Adding agents and admins and setting ticket access

What's my plan?

Suite

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus

Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise

You can add team members (agents and admins) manually, through a bulk import of users, or through the Zendesk API. You must be an admin to add team members.

This article covers the following topics:

• Adding an agent or admin
• About the user options
• About agent privileges and ticket access

To add users in a bulk import, see Bulk importing users. To add users with the API, see Zendesk Developer Tools: Introduction.

Tip: To learn more about adding users and defining their roles, see the Zendesk Support for Admins training course.

Related articles:

• About the Team members page
• Restricting agent ticket access by brand

Adding an agent or admin

Note: These instructions don't apply to AI agents (Ultimate). See Managing user access to the AI agents (Ultimate) product instead.

Admins can add any type of user (end users, agents, and other admins).

The account owner can also add agent seats to your subscription. The account owner is included as an agent seat in your subscription.

Before you add a team member, you can check the Seats remaining section of the Team members page to find out whether you have any available seats. If you don’t have any seats left, you won’t be able to add the agent or admin.

To add an agent or admin

1. In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Team > Team members.

   The Team members page opens.

2. Click Create team member.
3. Enter the team member’s Name and Email, then click Next.
4. In the Assign role section, select the user’s Support role from the Support drop-down list, then click Next.

   You set only the Support role now. You can set other roles later.

5. Click Save.

   The new user is saved. If the Also send a welcome email when a new user is created by an agent or administrator option is selected, the new user receives a welcome email and link to sign in.

6. (Optional) Click the new team member, who initially appears at the top of the list, to access their profile and assign any additional roles.

After you add the new team member, you can open their Support profile to set user options and agent permissions. On Enterprise plans, agent permissions are not set in the profile, but are determined by the agent’s custom role.

About user options

The following table describes the options that can be set for a new user.

Profile data	Description
Name	User's name.
Email	Email address used for all email communications with the user. Team members can have more than one email address but one will be their primary email.
Role	Defines the user's function and access level in your Zendesk Support. There are two user types: End user and Staff Member. Customers are assigned the role end user. Staff members can be assigned a variety of roles, such as agent or administrator. On Enterprise plans, you can create custom roles for agents. Roles and product access are managed in Admin Center. Only admins can change a user's role. For information about user roles, see Understanding Zendesk Support user roles. For information about custom roles, see Creating custom roles and assigning agents.
Contacts	Other contact information for the user, such as Phone, X (formerly Twitter) handle, Facebook page, and Google account.
Phone	Personal telephone number for the user.
Alias (Professional and Enterprise)	Alternative name for a team member to use on all communications with customers (also called end users) instead of their real name. If this field blank is blank, the team member's real name is used in email communications.
Signature	Closing line added to an agent's email notifications.
Tags	List of tags that will automatically be added to new tickets created by this user. Separate tags with a space. Tags are added to new tickets only, not updated tickets. This is an optional feature, and you may not have enabled user tagging. For more information about user tags, see Adding tags to users and organizations.
Organization	A collection of users (typically customers, but can include team members) created by an admin. 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. For more information, see About organizations and groups.
Language	Language the user will view your Zendesk Support in. This setting affects this user only.
Time zone	Local time zone for the user; used to time stamp tickets. This setting affects this user only.
Details	Additional details about the user. Address, for example. Details are visible to other team members but not customers.
Notes	Additional notes about the user. Notes are visible to other team members but not customers.

About agent privileges and ticket access

When you add agents you need to define their privileges (groups they will be assigned to, their access to tickets, if they can make both public and private comments, and their forums access). These privileges are described in the following table.

Note: On Enterprise plans, you set the agent's groups in the agent's profile, but you do not set agent permissions and ticket access in the agent's profile. Agent permissions and access (except for groups) are determined by the agent's custom role.

Privileges	Description
Brand membership	Defines the brands in which the user can view, search, and access tickets. Initially, new team members are assigned to all brands, giving them access to tickets across all brands. Admins are automatically assigned to all brands, and this cannot be changed. A team member’s role can further refine their access. For example, a team member’s role might limit them to only tickets in their groups. For more information about brand membership, see Restricting agent ticket access by brand.
Groups	List of groups the agent belongs to. Agents must belong to at least one group. Click the group name to edit the groups for the agent. For information about groups, see Creating groups.
Access	Define the agent's access to tickets as one of the following: All tickets Tickets in agent's groups Tickets in agent's org Assigned tickets only If you select to restrict the agent to an organization, you must also set the agent's organization (on the Add user page). See Restricting agents to an organization. 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. Agents must have All tickets access to create or edit end users. Note: On Enterprise plans, you do not set ticket access in agent profiles. Agent permissions are determined by the agent's custom role (see Creating custom roles and assigning agents).
Comments	Determine the type of comments an agent can make on tickets. Notes and replies enables the agent to add both internal notes and public replies to tickets. Notes only enables the agent to add only internal notes to tickets.