Microsoft SQL Server data in Zendesk

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

Plenty of enterprise support teams have Microsoft SQL Server sitting behind their products — customer accounts, subscriptions, order history, internal notes, permissions, licensing state. When a ticket comes in, agents need that data to answer. But SQL Server isn't connected to Zendesk by default, so they end up tab-switching to an internal tool or a database client, copying email addresses into search fields, and 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 SQL Server 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 T-SQL query against your own SQL Server database, using the ticket context as parameters. The 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 T-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 SQL Server instance. Ticket context is available as variables you can reference inline: email address, ticket ID, organization fields, most fields available in the ticket. Run the query against your live database from the editor to see results before you hook them up to the sidebar.

What you show is up to you. A typical enterprise support team might surface the customer's licensing state, account manager, and contract renewal date; the last few orders or invoices; open tickets tied to the same account; or licensed seat counts. E-commerce teams usually show recent orders, fulfilment status, and lifetime value. Internal-tool teams show permissions, roles, and recent activity. If you can write it in T-SQL, 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 SQL Server stays where it is. FactBranch connects out to it with a dedicated read-only user — we recommend creating a SQL Server login for FactBranch with the minimum privileges it needs, usually SELECT on the specific tables or views 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 or Availability Group secondary — 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 SQL Server connection with read-only credentials (toggle the static-IP option if your database is firewalled), write the T-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 SQL Server documentation or watch a support agent use the sidebar in practice.