The Qvasa App in Zendesk: Showing Dashboards and Controlling Access
Agents who live in Zendesk should not have to leave it to see their numbers. Click the Qvasa icon in Zendesk's left sidebar and the Qvasa app opens with your dashboards in it — live, read-only, and rendered as you, with your own permissions.
Two settings decide what any one agent finds there:
Show in the Zendesk app, on each dashboard — which dashboards are published to the app at all.
Zendesk App Permissions, on each user — what that person may reach of Qvasa from inside Zendesk.
They are two separate gates, and a dashboard only appears for an agent when both let it through.
Before you start
The Qvasa app has to be installed in Zendesk. A Zendesk admin installs it once from the marketplace — see How to Install Qvasa.
Your Qvasa account has to be connected to Zendesk. Without a connection Qvasa cannot read your Zendesk data or identify your agents, and the app says so. See Connecting Qvasa to Zendesk with Global OAuth.
To publish a dashboard you need to be able to edit that dashboard. To change Zendesk App Permissions you need to be a Qvasa admin, because they live on the user's page — see Managing User Permissions in Qvasa.
1. Publish a dashboard to the Zendesk app
Open the dashboard in Qvasa, click Edit, and look in the Access and behaviour card for Show in the Zendesk app. Tick it and click Update dashboard.
Publishing is deliberate and per dashboard. Nothing is in the Zendesk app until someone ticks this box, and unticking it removes the dashboard from the app again — it changes nothing about the dashboard in Qvasa itself.
Personal dashboards cannot be published. The box is not offered for them, and Qvasa refuses the change if one is sent anyway.
Cloning a dashboard does not carry the flag across. A clone starts unpublished, so a copy never appears in the app by accident.
On the dashboards list, every published dashboard carries a Zendesk app badge, so you can see at a glance what the app is serving.
2. Refresh the app in Zendesk
Back in Zendesk, click the Qvasa icon in the left sidebar — or refresh the page if the app is already open — and the dashboard is there.
The list on the left is rebuilt every time the app opens, so a dashboard you publish in Qvasa shows up on the agent's next open. There is nothing to install, update or redeploy in Zendesk.
Favourites come first, then the rest by name.
The app reopens the dashboard you looked at last, or the first in the list.
Dashboards are read-only in Zendesk. Tabs, quick filters and live updates all work, but nothing can be changed from here. Edit in Qvasa opens the same dashboard in Qvasa in a new tab.
The pill at the top reads Secure · verified by Zendesk: Zendesk itself signs who you are on every open, so there is nothing to sign into inside the app.
3. Only if they can see the dashboard in Qvasa
Publishing a dashboard does not share it with anybody. What each agent gets is the overlap of two things: the dashboards published to the app, and the dashboards that person can already see in Qvasa.
A dashboard an agent cannot see in Qvasa is simply absent from their list — not greyed out, not locked.
Two agents opening the same app at the same time can see entirely different lists.
The app can never widen access. To let someone see a dashboard there, give them access to the dashboard in Qvasa the usual way.
4. Zendesk App Permissions
Open a user in Qvasa (Settings → Account Members → Edit) and scroll to Zendesk App Permissions. Three checkboxes, least access to most:
Can see the Qvasa app in Zendesk — shows the app in Zendesk's left sidebar. On its own it shows published dashboards they already have access to, and nothing else.
Can sign into Qvasa from Zendesk — shows the Sign in to Qvasa button inside the app, which signs them straight into Qvasa in a new tab with no password. If they have no Qvasa user yet, signing in creates one at the lowest permission level.
Must log in through the Qvasa app in Zendesk — the restriction: this is the only way they can reach Qvasa.
Each box requires the one above it. Ticking a lower box ticks the ones above it for you, and unticking an upper box clears the ones below. That is deliberate: "must log in through the app" without "can sign in from Zendesk" would leave the user no way into Qvasa at all.
Zendesk administrators always see the app and the sign-in button, whatever is ticked here, so an account can never shut itself out of its own Zendesk app. Qvasa admins and owners are exempt in the same way. These permissions govern everyone else, and they default to off.
5. The two patterns people use
Dashboards in Zendesk, but no way into Qvasa. Tick only Can see the Qvasa app in Zendesk. The agent gets the app and their published dashboards, read-only, and there is no sign-in button — Qvasa stays closed to them. It is the right setting for frontline agents who need their numbers and nothing else.
Zendesk as the only door into Qvasa. Tick all three. The agent reaches Qvasa only by signing in through the app, which means they must be logged into Zendesk to get into Qvasa at all.
Once the third box is ticked for a user:
Signing in at qvasa.com with a password stops working for them, and Qvasa tells them to open the app in Zendesk instead.
Password reset stops working too, for the same reason — there is no password to reset into.
The sign-in link the app mints is single-use and expires in under a minute, so it is worth nothing if it is copied.
It cannot be combined with Must log in through SAML. A user can be forced through at most one login method, and ticking one clears the other.
What done looks like
The dashboards you want agents to have carry the Zendesk app badge on the dashboards list.
Opening the Qvasa icon in Zendesk shows those dashboards in the left-hand list and renders one of them.
An agent who should not reach Qvasa itself sees the app with no Sign in to Qvasa button.
Anyone restricted to the app is told to open Zendesk when they try to log in at qvasa.com.
Troubleshooting
The app says "No dashboards here yet". Either nothing has been published, or nothing published is visible to this agent. Check the Zendesk app badge on the dashboards list first, then check that the agent can open that dashboard in Qvasa.
I ticked the box but the dashboard is not in the app. Refresh the app in Zendesk — the list is built when the app opens. If it is still missing, the agent probably cannot see that dashboard in Qvasa.
An agent sees "You don't have access to the Qvasa app". Their Qvasa user exists but has no Zendesk App Permissions. A Qvasa admin ticks Can see the Qvasa app in Zendesk on their user.
An agent sees "Your Zendesk login isn't linked to a Qvasa user yet". Qvasa matches people by email address. Add that email to the Qvasa account, or correct the address on one side so the two match.
The app asks to connect Zendesk to Qvasa. The account has no working connection, so there is no data to show. A Qvasa admin can go straight to the approval from that button.
There is no "Show in the Zendesk app" box on the dashboard edit page. It is not offered for personal dashboards. If the dashboard is not personal and the box is still missing, contact us and we will enable it for your account.
Someone is locked out of Qvasa. Untick Must log in through the Qvasa app in Zendesk on their user and their password login works again.
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