Plan requirement
| Subscription | Any plan |
| Access | Admin |
Single sign-on leaves you without a Zendesk password, and it does not have to. An OAuth token is the answer, an API token the interim one.
What do I use when there is no Zendesk password?
Examples still show an email address and a password, and on an account using single sign-on there is no password to show, because your identity provider handles that. Nothing about SAML, OpenID Connect or JWT touches how an integration authenticates; they govern how people sign in.
Use an OAuth access token
That is what Zendesk now points at, sent as Authorization: Bearer {token}. Customers on basic authentication or API tokens are told they will have to migrate to it.
An API token still works today
Create it in Admin Center and authenticate with your email address plus the token, in the form {email}/token:{api_token}, rather than a password. It is the quick route and it has an end date: no new tokens can be created from 27 October 2026, and all of them stop working on 30 April 2027. Treat it as a bridge with a closing time rather than a destination.
Whose account should it run as?
Not yours. An integration tied to a named person breaks the day they leave and acts with their permissions until then. Give it a dedicated account with only the access it needs; that account does not need to be able to sign in interactively at all.
For something several people use
OAuth again, and it sits alongside single sign-on rather than against it: each person grants access through their normal login, and can withdraw it without anybody reissuing anything.
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.