Creating, managing, and using organizations

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.

Topics covered in this article:

• 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.

To create an organization

1. Hover over the +Add tab, then select Organization.

   

2. Enter the organization's name in the Name field.

   Organization names must be unique.

3. 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.

4. Click Save.

   You can add additional information after clicking Save.

5. Optionally, enter Tags.

   For more information about organization tags, see Adding tags to users and organizations.

6. 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.

7. 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.
8. 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.

Generally, a user must verify their email address before they are automatically added to an organization. However, an unverified user can be mapped to an organization if their profile is created at the same time as their first ticket and the ticket is created either via email or chat.

Important: If a user from the specified domain submitted a ticket before user mapping was configured, you must add them to the organization manually. They won't be added automatically.

To set up user mapping for an organization

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select People.
2. Click Organizations.
3. Find the organization you want to edit and then click Edit.

   Alternatively, you can search for the organization.

4. 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.

Note: If you add an already used mapped domain to a new organization:

• 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.

To set up group mapping for an organization

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select People.
2. Click Organizations.
3. Find the organization you want to edit and then click Edit.

   Alternatively, you can search for the organization.

4. 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.

To set up a shared organization

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select People.
2. Click Organizations.
3. Find the organization you want, then click Edit.

   Alternatively, you can search for the organization.

4. 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.

To view and manage your organizations

• 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

You can edit an organization's settings or delete an organization as needed. You must be an administrator to edit or delete organizations.

Note: When you delete an organization, any business rules you set up using the organization you deleted will no longer function properly.

To edit an organization

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select People.
2. Click Organizations.
3. Find the organization you want to edit and then click Edit.

   Alternatively, you can search for the organization.

4. Make any edits you'd like.

   Your updates are saved automatically, so when you are finished you can simply navigate away.

To delete an organization

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select People.
2. Click Organizations.
3. Find the organization you want to edit and then click Edit.

   Alternatively, you can search for the organization.

4. Click the Organization options arrow in the upper right, then select Delete.

   

5. 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. For security, agents can only add end users to organizations. Administrators can add agents and end 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.

To add a user to an organization

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select People.
2. Click End users (or Administrators, or Agents).
3. Find the user you want to edit and then click Edit.

   Alternatively, you can search for the user.

4. 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.

To restrict an agent to an organization (Team and Professional)

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select People.
2. Click Agents.
3. Find the agent you want to edit and then click Edit.

   Alternatively, you can search for the agent.

4. In Access, select Tickets from agent's org
5. 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.

Note: Notwithstanding ticket access restrictions, CC'ing an agent on any ticket lets the agent receive email notifications of all public and private updates to the ticket.

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.