How to Bulk Update Organizations in Zendesk?

Keeping organization data clean and up to date in Zendesk is important, but doing it in bulk is usually difficult.

By default, if you want to make changes on many organizations, you often have to:

• Export organizations.
• Edit everything in a spreadsheet.
• Import them back into Zendesk.

This is slow and not very practical when you just want to fix a few fields or tags across many organizations.

Swifteq’s app Advanced Search Plus solves this by letting you search and bulk update organizations directly inside Zendesk, in just a few clicks.

Why Bulk Updating Organizations Is Hard by Default

Zendesk focuses more on tickets when it comes to bulk actions. For organizations, the typical options are limited:

• There’s no simple native way to change many organizations at once.
• For larger changes (fields, tags, etc.), you usually have to:
  • Export organizations.
  • Update them in a CSV.
  • Import them again.
    

This becomes a problem when, for example:

• You want to add or remove tags from many organizations.
• You change your data model and need to update a field across all organizations.
• You introduce new custom fields and need to set them for existing organizations.

That’s why Advanced Search Plus includes a bulk update feature for organizations.

What Advanced Search Plus Does for Organizations?

Advanced Search Plus lets you:

• Search for organizations using flexible filters.
• Work with a small set or a very large list (hundreds or thousands).
• Select all organizations or only certain ones.
• Apply bulk changes to the selected organizations.

For organizations, you can:

• Update standard fields.
• Update custom fields.
• Add or adjust tags.
  

All of this happens directly in Zendesk, without exporting or importing data.

Example: Bulk Update Organization Tags

Let’s look at a practical example: you want to update organization tags.

Maybe you’ve changed your tagging structure and you now want to:

• Add a new tag to all organizations created this year.
• Or remove an old tag from a group of organizations.

Here’s how you can do that with Advanced Search Plus.

Step 1 – Search for the organizations you want to update

1. Open Advanced Search Plus in Zendesk.
2. Build your filter for organizations. For example:
   • Organizations created year to date.
   • Or organizations that match a certain condition (e.g. a specific tag, domain, or field value).
     
3. Click Search.
4. You’ll see a list of organizations that match your filters.

Now you have all the organizations that should be updated.

Step 2 – Select the organizations

Once the results are shown:

• You can select all organizations at once.
• Or manually select/deselect specific organizations.

For example:

• If you want the changes to apply to every organization in the list, keep them all selected.
• If you want to exclude a few organizations, simply uncheck those entries.

This gives you control over which organizations will be affected.

Step 3 – Open Bulk Changes

When your selection is ready:

1. Click Bulk changes.
2. A panel opens where you can choose what you want to change for these organizations.

Here you can:

• Change Fields (standard or custom).
• Add or adjust tags.
• Update custom fields related to those organizations.

Step 4 – Apply the bulk update

Depending on what you want to do, you can:

• Add a tag to all selected organizations.
• Remove a tag from all selected organizations.
• Update a standard field for all of them (e.g. a status-type field or category).
• Update a custom field across all of them (for example, a segment, region, or plan type).

Once you’ve set the desired changes:

1. Confirm the settings in the Bulk changes panel.
2. Click Save.

Advanced Search Plus will then apply the update to all selected organizations in the background.

Step 5 – Confirm the result

After the update is complete:

• Search again using the same filters in Advanced Search Plus.
• Open a few organization profiles in Zendesk.
• Check the fields or tags you changed.

You should now see:

• The new tag added or the old one removed.
• The updated values in the fields you selected.

This confirms that the bulk change worked correctly.

More Ways to Use Bulk Updates for Organizations

Here are some other examples of how you might use this feature:

• Clean up old tags
  • Remove outdated tags from all organizations that still have them.
  • Replace legacy tags after a reorganization.
• Align organization data with a new structure
  • Set a new custom field (e.g. region, segment, plan level) across all organizations created in a specific time frame.
  • Update fields on organizations that match certain criteria, such as domain or existing tags.
• Standardize metadata for reporting
  • Make sure all organizations used in reporting have the correct fields and tags set.
  • Prepare organization data for new dashboards or automations.

In all these cases, you avoid:

• Exporting organizations.
• Editing a CSV file.
• Importing everything back and hoping nothing breaks.

Why This Matters for Zendesk Admins and Operations Teams

For Zendesk admins and operations teams, the bulk update feature for organizations in Advanced Search Plus means:

• Less repetitive, manual editing.
• Faster data maintenance when your structure or tagging changes.
• Cleaner, more reliable organization data.
• No need for external tools or manual CSV workflows.

You stay inside Zendesk, search for the organizations you need, select them, and apply bulk changes in a controlled way.

If you frequently need to:

• Update tags on organizations.
• Adjust standard or custom fields across many organizations.
• Keep organization records clean and aligned with new processes.

…the bulk update feature for organizations in Advanced Search Plus makes that work much faster and much easier. Give it a try or ask for a demo.

Written by Sorin Alupoaie

 

Sorin Alupoaie is the founder of Swifteq, an experienced software technologist and entrepreneur, he loves shipping products that solve painful customer problems. Sorin strongly believes that any Customer Service interaction represents a huge opportunity for a business to listen and improve how they deliver value to customers.