Zendesk Access Denied via PBI

[dsimpsontx]

I'm trying to connect PBI to Zendesk to eliminate the middle person. I am listed as Administrator under Roles in Settings for my profile. Unfortunately, when I try to connect, I get an error that says "Access Denied" (see image). The only thing that I can think is affecting this error is the fact that the description for my role says "Can manage all settings, except billing, and provide chat support". Has anyone experienced this and resolved it?

Zendesk Access Denied PBI error message

[dsimpsontx · Accepted solution]

Figured it out after reaching out to Zendesk technical department.

"The Zendesk account that you are accessing is a standalone Chat account. You are an admin on the stand-alone Chat account. Unfortunately, the PowerBI integration offered by Microsoft is only available for Zendesk Support accounts, not standalone Chat accounts."

[dsimpsontx · Accepted solution]

Here is the Zendesk Support message in its entirely:

The Zendesk account that you are accessing is a standalone Chat account. You are an admin on the stand-alone Chat account. Unfortunately, the PowerBI integration offered by Microsoft is only available for Zendesk Support accounts, not standalone Chat accounts.
After doing some searching on PowerBI's community forum, I did find a posting from a user that was able to import their Zendesk Chat data into PowerBI Desktop by using our Chat API - https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Issue-with-REST-Full-API-of-Zendesk-Chat-using-API-bearer/m...
While the user did not offer step-by-step details on how they were able to import the data into PowerBI, the post does seem to indicate that it is possible to do.
If you are familiar with using APIs, then please check out Chat API documentation here - https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/live-chat/chat-api/chats/
You will also need a bearer token to authenticate the API calls. Please refer to the following article from our documentation which has instructions on generating a bearer token - https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408828740762-Chat-API-tutorial-Generating-an-OAuth-to...
Another workaround would be to export your Chat analytics data as a .csv file and import that .csv file into PowerBI if PowerBI is your preferred analytics tool. The following article contains instructions on exporting your Chat analytics data as a .csv file - https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408828193562-Monitoring-chat-activity-with-Analytics#...
You may also want to explore using a third-party data pipeline to import your Chat data into PowerBI such as Stitchdata and Panoply.
https://www.stitchdata.com/integrations/zendesk-chat/powerbi
https://panoply.io/integrations/power-bi/zendesk-chat/

[v-jingzhang]

Thank you! This is very helpful! 

[dsimpsontx]

I thought it had something to do with my role, but I am an admin and there doesn't appear to be any restriction that would affect my ability to connect from PBI.

Role Details TopRole Details MiddleRole Details Bottom

[dsimpsontx]

I opened Power Query from my PBI Desktop. I create a New Source and select Zendesk (beta) from the list. I enter my URL and enter my credientials, but I get the error message that I included in my first post.

[v-jingzhang]

Hi @dsimpsontx 

Where and how did you connect to Zendesk? And what resource in Zendesk did you try to connect to? According to the error message, it seems your Zendesk account cannot access something there. You may ask the admin or owner of that resource to check if there is any additional permission or access control on it? You may first check whether your account are able to access the same resource in Zendesk. 

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Jing

[dsimpsontx]

I did reply to your question.

[v-jingzhang]

Hi @dsimpsontx 

Sorry for the late reply. I didn't find similar issues about Zendesk connection recently. Can you test if your admin account can connect to Zendesk Template App in Power BI Service? Will this have the same problem? 

Connect to Zendesk with Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Jing

[dsimpsontx]

I thought the same thing, but I received the same error message indicating "Access Denied".

[v-jingzhang]

Hi @dsimpsontx 

I found an article about troubleshooting this "access denied" error from Zendesk Help. It talks about four scenarios in which this error message can be displayed. Hope it would be helpful. 

Why do I get an "access denied" error? – Zendesk help

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Jing

[dsimpsontx · Accepted solution]

Figured it out after reaching out to Zendesk technical department.

"The Zendesk account that you are accessing is a standalone Chat account. You are an admin on the stand-alone Chat account. Unfortunately, the PowerBI integration offered by Microsoft is only available for Zendesk Support accounts, not standalone Chat accounts."

[v-jingzhang]

Thank you for sharing this important information. It will definitely help other people that have this question.