Zendesk
×
Papercrane
Zendesk is retiring your dashboards. Again.
The legacy builder goes view only December 31, and live reporting ends January 25. Papercrane's AI agent rebuilds your support reporting as hosted dashboards that are code you own, joined with Salesforce, Stripe, or your warehouse.
Connect in about a minute. Free to connect and ask. Paid plans start when you publish a dashboard. See pricing
You have rebuilt these before
Every few years the reporting tool changes and the reports were yours to rebuild. The dates below are Zendesk's own.
Zendesk analytics, retired
| Date | What Zendesk retired | What you did |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 to 2021 | Insights, replaced by Explore | Rebuilt every report by hand |
| Dec 31, 2026 | The legacy dashboard builder; legacy dashboards go view only | Rebuilding them now |
| Jan 25, 2027 | Live reporting; live components stop showing data | Moving to the replacement |
| — | Dashboards in Papercrane are code you own. | Nothing. If you ever leave, they leave with you. |
Dates from Zendesk's own announcements. The new builder is genuinely better; it is also the third time the ground moved.
If you are rebuilding anyway, rebuild past the ticket wall
Explore reports on what lives inside Zendesk. The questions your executives actually ask pair a ticket with a number from somewhere else.
Cost to serve, by plan.
Tickets per organization from Zendesk next to contract value from Salesforce or Stripe: one ranked table showing which customers and plans consume your team.
CSAT before the renewal.
Satisfaction ratings lined up against renewal dates from your CRM, so the account team sees the slide a quarter before the cancellation call.
The release, measured in reopens.
Ticket volume and reopen rates around each product release, joined from your tickets to the release and usage data in your warehouse.
The rebuild list, asked instead of built
Which organizations filed the most tickets this quarter, and what does each one pay us?
Where did first reply time break the target last week, by group?
What is CSAT for every account renewing in the next 90 days?
Which ticket fields show up on our longest resolutions?
Did reopens spike after the last release?
Every answer comes back as a chart on a hosted dashboard you can hand to someone who has never opened Explore.
1. Connect with read access you approve on Zendesk's consent screen
2. Ask a question
3. The agent plans, queries, and builds a hosted dashboard
4. It stays live and maintained
Read access only. Your Zendesk configuration, fields, and workflows are untouched.
Three places your rebuilt dashboards could live
| The job | Zendesk Analytics | Dashboard add ons | Zendesk + Papercrane |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answer a question the prebuilt boards don't cover | Build it yourself: dataset, metric, attributes, on Professional or above | Pick from the widgets on offer | Ask it, get a chart in minutes |
| Put a dashboard in front of an exec or a customer | Email delivery; recipients outside your Zendesk need Enterprise and a tag on their profile | TV mode for the support floor | Send a link, embed it, or publish to your own domain |
| Join tickets to revenue | Zendesk data only | Mostly Zendesk data only | Tickets by organization next to CRM and billing numbers joins your CRM |
| When the vendor retires the tool | You rebuild | You rebuild | Dashboards are code you own |
| When a chart breaks | You debug the report | You file a ticket | Errors route back to the agent for repair |
The migration week
Fourteen legacy dashboards on the list; the agent rebuilt the six people actually opened, and the rest retired with the builder.
The renewal call
Twelve months of one account's tickets and CSAT next to its contract value, opened by the account manager without a request to support ops.
When Zendesk's own tools are the right choice
If every question you have is about tickets and you are on Professional or above, the new dashboard builder is included in what you already pay and it is genuinely improved; migrate to it and keep your money. If what January 25 actually costs you is the live wallboard on the support floor, Zendesk's real time monitoring or Geckoboard is built for exactly that, and we are not a wallboard. Papercrane earns its place when the answer needs data Zendesk doesn't hold, or when the dashboard needs to outlive the next migration.
Questions support teams ask us
Zendesk knows who needs help. Salesforce and HubSpot know what they pay, and Stripe knows when the invoice cleared.
Connect Zendesk, ask for the first dashboard on your migration list, and see it come back built.
Free to connect and ask. Paid plans start when you publish a dashboard. See pricing
Papercrane
Integrations: