Custom Objects make your Zendesk Much More Valuable

Zendesk recently announced Custom Objects for all customers on Support Enterprise plans and above. This new feature makes it possible to natively store and connect new data entities (like Subscriptions), modeling your entire business in Zendesk. Before the addition of Custom Objects, developers were limited to creating custom data using Custom Fields on top of standard Zendesk objects, like tickets or organizations for example.
 
Now, with Custom Objects, you can natively store any kind of business entity, like Products, directly in Zendesk Support, as well as extend the standard Zendesk data model to include these Custom Objects by creating relationships between Custom Objects and Standard Objects. This allows your agents to see everything attached to a customer all in one place.
 
It’s cool because you can use Custom Objects to influence how you will build apps and tools that integrate with Zendesk. They can also make your agents’ lives a lot easier. Agents can update products, manage orders and subscriptions, and even track connected devices thanks to Customer Objects and Sunshine.
 
Read our overview of Sunshine.

How do Custom Objects Work?

To use Custom Objects, go to the Admin page in Zendesk Support.
 
Click on Sunshine and then choose the Custom Objects link under the Manage section:
 

 
This link will take you to a dedicated page where you can activate Custom Resources:
 

 
Once activated you will see the option to create an object or relationship:
 

 
Build right in the interface:
 

 
After you activate, you’ll be able to create new Custom Object and Relationship types all within the interface. Developers can also use the Custom Objects API to load data into Custom Objects and create Custom Objects and Relationships. Devs can then use the Zendesk app framework to interact with the stored data within Custom Objects. This gives agents a much more complete view of the business/customer relationship. Custom Objects are an effective way to gain more insight and create a better understanding of all the data you are collecting right inside Zendesk.