Organizations are collections of your users (both end users and agents). As described in About organizations and groups, how you set up your organizations depends on how you want to define your workflow and organize your users (both end users and agents).
Administrators can add and edit organizations, agents cannot. On the Team plan, users can belong to only one organization. On Professional and Enterprise, users can belong to multiple organizations, up to 300. A user does not have to belong to any organization, however.
- Creating organizations
- Automatically adding users to organizations based on their email domain
- Mapping a group to an organization
- Setting up a shared organization for end users
- Viewing and managing organizations
- Editing and deleting organizations
- Manually adding users to organizations
- Restricting an agent to one organization
- Creating views by organization
Creating organizations
Your Zendesk account starts with a single, default organization that has the same name as your account. This organization contains all your users. Administrators can add additional organizations, agents cannot.
- Hover over the +Add tab, then select Organization.
- Enter the organization's name in the Name field.
Organization names must be unique.
- Enter Email domains (separated by a space) if you want to set up user
mapping.
When you set up user mapping, users from the specified email domains are automatically added to this organization when they submit a request for the first time or register. For more information and important considerations about user mapping, see Automatically adding users to organizations based on their email domain.
- Click Save.
You can add additional information after clicking Save.
- Optionally, enter Tags.
For more information about organization tags, see Adding tags to users and organizations.
- Select a Group if you want to set up group mapping.
When you set up group mapping, an organization's tickets are automatically assigned to the specified group. This can be set up by an administrator.
- For Users, determine their ticket
access. This setting
only affects Guide Professional, where
end
users
can access tickets in the customer portal. Important: There are organization access settings in the user profile and in the organization itself. If the settings are in conflict, the more permissive setting overrides the less permissive setting.
Ticket access options include:
- Select Can view own tickets only if you want users in this org to be able
to view and edit their own tickets only.Note: If you chose this setting, but the access setting in the user's profile or custom role gives the user access to all org tickets, this org setting will be overridden by the user setting.
- Select Can view all org tickets if you want users in this org to be able to
view all org tickets, then select And add comments or but not add
comments to determine whether they can also comment on org tickets.
Allowing all of the end users in an organization to see each other's tickets is referred to as a shared organization.
Note: If you chose this setting, and the access setting in the user's profile or custom role restricts access for users in the org to their own tickets only, this org setting will override the user setting.
- Select Can view own tickets only if you want users in this org to be able
to view and edit their own tickets only.
- Enter any Details or Notes you want.
The new organization is saved automatically, so when you are finished you can simply navigate away.
Automatically adding users to organizations based on their email domain
Users can be automatically added to an organization based on their email domain when they submit a request for the first time or register. This is referred to as user mapping. An administrator can set this up by editing an organization's settings.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select People.
- Click Organizations.
- Find the organization you want to edit and then click Edit.
Alternatively, you can search for the organization.
- In Domains enter the email domain(s) (separated by a space) to set up user
mapping.
Your update is saved automatically, so when you are finished you can simply navigate away. A user must then verify the email address for it to be added.
- Users are automatically mapped to the first organization sorted alphabetically by name
- Users are no longer mapped to the previous organization
- The email domain is automatically included in the allowlist
If you've added email domains to the allowlist (see Using the allowlist and blocklist to control access to Zendesk Support), these domains will be automatically included in the list. Although allowed domains are included, they are not shown on this organization settings page.
Removing the domain mapping will also remove all users who were mapped because of the domain.
Mapping a group to an organization
An organization's tickets can be automatically assigned to a group. This is referred to as group mapping and can be set up by an administrator.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select People.
- Click Organizations.
- Find the organization you want to edit and then click Edit.
Alternatively, you can search for the organization.
- Select a Group from the drop-down list to set up group mapping.
Your update is saved automatically, so when you are finished you can simply navigate away.
New tickets will now automatically be assigned to the selected group; however, business rules and agents may override this default group setting.
Setting up a shared organization for end users
You have the option of allowing all of the end users in an organization to see each other's tickets. This is referred to as a shared organization. This can be set up by an administrator.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select People.
- Click Organizations.
- Find the organization you want, then click Edit.
Alternatively, you can search for the organization.
- For Users, select Can view all org tickets, then, if you want to allow
users to add comments to shared organization tickets, select And add comments.Important: This organization-wide setting overrides the user access setting in the user profile. Meaning that, even if you restrict a user in this org to view their own tickets only, they will be able to see all org tickets if the org access is set to view all org tickets.
