Support tools — Zendesk and Intercom
Connect Zendesk and Intercom via OAuth. Both providers use the same setup pattern; this guide walks you through both.
TL;DR
Support tools — Zendesk and Intercom
Zendesk and Intercom are the two inbound support providers Watari supports today — both connect via OAuth, both encrypt tokens at rest, and both can be disconnected without losing historical bug data.
What both integrations share
- OAuth-only. No shared API keys or manual webhook configuration. Watari registers its own webhook on your account during the OAuth flow.
- Encrypted tokens. Access and refresh tokens are AES-256-GCM encrypted before they are written to the database. They are never logged.
- HMAC-verified webhooks. Every inbound webhook from Zendesk or Intercom is verified against the provider signature before processing. Duplicate events are deduplicated by event ID.
- Disconnect without data loss. Disconnecting a support tool stops new tickets from flowing in, but all existing bugs, mappings, and RCAs remain in your Watari workspace.
- One tool per workspace. Each Watari workspace connects one support tool. If you run separate Zendesk and Intercom deployments, create separate Watari workspaces.
If your organization has multiple Zendesk instances (for example, one for customer support and one for internal IT), only one instance connects per Watari workspace. Use separate Watari workspaces — one per Zendesk subdomain — to route them independently.
Connect your support tool
Connecting Zendesk
In the Watari dashboard, go to Settings → Integrations and click Connect Zendesk.
Enter your Zendesk subdomain. This is the part before .zendesk.com — for example, if your support portal is at acme.zendesk.com, enter acme.
You are redirected to the Zendesk OAuth authorization screen. Sign in with an account that has admin permissions on the Zendesk instance, then click Allow.
You are returned to Watari. The connection status shows as Connected and a webhook is registered on your Zendesk account automatically.
What Watari reads from Zendesk
Ticket subject, body, public comments, internal comments, status, priority, tags, custom fields, requester display name and email, and attachments (including screenshots). Watari reads only the tickets that reach it via webhook — you control that scope with a tag-based trigger if you prefer (for example, fire only when a needs-engineering tag is applied).
What Watari writes back to Zendesk
A single public comment posted to the ticket after the fix ships to production — the customer-facing RCA. Optionally, an internal note linking to the draft PR.
What gets extracted
Ticket content goes through structured extraction: severity, repro steps, expected vs. actual behavior, customer impact, and the customer's original words. Non-bug tickets (billing questions, account access, feature requests) are classified and skipped — they never produce a Mapped Bug.
Connecting Intercom
In the Watari dashboard, go to Settings → Integrations and click Connect Intercom.
You are redirected to the Intercom OAuth authorization screen. Sign in with a workspace admin account and click Authorize access.
Select the Intercom workspace you want to connect if prompted (relevant for accounts with multiple workspaces).
You are returned to Watari. The connection status shows as Connected and Watari subscribes to conversation events on your workspace.
What Watari reads from Intercom
Conversation parts (both customer and teammate messages), conversation attributes (state, tags, custom attributes, team assignment), contact display name and email, and attachments including screenshots. You can scope which conversations reach Watari by Intercom team assignment — only conversations assigned to the configured team trigger extraction.
What Watari writes back to Intercom
A single reply posted to the original conversation after the fix ships to production — the customer-facing RCA. Intercom's API deduplication ensures retries never double-post.
What gets extracted
Same structured extraction as Zendesk: severity, repro steps, expected vs. actual behavior, customer impact, and the customer's original words. Conversations that do not contain a reportable bug — billing disputes, onboarding questions, feature requests — are classified and skipped.
OAuth errors and reconnection
If the OAuth flow fails partway through (network timeout, user cancels authorization, session expires), go back to Settings → Integrations and start the connection flow again. OAuth state is short-lived; a fresh flow is the correct fix.
If the integration shows a Connection error status after being connected, it means Watari received a webhook but the token exchange failed or was revoked. Disconnect and reconnect from Settings → Integrations to re-authorize.
Next: Install the Watari GitHub App and configure CODEOWNERS-driven PR routing — install the GitHub App, select repositories, and configure CODEOWNERS-driven PR routing.