Best Practices

Recommended setup

Use a dedicated API token

Create a Zendesk API token specifically for Coupler.io under an admin account. This makes it easy to revoke access without disrupting other integrations.

Pick the right entity for your goal

Use Calls for historical analysis, Agents activities for performance reviews, and Current queue activities only for real-time dashboards — don't mix these in the same report.

Join Calls to Zendesk Support tickets

The `ticket_id` field in the Calls entity matches ticket IDs in Zendesk Support. Use Coupler.io's Join transformation to connect call outcomes to ticket resolution data.

Data refresh and scheduling

Schedule queue snapshots during business hours

Current queue activities and Agents overviews reflect live state. Scheduling runs during peak hours (e.g., every 15–30 minutes mid-day) gives you meaningful data — overnight runs will mostly show zeros.

Use a rolling start date for Calls

For ongoing call reporting, set your start date to the beginning of your current reporting period (week or month). Avoid pulling all-time data on every run — it increases processing time and can approach rate limits.

Performance optimization

Separate Calls and Call legs into different data flows

Call legs can contain significantly more rows than Calls. Keeping them in separate data flows prevents large leg exports from slowing down your main call reporting flow.

Use Append for period-over-period analysis

Export weekly agent activity snapshots and use Coupler.io's Append transformation to stack them into a single dataset. This is more reliable than pulling a long date range in one shot.

Common pitfalls

Don't rely on Current queue activities for historical reporting — it only captures the state at the moment the data flow runs and will not reflect what happened earlier in the day.

Do

• Set a specific start date when exporting Calls or Call legs

• Use an admin-level API token to avoid 403 errors

• Join Call legs to Calls on call_id when you need full routing detail

• Account for UTC timestamps when comparing to Zendesk dashboards

Don't

• Pull open-ended Calls exports without a start date — results may be empty

• Use the same data flow for both real-time queue monitoring and historical call analysis

• Expect IVR entities to have data if IVRs aren't configured in your account

• Assume recording_url will be populated — it depends on your plan and line settings