There are a few quick steps to take before you integrate any of Forethought’s products into your Zendesk instance.

1. Create a Forethought Integration User

Note: If you do not have seats available to create a Forethought integration user, you may proceed to step 2 - Authorize Forethought while logged into any existing admin account.

Please keep in mind that if this user is ever deleted/suspended or has their admin permissions revoked, that will break Forethought's integration with your help desk and to restore services you will need to correct the existing account or repeat the authorization process with a different admin account.

For this reason, we strongly recommend using a dedicated integration user if possible.

Creating a Forethought integration user in your Zendesk instance will give you full control over the access rights that Forethought has. Forethought uses this user to access your data through the Zendesk API.

1. Create a new Forethought user in your Zendesk instance
2. Give this user full admin rights for Guide and Support:
1. Go to ‘Admin Center’ in Zendesk
2. Navigate to the ‘Team members’ page via the sidebar
3. Click on the newly created Forethought user (this will navigate you to a new page)
4. In the top right corner you’ll see the panel with the user type and role
5. Click ‘Manage in Admin Center’ and you’ll be able to swap their permissions in the ‘role’ dropdown for both Support and Guide

2. Authorize Forethought

Once you have completed the prerequisite user creation steps in your Zendesk environment go to the Forethought Dashboard. Within the left side panel there will be a number of section and subsections. As you go through the Implementation process you'll be walked through how each relate to the Forethought products you've purchased from the suite. For now though go to Settings > Integrations. 

Scroll down and select the connector you want to set up, in this case start with the one that just says Zendesk. Once you click on it a side panel on the right should open up. Before you do anything follow these vital steps:

1. 1. In your Zendesk make sure you are currently logged in as the Integration user that you made in step 1
   2. Go back to Forethought Dashboard and your Zendesk domain. Which is also the base URL of where your agents work. For example https://example.zendesk.com/

Once you have done this and you have verified, hit connect. The status in the top right should go from Disconnected to Connected. If you exit out of the side panel that connector will now be at the top of the Integrations page under the Active section. With this step complete Forethought can now act with this users authorization to start pulling and indexing your data immediately!

If you run into any issues at all please reach out to your Forethought Customer Success team.