently supports the Priority field.
Autopilot
When Autopilot processes a closed or solved Zendesk ticket, it extracts feature requests and surfaces them in the Autopilot inbox. The suggested action is to create an idea. Approving a suggestion:
Creates a new idea on your Ideas dashboard.
Attaches the Zendesk ticket as an Insight on that idea.
Does not publish anything to your portal or notify any end-user.
Tickets must be closed or solved to be sent to Autopilot. Feedback will not be captured from open tickets.
See Autopilot — Ideas for full details.
Adding feedback manually from Zendesk
When an agent uses the Canny sidebar widget in a ticket, they can search for an existing idea or create a new one. The ticket is attached as an Insight on that idea.
Things to note
Tickets are only processed after they are closed or solved in Zendesk.
A teammate does not need to be a Canny admin to add an Insight on behalf of a user from Zendesk.
Ideas created via Autopilot are internal by default — they are only published to the portal if you have the Send new ideas to Portal toggle enabled, or if you manually publish the idea.
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