Integrating Watchman Monitoring with Zendesk will allow the creation of new tickets in your Zendesk account with alert and warning details as a private comment on the ticket, and mute further warnings until the ticket is resolved.
Warnings for an issue will remain muted until the ticket is marked closed or resolved.
Zendesk's Essential plan will be unable to access our Zendesk app, and Watchman Monitoring will be unable to clear green ticket icons from our dashboard.
Why integrate with Zendesk?
Computers report their status hourly. Rather than email every hour, Watchman Monitoring auto-mutes for one day, and offers additional muting options.
With a ticketing system, such as Zendesk, in place, the ticket itself becomes the mute. Tickets are created in a format where setting the "requestor" to the end user makes the related labor easier to track and invoice.
Enabling the Zendesk Integration
To allow Watchman Monitoring to send warnings directly into a Zendesk account:
- Turn the Zendesk Integration toggle to On.
- Enter the Zendesk Subdomain
- Enter the Zendesk Admin email address
- Enter the Zendesk API Token information into the Watchman Server interface.
Click the Save button.
Private Ticket Creation with Reference Email
Watchman Monitoring has introduced a new, better method for ticket creation that can have an impact on your existing Zendesk workflow. Private Ticket Creation allows for triggers to act upon the Ticket Created status, along with the access to the entire content of the ticket.
Upgrading your Zendesk integration
Watchman Monitoring's original Zendesk integration operated by creating a ticket and updating the ticket. Existing subscribers using the original Zendesk integration will be prompted to upgrade their integration. Upgrade by clicking the Details… button, select the Actions menu.
Actions > Upgrade Zendesk Integration…
You can also click Enable now… under Use Reference Email.
You will be presented a confirmation with additional details of benefits of the new Integration. Click Upgrade to continue.
Set Ticket Requester using Reference Email
Enabling Private Ticket Creation using the Reference Email allows the creation of tickets with the requester automatically set from the Reference Email. Tickets remain hidden to the requester until a public reply is added. Select the Set ticket requester using Reference Email when possible option to enable this feature.
When creating tickets using the Reference Email, the computer Reference Email has the highest priority, followed by the group Reference Email, and if no Reference Email is set, will default to the notification user.
If the Reference Email feature is not enabled in your subscription, you will be displayed a notice with a link to enable Reference Email.
Follow the Reference Email link to enable this feature. A link to return to your Zendesk Integration configuration will be provided.
Enabling Reference Email is not required to use the Zendesk Private Ticket Creation integration. The ticket creation process will react to New Ticket condition, and triggers can act upon all ticket content. The ticket requester will remain notifications@monitoringclient.com.
Downgrading your Zendesk integration
You can downgrade your Zendesk integration back to the import ticket workflow that adds a public comment. To downgrade, from the Actions menu, select Downgrade Integration…
You will be presented a confirmation with additional details of limitations of the reverting the Integration. Click Downgrade to continue.
What are the additional fields for in Zendesk?
Watchman Monitoring adds several fields to your Zendesk integration when enabled. The Watchman Plugin field holds the plugin slug for the notification or alert. The Watchman Dashboard field holds a link to your Watchman Monitoring Dashboard for use by the Watchman Monitoring Zendesk App. The Watchman ID field holds the Wachman Monitoring unique ID for the computer.
Will I still get emails?
A few items will still generate an email to the Subscriber:
- Newly created computer records
- A daily report of computers which do not report when expected
- Subscription related emails, such as payment receipts
- Posts by Watchman Monitoring staff and fellow subscribers in our Subscriber Community
Everything else is converted directly into a help ticket.
If a computer reports more than one warning, will it be tracked on a single ticket?
Each warning generates a separate ticket in Zendesk. Two tickets would be created if one computer reported both a failing hard drive and out of date backup.
Can alerts be merged?
A single Zendesk ticket number can be used to mute multiple warnings by entering the ticket number in the muting interface.
From the Actions menu, select All Muting Options...
The Plugin Mute Settings will slide out. Enter the related ticket number in the Mute With Existing Ticket field.
Can the Zendesk integration break? What would happen then?
The Zendesk integration relies on your Zendesk subdomain, administrator’s user account, and its API key. A change in any of these items would prevent the Watchman Monitoring server from accessing the Zendesk account.
If the integration fails, an alert is emailed to the primary email address on the Watchman Monitoring account. The Watchman Monitoring server automatically reverts to sending emails as issues are reported.
When the Zendesk integration is corrected, new issues will again create Zendesk tickets, and existing issues muted via ticket number will cease generating emails.
You can test you integration from the Actions menu > Test Zendesk Integration.
Disabling Zendesk Integration
In the Actions menu, you can Disable Zendesk Integration. This will maintain all of the muting that has been associated with Zendesk tickets allowing you to reenable Zendesk and maintain previous ticket muting. This action is considered safe and non-destructive.
The option to Reset Ticketing System... will clear all muting associated with Zendesk. This is a destructive process and cannot be reverted.
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