PSA Data Export guide
Create Zendesk API credentials for backup
Set up least-privilege Zendesk read access using OAuth token or API token, with tenant and regional details checked before backup.
On this page
Before you create credentials
Sign in as an administrator authorized to create integrations. Decide who owns rotation and revocation. Confirm the account plan exposes the modules you need and use a dedicated integration identity rather than a person's everyday login.
Create the Zendesk credential
Enable token or OAuth access, use a restricted integration identity, and retain the Zendesk subdomain. The current native model is OAuth token or API token. Follow the Zendesk official documentation in the live tenant because labels, available scopes, and regional hosts can change.
Choose read access
Request read access only for tickets and custom fields, comments and events, users and organizations, and attachment metadata and downloadable files. Do not grant create, update, or delete permissions when the vendor offers separate scopes. Some products attach visibility to the underlying user role even when a token itself exists.
Record connection details safely
Keep the credential secret together with the tenant identifier, subdomain or base URL, region/data center, expiration date, and granted scopes. Do not paste secrets into tickets, screenshots, source control, browser localStorage, or this marketing site.
Validate the connection
Call a harmless documented read endpoint, confirm the expected tenant, then list a small sample from each selected record group. Record permission failures and unavailable modules. Use cursor-based incremental ticket export for account-wide history; ordinary ticket list endpoints omit archived tickets. Fetch comments and attachment content deliberately.
Rotate or revoke access
Create the replacement first, validate it, update the consuming application through its secret store, then revoke the prior credential. Recheck scheduled captures after a role, license, region, or owner changes.
Plan your independent PSA archive
Keep source history available after your move. Join the waitlist for invitation-only BackupPSA access, or contact us about your platform.