PostgreSQL data in Zendesk

Show PostgreSQL customer data inside your Zendesk tickets, queried live on every ticket open. No ETL, no sync lag, no code.

PostgreSQL is where most product-led companies keep the data that matters to support: customer accounts, subscription state, orders, usage, permissions, feature flags, internal notes. None of that lives in Zendesk by default. So agents end up tab-switching between the helpdesk and whatever internal tool queries the database — copying ticket email addresses into a search, scanning results, pasting answers back. A minute here, two minutes there. On a busy shift that adds up to hours.

FactBranch fixes that by running a live PostgreSQL query every time a Zendesk ticket is opened, and rendering the result as a panel inside the ticket sidebar. The agent sees the data they need without leaving Zendesk.

How it works

FactBranch is a visual pipeline builder, not an ETL tool. There's no data warehouse in the middle, no sync schedule to tune, no copies of customer records sitting in a third-party database. The flow is simple: the Zendesk app passes the ticket context (requester email, ticket ID, organization, and anything else you want) to FactBranch. FactBranch runs your SQL query against your own PostgreSQL database, using the ticket context as parameters. The query results are rendered into an HTML panel you design, and shown inside the Zendesk sidebar.

Each step is a node in the visual editor. You write one SQL query and one HTML template. Everything else — the Zendesk integration, the parameter passing, the connection pool, the rendering — FactBranch handles.

Writing the query

You write the query directly against your own PostgreSQL database. Ticket context is available as variables you can reference inline: email address, ticket ID, organization fields, most fields that are available in the ticket. Run the query against your live database from the editor to see the results before you hook them up to the sidebar.

What you show is up to you. A typical SaaS support team might surface the customer's current plan, MRR, and trial state; their most recent invoice and payment status; a count of open tickets or incidents linked to their account; the last five API calls, deploys, or feature flag changes. E-commerce teams usually show the customer's most recent orders, fulfilment status, and lifetime value. Internal-tool teams show permissions, roles, and recent activity. If you can write it as a SQL query, you can put it in the Zendesk sidebar.

Designing the sidebar UI

Once your query returns results, FactBranch pipes them into a display node where you design the Zendesk panel. There's a "Generate a UI" button that produces a working HTML template from the shape of your query results — a sensible starting point you can then edit. You can tweak the template directly, add conditionals for empty or edge-case data, and style it with CSS. The templating language is Jinja2-compatible, so loops and filters work the way you'd expect.

Keeping it safe

Your PostgreSQL database stays where it is. FactBranch connects out to it with a dedicated read-only user — we recommend creating a Postgres role for FactBranch with the minimum privileges it needs, usually SELECT on the specific tables you want to expose. If your database is behind a firewall, FactBranch can route requests through a static IP so you can safely allowlist us. For extra isolation, run queries against a read replica instead of your primary — the integration works the same way.

Credentials are stored encrypted. We don't cache query results by default, so every ticket gets a fresh read; there's no stale data to worry about, and no long-lived copies of your data in our systems.

Setup

Most teams are live in about 10 minutes. Create a free FactBranch account, add a PostgreSQL connection with read-only credentials (toggle the static-IP option if your database is firewalled), write the SQL query you want the sidebar to run, and design the panel in the display node. The final step is installing the FactBranch app from the Zendesk marketplace and pasting in your API key — agents see the sidebar on the next ticket they open.

See the full walkthrough in our PostgreSQL documentation or watch a support agent use the sidebar in practice.