Your update is saved automatically, so when you are finished you can simply navigate away.
Alternatively, instead of allowing all end users in an organization to see an organization's tickets, you can grant this privilege to select end users. To do so, set the org to Can view own tickets only, then set individual users to Can view all org tickets in their user profiles. The user permission in that case overrides the organization-wide setting.
Viewing and managing organizations
You can view and manage the organizations you've created from the People page.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select People. On the People page, click Organization.
- For details about an organization, click edit.
Each organization shows the number of tickets and users associated with the organization. It can take a few minutes for Zendesk Support to index new tickets and users. If they don't appear in your organization details, wait a few minutes and try again.
Editing and deleting organizations
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select People.
- Click Organizations.
- Find the organization you want to edit and then click Edit.
Alternatively, you can search for the organization.
- Make any edits you'd like.
Your updates are saved automatically, so when you are finished you can simply navigate away.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select People.
- Click Organizations.
- Find the organization you want to edit and then click Edit.
Alternatively, you can search for the organization.
- Click the Organization options arrow in the upper right, then select
Delete.
- Confirm that you want to delete the organization.
Any users you assigned to the organization will no longer be assigned (since it doesn't exist anymore) and the organization will be removed from any tickets it was assigned to. Any business rules you set up using the organization you deleted will no longer function properly.
Manually adding users to organizations
You can add users to an organization at the time they are created or later by editing their profile. You can also include users' organizations when importing new users in a bulk import operation. Administrators and agents can add users to organizations.
On the Team plan, users can belong to only one organization. On Professional and Enterprise, users can belong to multiple organizations, up to 300.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select People.
- Click End users (or Administrators, or Agents).
- Find the user you want to edit and then click Edit.
Alternatively, you can search for the user.
- Select an organization from the drop-down list under Organization.
Your update is saved automatically, so when you are finished you can simply navigate away. You can change the user's organization at any time by editing their profile. End users cannot change their own organization (administrators and agents can).
If you are on Professional or Enterprise and add users to multiple organizations, see Managing users in multiple organizations.
Restricting agents to an organization
One of the options you have for managing the ticket workflow and controlling the access agents have to tickets is to add them directly to an organization and then restrict their access privileges to that organization. You must be an administrators to set this up.
If you are on the Enterprise plan, you can restrict access to an organization for all agents in a custom role, but you cannot restrict access on an individual agent level. See Creating custom agent roles. To restrict agents in a custom role to an organization, create or edit a custom role and set ticket access to Requested by users in this agent's organization. You can restrict a custom role to one or multiple organizations.
On Team and Professional plans, when you restrict agent access to tickets within their organization, those agents can no longer update end user information or add end users to tickets, and cannot view end user information on the People management page.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select People.
- Click Agents.
- Find the agent you want to edit and then click Edit.
Alternatively, you can search for the agent.
- In Access, select Tickets from agent's org
- In Organization, add the name of the organization, if there is not already one
there.
If you are on the Professional plan, you can add more than one org, if you want to restrict the agent's access to multiple organizations.
Your update is saved automatically, so when you are finished you can simply navigate away.
Regardless of the groups they belong to, agents will only have access to the organization's tickets.
Creating views by organization
You can use organizations when creating views (as well as business rules).
For example, a common use for organizations in a view is to monitor ticket activity.
This view displays unsolved tickets that are assigned to an organization called Customers.
99 Comments
Hi Jessie,
That doesn't help a lot when we are pushing organisations from our system over to Zendesk. It seems strange that you wouldn't allow Orgs to have the same name when there are plenty of organisations out there that have the same names. Especially if your target is smaller business (In NZ, this is 1-5 people business). Generally, they take their own name as the business, and there are often duplicates.
So when they log in to their Organisation portal, their Organisation name will be slightly differnet to what is truely is?
Hi Lee!
Thanks for sharing your use case! I can definitely understand where you're coming from on this.
This happens a lot with customers who are supporting several franchises of the same business. I know other customers who run into this situation will use the business name but also add the business location (or store number, some other unique info) to show the difference between each Org. It seems like a good solution; the customer sees their proper business name (plus the extra info), but the extra bit of info helps agents differentiate between the different Orgs so that tickets and users don't get added to the wrong one.
Hi Jessie,
I can appreciated work arounds as we ask our clients to do this many times, but if you say this happens a lot, then obviously re recognise that it's a common occurrence, as should anybody who works in any sort of industry, and in that case, why is it a restriction? You have domains and other information added to Orgs, so there are plenty of other ways to ensure tickets don't get added to the wrong one.
