How to Export Zendesk Tickets to Power BI or Tableau for Easy Data Analysis

A competitive market also brings out a consumer-driven market. To engage and grow, startups and enterprises need to build sustainable long-term customer relationships. And that’s why they need a customer support solution, such as Zendesk.

Zendesk is a cloud-based, all-in-one, centralized omnichannel solution that helps businesses to manage their customer service. It is a scalable solution with tools offering out-of-the-box features. In the Zendesk ecosystem, you get a ticketing system, sales CRM, self-service online support, community forums, call center software, and reporting & analytics.

For businesses, Zendesk gives the tools to centralize the approach. However, you need to analyze the data to make the most out of your customer service approach. Zendesk Explore tool offers reporting and analytics with access to built-in reports. It helps you analyze key customer data and collaborate with others within the organization.

However, Zendesk Explore can be limiting as it is part of the Zendesk ecosystem and doesn’t offer full-blown features compared to industry-leading BI solutions. For instance, if you want to create a comprehensive report to understand customers’ data better and make data-driven decisions, you need dedicated BI tools. By choosing BI tools to do the heavy lifting, you are setting up to make better strategic decisions and improve customer support.

In this article, we will take a closer look at Zendesk ticketing system and the benefits of analyzing your Zendesk data with BI tools. We will show you how to quickly and easily export your tickets to Power BI and Tableau so that you can get deeper insights.

Let’s get started.

The Zendesk ticketing system is at the core of the Zendesk ecosystem. It provides companies with an end-to-end solution to manage and track customer issues through ticketing.

As a company, you can benefit from the Zendesk ticketing system's centralized approach. Here, you get a central dashboard where the customer support team can tag, categorize and assign tickets to the right team members for quick resolutions. For example, customers can connect via social media platforms like Facebook. In that case, your customer support team can see the message from the ticketing system without having access to the company's social media accounts.

By providing a contextual approach, Zendesk improves collaboration and where support can track all relevant data about the customer's issue.

Zendesk describes its ticketing system as a "shared inbox" for customers' queries. Its ability to provide an Omnidirectional support channel removes a huge burden on support staff when managing different customer communication channels. All communication is converted into tickets which makes them easy to handle.

Zendesk ticket types enable you to streamline tickets in the best possible way. It is completely optional, but to get the best out of Zendesk workflow, you should use it.

When a ticket is generated, it is assigned as “New.” In the next step of the ticket life cycle, you can assign any of the four Zendesk ticket types:

The ticket types give the support team a head start, considering the agent knows what problem type he expects to solve.

Apart from ticket types, you can also set up ticket priorities for better workflow. Zendesk offers four pre-defined priority types, including normal, low, high, and urgent.

To summarize, a user must fill a ticket form with mandatory fields such as subject and description of the issue they face. Depending on what other information the company needs, users may also need to provide additional data such as product version or type. Moreover, the company can choose standard ticket fields or create custom ticket fields.

Zendesk is a complete solution. With it, you can capture users' issues and process them through their excellent customer relationship management and ticketing system, including understanding customer data through their Zendesk Explore tool.

However, it is not a dedicated analytics and reporting tool and lacks the features you would get from a dedicated BI tool such as Power BI or Tableau. By transiting to a dedicated BI tool, you gain many benefits, ideally missed if you stick to Zendesk's in-build Explore tool.

Let's take a look at the benefits below:

Improved organization efficiency and productivity: Overall, the BI tool can let you understand your data to create actionable insights. As every ticket detail is kept together, BI tools can uncover hidden insights, which organizations can use to improve their efficiency and productivity.

There are many ways you can export Zendesk tickets to Power BI. Another obvious way is to use Zendesk’s built-in feature (not available on the Team plan). It lets you export data via a downloadable file in JSON, XML, or CSV format and can take some time to prepare before you can download it. This method is not straightforward, as you must first enable export from your admin account. If you opt to do XML export, you need to use Zendesk API endpoints to export custom fields.

Clearly, using Zendesk’s built-in export feature is not user-friendly and is not ideal for continuous data transfer from Zendesk to Power BI.

