How to list user labels in Zoho Desk Help Center

Retrieving all labels assigned to a specific Help Center user in Zoho Desk requires a single authenticated GET request against the user-labels endpoint — here is exactly how to do it.

Why this matters

User labels in Zoho Desk Help Center let you segment and categorise portal users for targeted content, permissions, or workflows. If you are building an integration, a migration script, or an audit tool, you will need to programmatically fetch which labels belong to a given user. This is also the first step before reassigning or removing labels from that user. As independent expert support for Zoho (not official Zoho support), Beam Help walks you through the full process below.

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Step-by-step

Step 1. Confirm you have the two identifiers you need before making any call: the helpcenterid (the unique ID of your Help Center portal) and the userid (the ID of the specific portal user whose labels you want to inspect). Both are required path parameters — the request will fail without them. ^[1]

Step 2. Ensure your OAuth token carries the appropriate Zoho Desk scopes. At minimum you will need read-level access to settings or contacts; our recommended scope configuration includes Desk.basic.READ and Desk.settings.READ among others, so verify your token was issued with those scopes before proceeding. ^[8]

Step 3. Issue a GET request to the following endpoint, substituting your real IDs into the path: ^[1]

GET /api/v1/helpcenter/{helpcenter_id}/users/{user_id}/labels

Step 4. If you are using a Python client, the call looks like this — pass helpcenterid and userid as strings, and optionally supply a p dictionary for any pagination or query parameters: ^[1]

result = client.list_labels_of_user(
    helpcenter_id="your_helpcenter_id",
    user_id="your_user_id",
    p={"page": 1}   # optional pagination params
)

Step 5. Parse the response. The returned payload will contain the label records associated with that user. Store or display the label IDs and names as needed for your downstream logic. ^[1]

Step 6. If instead you need to approach this from the label side — that is, you already know a label and want to see every user under it — use the complementary endpoint: ^[2]

GET /api/v1/helpcenter/{helpcenter_id}/labels/{label_id}/users

In Python: ^[2]

result = client.list_users_under_a_label(
    helpcenter_id="your_helpcenter_id",
    label_id="your_label_id"
)

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Common pitfalls

• Mixing up endpoint direction. There are two related endpoints: one retrieves labels *for a user* (/users/{userid}/labels) and the other retrieves users *under a label* (/labels/{labelid}/users). Using the wrong one will return an empty or unexpected result set. [^1,2]

• Missing path parameters. Both helpcenterid and userid (or label_id) are path-level parameters, not query parameters. Passing them in the query string instead of the URL path will result in a routing error. [^1,2]

• Assigning vs. listing. A POST to the same /users/{user_id}/labels path *assigns* labels rather than listing them. Confirm you are using GET, not POST, or you will inadvertently modify data. ^[3]

• Scope gaps. If your OAuth token was generated without the necessary Desk scopes, the API will return an authorisation error. Cross-check your token's granted scopes against the required list in your configuration. ^[8]

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What to check

• Verify both IDs are correct — confirm helpcenterid and userid by looking them up in your Zoho Desk admin panel or via a prior API call before running the label-list request. ^[1]
• Confirm the HTTP method is GET — the same URL path supports POST (assign) and DELETE (remove), so a wrong method will silently alter label assignments instead of reading them. [^3,6]
• Check pagination — if the user has many labels, use the p parameter to page through results and ensure you are not missing labels that fall beyond the first page. ^[1]