Zaapi Open API: Connect Your CRM and Automate Customer Support

Zaapi Open API lets your software read and manage data in your Zaapi store, including contacts, conversations, tickets and messages. You can use it to bring CRM information into customer profiles, update supported records and send plain-text messages. Zaapi webhooks can notify your integration when an event happens, so it can start a workflow in another tool.

For a support team, the benefit is practical: information collected elsewhere can be available when an agent needs to help a customer.

Zaapi Open API is available on the Advanced plan.

Imagine a customer asking about an order. Your CRM already knows their membership tier and account owner, but the agent has to open another system to find them. An integration can bring those details into Zaapi, reducing the need to look them up repeatedly.

What can you do with the Zaapi Open API?

Start with a task your team already performs manually. Three useful examples are customer data sync, team notifications and follow-up tasks.

These workflows need configuration: a source of information, rules for processing it, and a destination that supports the required action. Connecting an API does not automatically define how your business should handle each case.

Which actions does the API support?

The current API reference documents several groups of operations:

Permissions are specific to each operation. Some write scopes for users, labels, teams and accounts are reserved for future endpoints, so their presence in the scope list does not mean those records can currently be created or edited through the API. See the scope reference.

Bring customer information into Zaapi

An API integration can find a contact in Zaapi and update their custom fields using information from another system. Consider an illustrative workflow with ZORT as the source system, provided your setup exposes the data you need.

Suppose your customer record contains:

- Customer Type: VIP
- Loyalty Tier: Gold
- Customer ID: CUST-1042
- Sales Rep: John

You create the corresponding fields in Zaapi, map the source data to those fields, identify the correct contact, and send the updates. The support team can then use this context while helping the customer.

The important design choice is which system owns each value. If the CRM manages membership tiers, decide that it remains the source of truth for that field. Otherwise, different teams may keep replacing one another's changes.

For the full workflow, read how to sync CRM data with Zaapi.

Connect customer conversations with actions in other tools

Some integrations start outside Zaapi. Others start when something happens inside it.

For example, a customer asks to cancel an order. Your integration can evaluate the message, check your escalation rules and notify the team that handles cancellations. If the request needs follow-up, it can also create a task in your CRM or task tool.

The notification should explain what happened and who needs to act. It should not imply that the order has already been cancelled. Changing an order is a separate workflow that requires support from the order system and your business rules.

Zaapi's webhook documentation lists events such as an incoming message, a ticket assignment and an AI escalation. Your integration decides what to do with the events you subscribe to.

How are APIs and webhooks different?

An API request is a way for another system to ask Zaapi for information or make a supported change. A webhook is a way for Zaapi to notify another system when a subscribed event occurs.

For a CRM sync, the flow might be:

CRM change → integration workflow → Zaapi Open API → customer profile

For an escalation, it might be:

Zaapi event → webhook receiver → business rule → Slack alert or CRM task

Many useful integrations combine both. A webhook starts the workflow, and an API request retrieves the extra information needed for the next step.

For example, `message.received` tells your workflow that an incoming message arrived. Your integration can examine the text, apply a rule and create an external task. A follow-up API call can add an internal comment to the Zaapi conversation so the support team can see what happened. These are separate configured steps.

How do you get API access?

On an eligible Advanced account, a store owner or admin creates an API key in Settings → Developers → Add API key. Choose the permissions the integration needs, create the key and store it when it is displayed. The secret is shown once.

The integration sends the key in the `x-api-key` request header. Keys expire six months after creation or their most recent rotation, so assign someone to maintain them. Follow the getting-started guide for the current setup procedure.

Do you need to build a custom integration?

You do not always need to build an entire application. The Zaapi Open API can be used with automation platforms such as Zapier, Make and n8n.

These platforms can handle parts of the workflow, but someone still needs to configure authentication, match fields and test what happens when data is missing or an action fails. Whether a ready-made app exists is a separate question from whether a tool can call the API.

What should your first integration be?

Choose one workflow with a clear owner and an outcome you can check. Syncing a single customer field is often a manageable starting point.

For example, begin with Loyalty Tier. Confirm that the integration updates the right customer, preserves unrelated information and reports failed updates. Once that works, add Customer Type or Sales Rep.

Before rolling it out, agree on three things: who owns the source data, how quickly it needs to appear in Zaapi, and who investigates failures. Those decisions make the integration useful after the initial setup is finished.

Frequently asked questions

Does Zaapi Open API replace my CRM?

No. It lets you connect your CRM with Zaapi so relevant information can move between systems. You decide which system manages each part of the customer record.

Can I connect Zaapi to Slack?

You can build a workflow that sends information from Zaapi to Slack through an integration. Select the relevant Zaapi event, define the alert rule and configure the Slack destination.

Which Zaapi plan includes Open API?

Zaapi Open API is available on the Advanced plan. “Open API” describes the integration interface; it does not mean the service is free or the software is open source.

Can an integration send messages to customers?

Yes. The documented plain-text message endpoint accepts a conversation ID and text of 1–1,000 characters. Channel rules still apply. The endpoint currently has no idempotency key, meaning a repeated send request can send another message; the integration must manage retries carefully. See sending a plain-text message.

Where can developers find the technical details?

Zaapi Open API documentation covers authentication, available operations and request requirements. The webhook guide covers event subscriptions and delivery.

Connect the information your team needs

Pick one piece of customer context or one follow-up task that your team currently copies between tools. That is a useful starting point for a Zaapi integration.

Explore Zaapi's Advanced plan to get started. Already using Advanced? Share the API documentation with the person responsible for your integration.