How it works
You can easily connect your public Zendesk Help Center to Intercom with our no-code integration. This allows you to continuously sync your content from Zendesk, keeping it as your source of truth while using the articles to power Intercom’s AI features.
Once your articles are synced to Intercom, you can:
Use them to power Fin AI Agent and Copilot for accurate, automated answers.
Make them accessible in the Inbox for teammates to share in conversations.
Feature them in your Intercom Help Center for customers to self-serve.
Our new Zendesk sync is built on a robust service pipeline that improves the speed and reliability of your content integration. It also automatically extracts metadata like labels and categories from Zendesk and applies them as tags in Intercom, helping you organize content and apply rules for more effective AI resolution.
Connecting with the new Zendesk importer
This method uses a secure API key for authentication and allows you to either sync your content from Zendensk.
Step 1: Generate a Zendesk API token
In your Zendesk account, go to the Admin Center.
Navigate to Apps and integrations > APIs > Zendesk API.
Click the API token tab and click Add API token.
Give the token a descriptive name (e.g., "Intercom Integration") and copy the token.
Important: Zendesk will only show you this token once, so make sure to keep it somewhere safe before continuing.
Step 2: Connect Zendesk in Intercom
From your Intercom workspace, go to Knowledge > Sources.
Under "Public articles", find Zendesk and click Sync or Import.
Enter your Zendesk subdomain (e.g.,
your-company.zendesk.com).
For "Authentication method", select API key.
In the "Email address" field, enter the email address of your Zendesk admin.
In the "API token" field, paste the token you generated from Zendesk.
(Optional) If you have articles in Zendesk that are only visible to logged-in users, toggle on Sync articles for signed-in users.
Choose the Intercom Target Help Center where you want the content to appear.
Select Sync content.
Click Sync to begin.
What happens after you connect
We will begin crawling your Zendesk site and bringing your published articles into Intercom. This process can take anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour, depending on the number of articles. We'll send you an email once it's complete, and the sync will then run every hour to pull in the latest content.
You can check the status at any time in Knowledge > Sources. After the process has completed, refresh the Content page in Knowledge to see your articles.
How Zendesk metadata is synced
To save you time, the sync automatically converts the structure and metadata of your Zendesk knowledge base into a format that’s useful in Intercom.
Zendesk labels, categories, and content tags are all synced and converted into article tags in Intercom.
Your Zendesk article structure (collections and sections) will be replicated in Intercom. Uncategorized content will be placed in a collection named "General".
Tip: With these tags automatically applied, you can filter content in Knowledge, or create specific audiences in Fin AI Agent to control which articles it uses for certain customers. For example, a Zendesk label "EMEA-only" becomes a tag in Intercom, which you can use to ensure Fin only provides those articles to your European audience.
Manage your connection
Remove a Sync
If you’d like to remove the sync with Zendesk (and related data), you can do this from Knowledge > Sources by clicking Manage > Remove this source under public articles.
You’ll see a green confirmation banner indicating the removal has been successful and synced articles will be deleted from Knowledge in Intercom.
Important: Removing the connection will delete all synced Zendesk articles from Intercom. This will also remove their data from your Article reports, which may cause your reporting numbers to decrease.
Important considerations
Zendesk remains your source of truth: You will still keep your customer-facing Help Center website on Zendesk, and all edits must be made there.
Read-only in Intercom: Synced articles are view-only in Intercom. Changes made in Zendesk will be updated in Intercom during the next hourly sync.
Search indexing: To avoid duplicate content penalties, we prevent search engines from indexing your Intercom Help Center when you have an active sync. Your Zendesk Help Center is assumed to be the primary one for search engines.
Linking: If a customer clicks the "Open in Help Center" link on a synced article in the Messenger, it will open the article in your Zendesk Help Center.
What gets synced: We only process published Zendesk articles that are either public or visible to signed-in users. Internal or private knowledge base articles are not supported.
Duplicate content: If you already have articles published in Intercom when you start the sync, you may end up with duplicated content.
Workflows: If you use Workflows (formerly Custom Bots) that link to Intercom articles, you'll need to update them to point to the new synced articles.
Language support: We don’t support articles in languages that are not currently supported by Intercom. If you have multiple English variants (like
en-usanden-gb), they will be mapped to Intercom's general English (en), which may result in separate articles being created to avoid data loss.Video support: We support videos embedded via
iframeusing Zendesk's 'Add video' button (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo, Loom). Custom HTML, CSS, or JavaScript video embeds are not supported.
Syncing with the legacy Zendesk importer
You can start a sync from Knowledge > Sources by clicking Sync or Import under public articles.
Now enter your Zendesk subdomain and choose the option to “Sync content” then go ahead and click Sync.
Note:
If you already have articles published in Intercom, we’ll keep these existing articles and you may end up with duplicated content. You can choose to delete all Intercom articles before starting the first sync.
You’ll also need to update any Workflows containing Intercom articles with the new synced articles to ensure they’re linking to the right content and kept up-to-date with changes you make in Zendesk.
Once the first sync is started, it's not possible to force stop it. You can remove the sync once the initial sync is completed.
Once the sync is complete, you’ll receive an email to your registered Intercom email address which confirms how many articles were synchronized.
After syncing public articles from Zendesk, the content will appear in a flat list inside a synced folder you can view from the left sidebar in Knowledge > Content. (Existing Zendesk folder structure is currently not supported in Knowledge but will be coming soon).
Public Articles that are synced from Zendesk will be shown in Knowledge as view-only and can’t be edited. All changes must be made through Zendesk and will automatically propagate to Intercom with the next sync. However, you can configure the settings for synced articles such as enabling them for Fin or managing audience rules.
Note:
You’ll need to import articles from Zendesk if you want to make them available in your Intercom Help Center and edit them in Intercom.
Re-syncs automatically run every hour and propagate any changes made to articles in Zendesk into Intercom. This includes new articles, article content changes, and removing articles.
Syncs that run automatically following the first sync won’t send an email on completion.
What is my Zendesk subdomain?
This is the domain for your Zendesk account (not your Help Center URL). Your Zendesk subdomain is its unique identifier and there are a few ways to find it which you can see here.
Using synced articles in Intercom Support tools
After syncing your Zendesk articles with Intercom, you can use them to power the following Intercom Support tools (if they’re included in your plan):
Browsing articles
Searching for articles
Article suggestions (Messenger Home)
AI answers
Article suggestions
AI answers
Search and send articles in conversations
Read-only capability
Using synced articles via the Public API
Synced articles and their content will be retrievable from the Public API similar to Intercom articles. However, you won’t be able to edit or manipulate synced articles via API calls.
Affected API endpoints:
Unaffected API endpoints:
Reporting on your synced articles
You can track the performance of your synced Zendesk articles in the same way you track your native Intercom articles.
All views, reactions, and search data for your synced content will appear in your main Articles report. This allows you to see which articles are being used most, what customers are searching for, and which articles might need improvement in Zendesk.
You can find the report in Reports > All reports > Intercom reports. For a detailed guide on how to use this report, see our article "Articles report".
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