Connecting external data sources to Explore

Hi @Vladimir Petrushenka , what kind of external data are you looking to plug into Expore? For example, is this data in an SQL or Oracle database? Or something else? Data about your products or services or about your customers? Just looking to understand your use case a little better!

Thanks Laura. If possible, we want to normalise certain types of Zendesk tickets contact against our own product's data. So for example, we'd like to build reports that compare complaint tickets against total sessions for our website/app in order to get a ratio of complaints/sessions. We have the product data in various places, but for example Tableau.

Agreed, this would be really useful

I agree. We create quotes and plan installations via Odoo. It would be great to be able to link that data in Explore with the number of calls and tickets created each week, to e.g. get a contact to order ratio. 

Hello, I would love to have this possibility, too. 

My need would be to calculate the ratio between number of tickets and the usage in hours of hours manchines. I can for sure do this in Excel, but bein able to enter this in Explore would permit to have everything into the same page. 

Hello, I would also be interested by this, to compare our volume of tickets against our volume of transactions (external data). Thanks

Same here...similar to @lucas28, want to correlate #bugs filed vs #tickets.

This is a feature we would also find valuable. Ideally via some sort of connector (SQL or a REST API or...) that we could establish mappings in so that we're not forced to continually re-upload bulk data.

100% would be useful. Using Zendesk Explore as a story telling tool to compare our support and guide actions against other impacts and outcomes (external data sets) would be a business reporting game changer for us.

Hey Vladimir,

Thank you for reaching out to us with your interest in Explore's potential for integration with external data sources.

While the initial discussion back in 2017 did touch upon such functionality, I understand how directly connecting to other data points within Explore would greatly enhance your reporting capabilities.

As for your current needs, the use of Custom Objects is indeed a step towards integrating external data. We are also planning updates to the Custom Objects functionality in the coming months, which should provide more versatility for data handling within Explore.

Additionally, we are continuously improving our export features. By enhancing the robustness of exporting capabilities, it will become more convenient for you to blend Explore data with other sources using external business intelligence tools. This approach may offer a different angle to achieve your desired outcome in the meantime.

We value inputs like yours as we shape our product development roadmap. Yet, while the direct incorporation of external data into Explore is not currently on our immediate roadmap, feedback such as yours is crucial for prioritizing features that provide the most value to our customers. Your suggestions have been noted and will help inform future planning.

For the latest updates on what's developing in Explore and other Zendesk products, please stay connected with our What’s New Community Topic and our scheduled Community events.

Thank you for your continued support as a Zendesk user, and please keep sharing your ideas with us!