That’s why the best solution is to use Alpha Serve Power BI Connector for Zendesk. It is an enterprise-grade app that seamlessly connects Zendesk and Power BI. The connector brings multiple benefits, including export comments, satisfaction ratings, ticket metrics, agents & users, organizations, etc.

Exporting all tickets from Zendesk to Power BI is easy. Before we get started, you need permission to access Power BI Connector for the Zendesk application. If you don’t have permission, ask the Zendesk administrator for it.

Create a data source in Zendesk:
1.From the navigation menu, click on the icon against Power BI Connector for the Zendesk application.
2.It’ll open up a new page. From there, select “Create a Data Source.”

3.Now you need to fill in fields for successful data source creation. These fields include the title section's Name, Description, and Share settings. For the filter tickets section, you also need to select a few options including select by query, filter, etc.
4.As you want to export all tickets, you need to choose “All” in “Filter Ticket Selection.”
5.You’ll now get a Data Source URL.

With the data source created, you need to follow the steps below.
Import data into Microsoft Power BI:
1.Copy the generated Data Source URL.
2.Now, launch Power BI Desktop. Click on Get Data and then OData feed. Paste the URL in the feed.

Next, complete the basic authorization in Power BI. Here, you need to enter your Zendesk email as User name and API token as a password.

Once authorized, you can now select related tables. Finally, click on Load to load the data.

You can also export specific tickets or groups of tickets. To do so, you need to follow the steps mentioned above. However, to filter data you need to click on Select by query to create your own request and search for specific tickets. Filter enables you to modify search query, using a set of pre-defined filters.

You can further narrow down ticket data by selecting tables and fields. Each table contains different fields. To include the table, simply click the checkbox. Subsections with fields available for export will be expanded. Toggle the checkbox, to include/exclude it from the export.

For more detailed steps, check out our User guide.

Like Power BI, the best way to export Zendesk tickets to Tableau is to use Alpha Serve Tableau Connector for Zendesk. The connector is capable of providing a seamless connection between the two platforms.

The Tableau Connector for Zendesk allows export for all Support data, including comments, agents & users, tickets, ticket metrics, etc. This connector enables you to create comprehensive reports based on required data and use them to make data-driven decisions.

In a newly opened page, fill Name, Description, and Share settings before saving the data source.

In Filter Ticket Selection, choose All to export all existing tickets.

Click Save to complete the successful data source creation. And finally, Copy the created Data Source URL to import data to the Tableau application.

Choose OData connection. In Server field paste generated URL that you copied previously. Select Users and Passwords for authorization. Put your email address for the Username and API Token for the Password. Complete the connection steps by Sign In.

Tableau will now process your request, giving you access to all tickets from Zendesk to Tableau.
For a more detailed guide, check out our User Guide - Tableau Connector for Zendesk.

To export specific tickets or groups of tickets from Zendesk to Tableau, you must follow a similar process to “exporting all tickets.” However, you need to select a query to create your filter data and request. Also, during the process, you must select Zendesk fields to narrow Zendesk data export.

To create specific ticket export follow the steps mentioned above with a few differences. To filter data, click on Select by query to create your own request and search for specific tickets. Filter enables you to modify search query, using a set of pre-defined filters.

You can further narrow down ticket data by selecting tables and fields. Each table contains different fields. To include the table, simply click the checkbox. Subsection with fields available for export will be expanded when you toggle the checkbox, to include/exclude it from the export.

Once you select the required tables and fields, click Save to complete the successful data source creation. The further steps for data import to Tableau are the same as for “all tickets”.

Empowering your business with BI tools can change your outlook on problem-solving and growth. If you’re using Zendesk, you already know the importance of customer satisfaction. You can refine and improve customer support with BI tools like Tableau and Power BI. However, to make the most out of it, you need a reliable and seamless connection. Our Power BI Connector for Zendesk and Tableau Connector for Zendesk is the best ways to connect Zendesk to your preferred BI tool. So, what do you think about Alpha Serve connectors? Share this article with your thought.