Weekly

Back up your Zendesk tickets every week

Each week you get a CSV of the tickets that changed, so you have your own copy.

Runs: Weekly
Apps: Zendesk
AI: Not needed
Access: read (admin for incremental export)

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every Sunday night, export the Zendesk tickets that changed this week to a CSV and email it to me.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

Zendesk keeps tickets, but plenty of companies still want an independent copy: for an audit, a data migration, a contract requirement or just peace of mind. Full exports are a manual process requiring an admin to click through, download and file the result, so the backup happens every few months, if at all. A closed account or an accidental bulk deletion would leave huge gaps.

Each week, only tickets that changed since the last export are fetched using Zendesk's incremental export, which works from a cursor. They are assembled into a CSV with columns such as ID, subject, status and dates, and the file is emailed or linked to you. The cursor is stored so the next run starts exactly where this one finished.

Good for operations and compliance owners who need a regular archive.

What you get out of it

A copy outside Zendesk
A weekly file means that if a bulk deletion or an account problem happens, you lose at most a week of history. Rebuilding from files is slow, but it is possible, which beats having nothing at all.
Audit requests answered quickly
Auditors and customers ask for ticket history at unpredictable times. With files on hand, a request that would have taken a day of exporting becomes a few minutes of searching your archive.
Small, efficient files
Because the cursor starts each run where the last one ended, each file holds only changed tickets. Files stay small and quick to open, and you avoid storing the same tickets over and over.
No admin chore to forget
A quarterly manual export is the sort of task that gets skipped under pressure. A weekly job runs whether or not anyone remembers, so the archive does not depend on one person's diary.
Smoother migration later
If you ever move to another help desk, the files form a structured history ready to import. You avoid a rushed bulk export during a transition, when time is shortest.
Peace of mind for owners
Knowing a copy of your support history sits outside the vendor reduces risk for compliance owners and makes vendor reviews calmer, because you are not wholly dependent on one system.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Once a week, ClickRuntime collects every Zendesk ticket that changed since the last backup.
It builds a CSV with each ticket's number, subject, status, priority and dates.
You get the CSV by email, and the automation remembers where it stopped so next week's backup picks up from there.

Before it runs live

Connect Zendesk

What you get

RunsWeekly

Back up your Zendesk tickets every weektoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Zendesk exportZendesk export: 318 tickets changed this week id,subject,status,priority,created_at,updated_at

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Zendesk steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

weekly_ticket_export_backup.pyexample

import csv, io, time
from clickruntime import on_trigger, http, credentials, notify

ZD = "https://yourcompany.zendesk.com/api/v2"
AGENT_EMAIL = "you@yourcompany.com"

def zd(method, path, **kw):
    r = http.request(method, f"{ZD}{path}", auth=(f"{AGENT_EMAIL}/token", credentials.secret("ZENDESK_API_TOKEN")), **kw)
    r.raise_for_status()
    return r.json() if r.content else None

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    params = {"start_time": int(time.time()) - 7 * 86400}
    tickets = []
    while True:
        page = zd("GET", "/incremental/tickets/cursor.json", params=params)
        tickets += page["tickets"]
        if page["end_of_stream"]:
            break
        params = {"cursor": page["after_cursor"]}
    out = io.StringIO()
    w = csv.writer(out)
    w.writerow(["id", "subject", "status", "priority", "created_at", "updated_at"])
    for t in tickets:
        w.writerow([t["id"], t["subject"], t["status"], t["priority"], t["created_at"], t["updated_at"]])
    notify.email_me(f"Zendesk export: {len(tickets)} tickets changed this week", out.getvalue())
    return {"tickets": len(tickets)}

FAQ

Common questions

Does the export include comments and attachments?

The default export covers ticket fields such as ID, subject, status, requester and timestamps. Comment bodies and attachments can be added as extra columns or files, though attachments make the export much larger. Attachments would make the file much larger.

What if the cursor gets lost?

The cursor is stored after each successful run. If it is ever lost, the export can restart from a chosen date, which creates a larger file once but does not affect later weekly runs. The cursor can be reset to a chosen date.

Which Zendesk plans allow incremental export?

The incremental export API is available through the Zendesk API with rate limits that differ by plan. A connected account with permission to export tickets, usually an admin, is required. Incremental export needs API access, which usually means an admin account.

What permissions does it need?

read (admin for incremental export). Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it runs (weekly). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Daily