Re-surfacing Dan's earlier comment: is it on the roadmap to allow specific individual users to not only view their tickets but also edit a comment?
I can't think of any even moderately sized organization that would want every user in that organization to have ticket edit access (sounds pretty chaotic!); more normally there are a few super-user admins who would be using this feature.
Hi Daniel -
Thanks for your question. Creating the functionality to edit comments is not planned for development. This is a feature that has been deeply considered and broadly debated, and we have ultimately decided not to go down that road as it creates a number of complicated problems around maintaining a System of Record.
Hey Lee!
I definitely see what you're saying here. Routing tickets isn't the only consideration with this, though. Having Orgs with the exact same name will cause confusion on the part of agents who are trying to figure out what Org they need to select when they're working with tickets. It would also cause confusion when trying to report on tickets or users from different Orgs - without some differentiating information in the name, there'd be no good way to tell what you were looking at. There are probably other considerations that I'm not thinking of, as well.
I can see that you feel strongly about this, though! I took a look at our Product Feedback area and didn't see any posts about this particular idea, so I'd definitely encourage you to head over there to share your suggestion and use case. This will give other users the chance to add their votes and use cases as well, and ensures that our Product Managers will see your feedback (even though they're not always able to response, they see everything!).
For a user I set "Can view all org tickets" but I don't see where you I can "then select And add comments or but not add comments to determine whether they can also comment on org tickets." as you state above.
I see my error - I was referring to the setting in the User's settings not the Org. If I set the end user setting to "Can view all org tickets" is it the setting in the Org that determines if they can or cannot add comments?
Hello Ted,
This note from above might help: Important: There are organization access settings in the user profile and in the organization itself. If the settings are in conflict, the more permissive setting overrides the less permissive setting.
I must look into this myself as what I am finding does not match how it was configured years ago. And, I see my Time Zone is American Samoa rather than USA Pacific, and I have seen other incorrect settings....
Frojon Banwell
For the end user there are two settings - "Can view and edit own tickets only", "Can view tickets from user's org". The latter isn't exactly specific about write access so it isn't clear if this is more permissive than the org setting of "Can view all org tickets, but cannot add comments". I want the end user to be able to see other tickets but not comment on them.
My settings for the Org are Can view all org tickets, but cannot add comments, while the setting for the User is the Can view and edit own tickets only. I believe this might be a bit more complicated than it was years ago when I first created. However, I believe the combination still allows everyone to see all the tickets in our Org, and only edit their own or if they are in the CC. Since I think something is slightly different I do need to confirm all is as I expect!
Is there a way to automatically assign tickets to an Organization based on it's Brand? Currently it seems to be based on the domain of the requester. However, we have certain support email addresses set up and associated with specific brands, and we'd like all tickets received at those email addresses to be automatically assigned to specific organizations.
Hey James!
I know we've spoken about this elsewhere, but since this response is public I do want to make sure I am being clear about the verbiage being used here.
- Tickets are associated to an Organization by the Ticket Requester.
- The default options available to set the Organization of a ticket via Business Rules can only update the Organization to one that the User is already associated with.
- When a ticket is created it will automatically be associated to the primary Organization of the Ticket Requester (for Professional and Enterprise accounts that have "Allow users to belong to multiple organizations" enabled). The options to set Organizations in Business Rules will generally only be applicable to these types of User's requests.
Organizations are generally intended to associate Users who are actually part of the same company. Although there can be legitimate use cases for using Organizations for other purposes, these are not common and there are often going to be better methods of achieving affiliations for customers to a product or brand.
We would not generally recommend associating Users to an Organization systematically outside of the User Mapping option that we already provide. As a companies email domain, such as zendesk.com, will only be available to legitimate members of that company these can be considered to be vetted for security by the company providing them. Associating unaffiliated individuals to an Organization, such as those with a publicly available domain such as gmail.com, or in your case based on the email address they are contacting presents a security risk.
- If you were to allow any Users in that Organization to view all Organization tickets, then you could be exposing customer information to anyone who you have granted access to that Organization's tickets.
If you wanted to affiliate customers to your brands my recommendation would be to look into User Fields (Adding custom fields to users). User Fields can be set via Business Rules which will give you a lot more freedom to build your workflows around these.
It sounds like the best way to proceed here will depend on the workflow you wanted to set this up for. If you wanted to post that publicly I'm happy to follow up here, or if you preferred we can also discuss this privately in a ticket. I look forward to further assisting!
