Zendesk + Zendesk Sunshine
Build a Complete Customer Picture by Connecting Zendesk with Zendesk Sunshine
Tie your support ticketing data to Zendesk Sunshine's flexible CRM platform so every agent sees the full customer story.
Why integrate Zendesk and Zendesk Sunshine?
Zendesk and Zendesk Sunshine do different jobs. Zendesk handles support tickets, SLA management, and agent workflows. Zendesk Sunshine is an open CRM layer built on AWS that lets you model any kind of customer data you want. Useful on their own — but without a live connection between them, agents are working blind and your CRM is always a step behind. Connecting the two through tray.ai creates a bidirectional data bridge: support interactions get richer context from CRM records, and CRM records stay current with real ticket activity. Siloed support data becomes something you can actually act on.
Automate & integrate Zendesk & Zendesk Sunshine
Use case
Enrich Zendesk Tickets with Sunshine Custom Object Data
When a new ticket opens in Zendesk, automatically pull the customer's Zendesk Sunshine Custom Object records — subscription tier, product usage stats, account health score — and surface them on the ticket sidebar. Agents get full context immediately, without switching tools or asking customers to repeat themselves.
Use case
Sync Ticket Events Back to Sunshine Customer Profiles
Every time a ticket is resolved, escalated, reopened, or tagged in Zendesk, a workflow updates the customer's Sunshine profile with that interaction. Your CRM layer always reflects the current support relationship, which makes segmentation accurate and proactive outreach actually timely.
Use case
Automate Ticket Creation from Sunshine Custom Object Events
When a Zendesk Sunshine Custom Object event fires — a contract nearing expiry, a usage threshold crossed, a churn-risk flag set — tray.ai automatically creates a proactive Zendesk ticket and routes it to the right team. CRM intelligence becomes a support action without anyone doing it manually.
Use case
Build Unified Customer Timelines Across Both Platforms
Aggregate ticket open, update, and close events from Zendesk alongside Sunshine relationship and profile changes into a single chronological timeline stored in Sunshine. Any team member — support, sales, success — gets a complete view of every customer touchpoint without digging through two systems.
Use case
Trigger Sunshine Relationship Graph Updates from Ticket Metadata
Use tray.ai to parse ticket tags, custom fields, and CSAT scores from Zendesk and push those signals into the Zendesk Sunshine relationship graph, updating connections between contacts, organizations, and product objects. Your relationship model stays current with real support activity rather than aging CRM entries.
Use case
Sync Organization and Contact Data Between Zendesk and Sunshine
When a new organization or end-user is created or updated in Zendesk, automatically create or update the matching record in Zendesk Sunshine Custom Objects — and the other way around. Both platforms stay in agreement on organization hierarchy and contact details without anyone manually reconciling them.
Use case
Route Tickets Based on Sunshine Customer Tier Data
When a ticket comes into Zendesk, query Zendesk Sunshine in real time for the customer's account tier, spend history, or VIP status, then apply the right priority level, SLA policy, and routing rule automatically. High-value customers reach senior agents immediately, with no manual triage required.
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Zendesk & Zendesk Sunshine Challenges
What challenges are there when working with Zendesk & Zendesk Sunshine and how will using Tray.ai help?
Challenge
Keeping Custom Object Schemas in Sync with Ticket Data Models
Zendesk Sunshine Custom Objects have flexible, user-defined schemas that evolve independently of the structured fields in Zendesk tickets. When either schema changes — new fields added, types modified, objects deprecated — integrations built on rigid field mappings break silently, causing data loss or sync failures.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
Tray.ai's visual data mapper makes field relationships explicit and easy to update without writing code. When schemas change, you can update mappings in the tray.ai workflow canvas in minutes. Built-in error handling and alerting notify you immediately if a field mapping fails, so nothing goes missing without you knowing.
Challenge
Handling High-Volume Ticket Events Without Missing Updates
Enterprise support teams can generate thousands of ticket events per hour. Polling-based integrations between Zendesk and Sunshine struggle to keep pace, causing delays in CRM updates and stale context showing up for agents during active ticket resolution.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
Tray.ai uses event-driven webhook triggers for both Zendesk and Zendesk Sunshine, so every ticket event is processed in near real-time regardless of volume. Tray.ai's infrastructure handles concurrent workflow executions automatically, removing processing queues and data lag even during peak support periods.
Challenge
Avoiding Infinite Sync Loops in Bidirectional Workflows
When syncing data bidirectionally between Zendesk and Zendesk Sunshine, updates made by the integration itself can trigger new sync events, creating an infinite loop that floods both systems with redundant API calls and corrupted data records.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
Tray.ai has built-in workflow branching and conditional logic that lets you stamp records with a sync source identifier before writing them. Subsequent workflow triggers check for that identifier and skip records the integration already wrote, breaking the loop cleanly without custom code.
Challenge
Authenticating and Permissioning Across Both Zendesk API Surfaces
Zendesk's core Support API and the Zendesk Sunshine Custom Objects API use different endpoint structures and may require different OAuth scopes or API tokens depending on your Zendesk plan and Sunshine configuration. Managing these credentials separately creates maintenance overhead and security risk.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
Tray.ai's centralized authentication manager stores and manages credentials for both the Zendesk Support API and the Zendesk Sunshine API independently and securely. Tokens are encrypted at rest, refreshed automatically where supported, and can be updated in one place without touching individual workflows.
