What are the custom data APIs?

Hi @Miriam -- I'm going to answer in English -- I hope that's OK. 

Sunshine is a collection of features that can help create tighter integrations with external systems.

Sunshine Custom Objects is a "database as a service" feature and allows you to define various record types and schema to store data (which very well could be synchronized with an external system).

Another feature is Sunshine Profiles, which allows you to extend Zendesk User records with additional information that's tied to an external system.

I would also review Integrating with Zendesk for more integration options.

I hope this gives additional resources to look at. If I can clarify anything, please post back!

¿Si tengo una BD externa de clientes con diferentes atributos, puedo usar Sunshine para integrar esa información con los tickets?

gracias 

Hi There, I'm pretty new with Zendesk and trying to find out if Sunshine is the answer to my questions. 

My goal with Zendesk is to be able to get information from my backend [**** Spring boot applications -microservices- different data sources, Mysql, Neo4J and Mongodb *****]  into Zendesk (realtime) using my APIs for our call center Reps to see relevant information every time a customer contacts us. Below some goals.

• A customer service representative is logged into (zendesk), he receives a call from a customer. At that point, I query my API to get information from my “”backend” and bring a summary of that client using the customer phone number as the entry.
• A customer sends an email (ticket) when a REP opens that ticket (or as soon the ticket is received) I query My backend API to get all information I have (customer and order related) tied to that email account.
• A  customer is interacting with the self-service zendesk Chat app in our site, the customer selects a menu that says for -Order Status click here- >>> then the user enters his order number >>>> then that service queries my API and gets “status for that order”
• A customer Calls and listen to our automated menu option >>>> One of the options is to check order status >>>>> the customer selects that option and is asked to enter his order number >>>> we query our backend API to get that information back to Zendesk and answer the customer.

Can someone please point me in the right direction here ?, I haven't had luck with support so far. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

(other community members, please share your experiences as well!)

Hi @Hector. 

As mentioned above, Sunshine is an umbrella term that contains a number of platform features.

The "Custom Objects" feature, in its simplest form, is a database-as-a-service type feature. It lets you extend the ticket and user data models with your own data. A much more advanced approach versus using, say, ticket or user custom fields. It basically allows you to store your external system's data inside Zendesk.

The "Profiles & Events" feature lets you tie "event" type data to profiles that map to various external systems (this is also a very simplified description).

For your scenarios above, however, my take is that you want to pull in additional information from a service you control and display that in the agent's Zendesk Support UI. You want to keep the data external, just pull it into Zendesk to help give the agent context around the ticket. For this, the Zendesk Apps framework may be your best bet. It allows custom UI extensions to be placed inside the Support interface. The custom extensions (known as "apps") can run custom code can make requests and get responses from external services. The response data can then be displayed by the app.

Here are some resources to investigate:

• Develop for Zendesk Support

• Zendesk Apps Tutorial Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

• How Apps framework client.request works

• JavaScript Promises — a Zendesk Introduction

If you pursue an Apps framework app, the community Zendesk Apps framework (ZAF) topic is a great resource for further questions.