I would like to see the privileges broken down into separate tasks. The privileges lump too many functions together. In particular, this checkbox:
Groups categorize agents while organizations enable you to segment your end-users.
There should definitely be a separate task for edit vs. create/delete of organizations. It also seems like there should be a separation of groups and organizations.
Is it possible to auto create organisation based on the domain name?
Welcome to the Community, Samik!
It's not possible to automatically create an Org, but once the Org is created you can set it up so that all users from a specific email domain are automatically added to the Org, which you've probably seen in the article above.
Hope that helps!
Zendesk Team,
On February 24th, 2017, Meena asked a question about deactivating organizations without completely deleting organizational data.
We are a B to B company that needs the ability to remove access to our support portal for customers (organizations) and users without completely deleting this data. I presume this to be similar for any other SaaS or subscription model businesses that use Zendesk.
Hey Mike!
As Jesse mentioned in her response to Meena, organizations cannot be suspended, but only because they are a value on the ticket and the user, not a place that users live inside.
You can certainly suspend all the users of an organization!
Suspending the users would ensure that you keep their ticket information while still preventing them from creating new tickets or viewing the tickets they have already raised.
I recommend reading through this as a refresher: Zendesk Agent guide - Suspending a user
If you run into further issues as you do this, let us know!
Somehow we managed to have one organization set up twice. With slightly different names though. Unfortunately none of the two was setup with a domain.
Now both have users set up with closed tickets linked to them.
How do I move all users to one organization bringing all tickets with them?
Thank you
Hey Mschrijnder!
Once the tickets are closed, all of their qualities are frozen, including historic organization names.
There is more information regarding this here:
Why is the ticket organization not being updated for closed tickets?
I'd like to set up a trigger to cc certain tickets to members of an organization. All the settings, as far as I can tell, only allow me to cc tickets to agents.
Hi everyone!
Quick question, if we need to rename an Organization, how will this affect our ticket data, reports and our triggers? I know orgs have a unique ID so not sure if renaming an org will affect open requests or how would it affect closed ones given that they can't be modified.
Thanks,
Luis
Hi Crystal!
It's not possible to use triggers to add end-users as CCs on tickets, but you might be able to set something up using an external target. We have an article about how to set up external targets here.
For the shared organization, is there a way to give a single user access to view all org tickets AND add comments.
I only see the option to give add comments permission on the org level, and i do not want ot give the entire org that permission.
Hi Sahar!
You can manage this from the profile of the individual user. Go to the user profile in Support, and you'll see a drop down menu labeled Access toward the top of the left column:
Select Can view tickets from user's org. This will allow them to see all tickets from their Org and, as long as the ticket they're viewing isn't in Closed status, they will be able to add comments and CCs to any of those tickets from their own My Activities section in Help Center.
Hello,
Is it possible to detect users within an Organisation and differentiate between End Users and current Agents? Basically, we have an Organisation of almost 1000 users, however, almost 900 of these are past staff (therefore, not current instance agents).
I'd love to separate these out so that the Organisation only contains current Agents and would sub-Organise the previous team members.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Lisa
Hi Lisa!
A workaround that I could suggest for this is to perform a search using the organization name as keyword. In the search results, go to Users tab to see all users under the organization. There will be a column showing the user role.
The not so good news is you cannot bulk edit the users from this view. You have to manually go through each one and edit the organization from the user profile.
Hey Gab,
Thanks so much for that.
I found that I was unable to change the organisation name of an existent member; could this be due to the domain name being attached to the existing organisation?
Thanks,
Lisa
Hey Lisa!
Yes, if the domain mapping for your current Organization is set to the same domain that these users' email addresses belong to then it will continue to map the users to that Organization. You will want to remove the domain mapping from your Organization, remove the users from that Organization, and then add them to the new Organization (if you do not have "Allow users to belong to multiple organizations" enabled under Admin > Settings > Customers).
Hi All,
Does anyone know offhand if an organization addition can automatically add a value to a custom ticket field that is set up? Possibly via API?
I have a use case where not all tickets for an organization are coming from a requester of that organization. Example would be internal service rep writing to support on behalf of the customer, or the customer is submitting a request to us via a separate UI, and the ticket requester comes in looking generic. To get around this, I have a separate ticket field called "Account Name" to properly account for these use cases and basically the same values as the organization name, but I'd like to avoid having to manually add a value to that ticket field when I add a new organization to our enterprise. Thoughts anyone?
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