Build a Zendesk ticket-routing agent

Auto-tag every incoming Zendesk ticket with the team that owns the problem area.

Zendesk ticket showing the routing agent's classification on the ticket

Overview

In this tutorial, you'll build a ticket-routing agent in the Inkeep Visual Builder. When a new ticket lands in Zendesk, the agent will:

Read the ticket and identify the actual problem
Pick the team that owns that problem area
Write the team tag to a Zendesk custom field

The result is an inbox that sorts itself.

Prerequisites

Access to Inkeep Enterprise — schedule a demo if you don't have it yet
A Zendesk org where you can create a custom field for ticket routing (e.g., a dropdown field named "Ticket type" with one value per team)
A Zendesk MCP server registered in your project, with a tool that writes a value to a ticket's custom field. If you don't have one yet, see Build Custom MCP Servers for how to wrap the Zendesk API as an MCP server.

Create the Classifier agent

In the Visual Builder, go to the Agents tab in the left sidebar and click Create agent.

Click the Default Sub Agent on the canvas to configure it. Fill in:

Name: Classifier
Description: Reads a Zendesk ticket, picks the owning team, and writes the team tag to a custom field.
Prompt: Paste the prompt below

About the taxonomy in the prompt: the # Team taxonomy section below is your product map in plain English. When your team reorgs or adds a new product surface, you edit this section — no code changes, no retraining. The taxonomy shown is an example for an Inkeep-style team structure; replace it with your own team names and the categories they own.

Prompt:

# Your job

For every incoming Zendesk ticket, identify the team that owns the problem area and write that team's tag to the ticket's custom field. One ticket → one custom-field write.

Classify by what the customer needs help with, not by what they wrote about — customers often describe their setup before their actual problem.

# Team taxonomy

- **Product** — questions about how the product works
- **Account** — login, billing, account access
- **Other** — anything off-topic or that doesn't fit

# Write the tag

Call **update_ticket_custom_field** exactly once with:

- `ticket_id` — from the trigger message
- `custom_field_id` — `[YOUR_CUSTOM_FIELD_ID]`
- `value` — `product` for Product, `account` for Account, `other` for Other

Tip

Things to substitute before you save:

Replace [YOUR_CUSTOM_FIELD_ID] with the numeric ID of your Zendesk custom field (find it in Zendesk Admin → Objects and rules → Fields).
Replace the example team taxonomy + values with your own teams.
If your Zendesk MCP names its custom-field-write tool something other than update_ticket_custom_field, swap that name in the prompt to match.

Connect the Zendesk MCP tool

On the agent canvas, drag and drop an MCP block from the top left toolbar.

Select your Zendesk MCP and connect it to the Classifier sub agent.

Click on the MCP block and restrict Active Tools to only the tool that updates a ticket's custom field — in our example MCP that's update_ticket_custom_field, but your MCP may name it differently. This agent only writes one thing, so leaving other tools enabled invites mistakes.

Click Save Changes in the top right corner.

Create the webhook trigger

The trigger is the door Zendesk knocks on to wake the agent up.

Go to Triggers in the left sidebar and click New Webhook Trigger.

Select the Classifier agent you just built as the agent this trigger will invoke, then click Continue.

Fill in:

Name: e.g. Zendesk new-ticket trigger
Authentication: None — the URL itself is the secret

Click Create Trigger. Copy the webhook URL that appears — you'll need it in the next section.

Wire Zendesk to fire the trigger

Now set up Zendesk so every new ticket POSTs to the trigger URL you just copied.

See Trigger Inkeep agents from Zendesk tickets — paste your trigger URL into the Zendesk webhook's Endpoint URL. Come back here when you're done.

Test the agent

From an outside email address, send a test ticket to your Zendesk support address with a question that clearly belongs to one of your teams (e.g., "How do I update my billing details?" for the Account team).

Switch to the Zendesk tab, find the new ticket, and refresh.

Within about 10 seconds, the ticket's custom field flips from blank to the matching team value, written by the agent.