Challenge
Mapping Complex Zendesk Sunshine Relationship Graphs to Flat Ticket Fields
Zendesk Sunshine's relationship graph can model many-to-many connections between contacts, organizations, and custom objects — a richness that doesn't translate neatly to Zendesk's relatively flat ticket and user data model. Getting the right relational context for a given ticket without over-fetching or under-fetching requires careful query logic.
How Tray.ai Can Help:
Tray.ai's workflow logic includes data transformation steps — JSONPath extraction, conditional branching, and loop operations — that let you traverse Sunshine relationship graphs, filter relevant nodes, and reshape complex relational data into the flat field structure Zendesk ticket custom fields expect, all configured visually without custom code.
Start using our pre-built Zendesk & Zendesk Sunshine templates today
Start from scratch or use one of our pre-built Zendesk & Zendesk Sunshine templates to quickly solve your most common use cases.
Zendesk & Zendesk Sunshine Templates
Find pre-built Zendesk & Zendesk Sunshine solutions for common use cases
Template
New Zendesk Ticket → Enrich with Sunshine Custom Object and Update Sidebar
Triggers when a new ticket is created in Zendesk, queries Zendesk Sunshine for all Custom Object records tied to that customer, and writes the enriched data back to the ticket's custom fields or sidebar app so agents have context immediately.
Steps:
- Trigger on new ticket creation event in Zendesk via webhook
- Extract customer email or user ID from the ticket payload
- Query Zendesk Sunshine for Custom Objects linked to that customer profile
- Map relevant Sunshine fields (account tier, health score, product usage) to Zendesk ticket custom fields
- Update Zendesk ticket with enriched data and notify assigned agent
Connectors Used: Zendesk, Zendesk Sunshine
Template
Zendesk Ticket Resolved → Update Sunshine Customer Profile
When a ticket is marked solved in Zendesk, this template pushes the resolution details — ticket ID, category, resolution time, CSAT score — into the customer's Zendesk Sunshine Custom Object profile, keeping CRM interaction history current.
Steps:
- Trigger on ticket status change to 'Solved' in Zendesk
- Extract ticket metadata including resolution time, category tags, and CSAT score
- Locate the corresponding Custom Object record in Zendesk Sunshine by customer ID
- Append ticket resolution event to the Sunshine customer interaction log
- Update Sunshine relationship attributes such as support frequency or satisfaction index
Connectors Used: Zendesk, Zendesk Sunshine
Template
Zendesk Sunshine Custom Object Event → Create Proactive Zendesk Ticket
Listens for defined Custom Object events in Zendesk Sunshine — a churn-risk flag, a renewal date approaching, a usage drop — and automatically creates and assigns a proactive support or success ticket in Zendesk.
Steps:
- Trigger on a specified Zendesk Sunshine Custom Object event or field value change
- Evaluate event data against configured business rules (e.g., churn score above threshold)
- Create a new ticket in Zendesk with pre-populated subject, description, and priority
- Assign ticket to the appropriate agent group based on customer tier from Sunshine
- Add internal note to ticket with full Sunshine context for the assigned agent
Connectors Used: Zendesk Sunshine, Zendesk
Template
Bidirectional Contact Sync Between Zendesk Users and Sunshine Custom Objects
Maintains a continuous two-way sync of user and organization records between Zendesk and Zendesk Sunshine, creating or updating records in both platforms whenever a change is detected in either system, with conflict resolution logic to prevent data overwrites.
Steps:
- Trigger on user or organization create/update events in either Zendesk or Zendesk Sunshine
- Check for an existing matching record in the target system using email or external ID
- Apply conflict resolution logic to determine which record is the authoritative source
- Create or update the record in the target system with mapped fields
- Log the sync event and flag any conflicts for manual review
Connectors Used: Zendesk, Zendesk Sunshine
Template
Zendesk CSAT Score → Sunshine Relationship Score Update
After a CSAT survey response is captured in Zendesk, this template parses the satisfaction rating and comment, then pushes a weighted score update to the customer's relationship attributes in Zendesk Sunshine for real-time health score recalculation.
Steps:
- Trigger on new CSAT satisfaction rating submitted in Zendesk
- Extract rating score, free-text comment, and associated ticket metadata
- Apply a configurable weighting formula to calculate the contribution to the health score
- Locate the customer's Custom Object record in Zendesk Sunshine
- Update the Sunshine relationship score attribute and append CSAT event to interaction history
Connectors Used: Zendesk, Zendesk Sunshine
Template
Zendesk Ticket Escalation → Sunshine Profile Flag and Alert
When a ticket is escalated in Zendesk — by hitting a priority threshold or being manually escalated — this template flags the customer's Sunshine profile with an active escalation attribute and sends an alert to the customer success team with full context.
Steps:
- Trigger on ticket priority change to 'Urgent' or escalation tag applied in Zendesk
- Retrieve full ticket details and customer information from Zendesk
- Update the customer's Zendesk Sunshine Custom Object with an active escalation flag and timestamp
- Query Sunshine for additional customer context such as revenue tier and account age
- Send a formatted alert to the customer success Slack channel or email distribution list with combined context
Connectors Used: Zendesk, Zendesk Sunshine