Zendesk Guide

Exchange data with Zendesk Help Center.

Ilya Krukowski avatar
Written by Ilya Krukowski
Updated over a week ago

This feature is available from the Pro plan and above.

Use this app to sync your Zendesk Help Desk with Lokalise.

Known limitations

  • Zendesk API has certain limitations when working with content blocks. Specifically, content blocks will be exported and translated as text. It means you'll have to check and update translated articles after exporting from Lokalise to make sure that the content blocks are there (instead of their textual representation).

  • Please remember that Lokalise can only sync categories, sections and articles that already exist in your help center.

Prerequisites

Enable localizations

As an optional step, add the languages to which you want your help center translated. It can be done at Zendesk Admin Center, under Account > Localization:

Add languages to the help center

Add languages to your help center by navigating to Help center settings > Language settings and selecting the languages (press Add new language to create more languages):

Other things to consider

  • Your profile should have permissions to modify Zendesk guide content to properly export translated items. Specifically, the user who installs the Zendesk Guide App, needs to have admin or agent access with publishing permissions to manage articles (create/update).

  • It's also a good idea to use a separate Lokalise project for Zendesk localization.

Setting up

First of all, open your Lokalise project and navigate to the Apps page:

Find Zendesk Guide in the list, click on it and then press Install. Click Install once again and enter your Zendesk subdomain. For example, you would enter mycorp_support that is a subdomain of mycorp_support.zendesk.com:

Click Authorize and allow Lokalise to access your Zendesk project.

Importing items

This app also supports automated import. You can learn more in the corresponding article.

Once you authorize, the list of sections, categories and articles will appear. Select the required items and press Import selected to download the chosen content to your Lokalise project for further translation.

You'll be presented with the following dialog:

  • Import languages — choose one or more languages to import translations for. Missing languages will be automatically added into your Lokalise project.

  • Overwrite updated translations — whether you'd like to update already downloaded items with the values from Zendesk.

  • Skip key creation for empty translations — when enabled, translation keys for empty Zendesk items won't be created on Lokalise.

  • Assign tags — choose the tags that you'd like to assign to the created translation keys on Lokalise. For example, if you've chosen Title, your keys will be assigned with tags named after the corresponding articles' titles.

Click OK once you are ready. Please note that the import process will be performed in the background, and you can check its status on the Activity page.

You can narrow the scope using the Filter dropdown or use the search box in the top right corner:

Performing translations

After the items are downloaded and new keys are created, you may proceed to the translation process as usual. If you've ticked the Assign tags option during when starting the import operation, the newly created keys will be assigned with tags as shown in the screenshot:

Specifically, each key has the following tags:

  • "Zendesk Guide" — specifies that this content is related to Zendesk Guide.

  • "title" or "body" — specifies which part of the article the key belongs to.

  • A tag specifying the item type (article, section, or category).

  • A tag named after the corresponding post, section, or category.

Exporting to Zendesk Guide

This app also supports automated export. You can learn more in the corresponding article.

When the translations are done, return to the app page and select the items you want to export to Zendesk. Next, click the Export selected button.

Choose the languages to export and tick Don't export empty translations if needed. The selected languages will be updated in Zendesk.

Reimporting from Zendesk guide

If any changes were made in Zendesk, you can update the existing Lokalise keys by importing items from Zendesk. To achieve that, choose one or more linked items and click Import selected.

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