Load Zendesk - Main API data to Azure Synapse Analytics

Zendesk Support is a customer service platform whose API provides access to support resources and incremental exports of records changed since a prior request. Everything needed to build a working Zendesk - Main API → Azure Synapse Analytics pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your Zendesk - Main API to Azure Synapse Analytics pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the Zendesk - Main API API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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Zendesk - Main API API at a glance

These values come from the Zendesk - Main API API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the Zendesk - Main API API?

Use HTTP Basic authentication with an Authorization header. For an API token, construct the credential string as {email_address}/token:{api_token}, Base64-encode it, and send Authorization: Basic {base64_value}; Content-Type: application/json is recommended and should be included for JSON requests. Zendesk is deprecating Support API tokens: unused tokens are scheduled for deactivation beginning July 28, 2026, and all API tokens are scheduled to stop working by April 30, 2027, so OAuth migration is required for long-term production use.

1. Get your credentials

As of 2026-10-12, use a Zendesk API token rather than an email/password API credential: Zendesk began phasing out password authentication on January 12, 2026, and API-token authentication is itself scheduled for removal (unused tokens auto-deactivate beginning July 28, 2026; all API tokens stop working by April 30, 2027). For a current production integration, prefer OAuth if available. To obtain a token for a transitional integration: 1) Sign in to Zendesk as an administrator. 2) In Admin Center, open Apps and integrations > APIs > API configuration. 3) Accept the API terms, click Get started if prompted, enable Allow API token access, and Save. 4) Open Apps and integrations > APIs > API tokens. 5) Click Add API token, optionally enter a description, and click Save. 6) Copy the token immediately and store it securely; it is used as the Basic-auth password. Use the verified Zendesk user email with '/token' appended as the username, for example username 'agent@example.com/token' and password '<api_token>'. Send Basic authentication over HTTPS; do not put credentials in the URL or request payload. The account subdomain is the part before '.zendesk.com', and the API base is https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.zendesk_main_api_source]
email = "agent@example.com/token"
api_token = "your_zendesk_api_token"

dlt reads this file automatically at runtime. With the harness, the setup-secrets skill prompts you for the values and never handles the raw credential in chat. For production, see setting up credentials with dlt.

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What Zendesk - Main API data can I load into Azure Synapse Analytics?

These are the Zendesk - Main API endpoints dlt can load into Azure Synapse Analytics:

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How do I load only new Zendesk - Main API records?

Zendesk - Main API exposes updated_at on tickets, so dlt can request only the records that changed since the last run. Set it as the cursor_path and dlt tracks the high-water mark for you between runs.

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{"name": "tickets", "endpoint": {
    "path": "tickets",
    "data_selector": "tickets",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "updated_at", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated Zendesk - Main API pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading /api/v2/tickets.json and /api/v2/incremental/tickets/cursor.json from the Zendesk - Main API API into Azure Synapse Analytics:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def zendesk_main_api_source(api_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2",
            "auth": {"type": "http_basic", "username": "REPLACE_ME", "password": api_token},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "tickets", "endpoint": {"path": "tickets", "data_selector": "tickets"}},
            {"name": "users", "endpoint": {"path": "users", "data_selector": "users"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_zendesk_main_api_to_synapse() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="zendesk_main_api_pipeline",
        destination="synapse",
        dataset_name="zendesk_main_api_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(zendesk_main_api_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_zendesk_main_api_to_synapse()

Run it with uv run python zendesk_main_api_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query Zendesk - Main API data in Azure Synapse Analytics?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("zendesk_main_api_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.tickets.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM zendesk_main_api_data.tickets LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the Zendesk - Main API to Azure Synapse Analytics pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw Zendesk - Main API loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load Zendesk - Main API data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack