Common scenarios
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Sync keeps failing; “could not authenticate” or 401 | The Subdomain field has the public Help Center URL (e.g. help.yourcompany.com) instead of the Zendesk instance name | Open the source, set Subdomain to just the instance name — your-company from your-company.zendesk.com. If you publish the Help Center on a custom domain, that custom domain is irrelevant — use the *.zendesk.com subdomain. |
| Article is public in Zendesk but shows as Internal in OpenCX | The article is assigned to a Zendesk | Either remove the segment restriction in Zendesk (article visibility refreshes on next sync), or override the visibility per-article in AI Instructions using the eye icon. |
| Archived article still appears in AI answers | Archived articles still sync today — they’re indexed as INTERNAL but the AI can still cite them in agent-facing surfaces | Delete the article in Zendesk (the next sync removes it from OpenCX), or bulk-delete from the Zendesk folder in AI Instructions. Tracked as a known gap — see the limits table on the Connect page. |
| One Zendesk account hosts multiple Help Centers — only one synced | Not supported today. The Airbyte Zendesk source ingests articles across all Help Centers in the account without a per-HC filter. | Use the Website crawler against the Help Center you don’t want Zendesk-synced, with the Zendesk source covering the primary one. Escalate to support if you need proper multi-HC scoping. |
| Re-syncing doesn’t pick up bulk edits | Incremental sync cursors on updated_at — but bulk edits in Zendesk sometimes don’t bump that field | Use Sync now on the source. If items are still stale, remove and re-add the source to force a full pull. |
| None of the above | — | Contact support with the source connection ID, a sample article URL, and what you expected vs. what you see. |
Limits
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Streams synced | articles only |
| Multi-Help-Center | Not supported today |
| Per-category/per-section scoping | Not supported today |
| Archived articles | Still synced (marked internal) |
| Sync cadence | Airbyte polling — typically every few hours |
| Credential fallback | None — the subdomain + email + API token must be valid together |
Related Documentation
Connect Zendesk
Re-check credentials, visibility rules, limits.
Zendesk overview
What this source does.
Zendesk integration
Ticketing and control surface.
Website crawler
Fallback for multi-HC scoping.