Creating custom roles and assigning agents

On Enterprise and Enterpise Plus plans, you can define your own agent roles and assign those roles to any agent. This allows you to define agent roles that suit your own organizational structure and workflow.

This article includes these sections:

• Understanding the predefined agent roles
• Other unique agent roles
• Creating custom agent roles
• Assigning custom roles to agents

Understanding the default agent roles

There are a number of default agent roles that reflect typical customer support roles. You can use these agent roles as is or clone them and create variations to suit your needs. Or, you can create your own agent roles.

Table 1. Default agent roles

Agent role	Description
Advisor	Advisors manage the workflow and configure your Zendesk. They create or manage shared automations, macros, triggers, and views. They also set up the service level agreements, channels, and extensions. Advisors don't solve tickets, they can only create tickets on behalf of end users and make private comments.
Staff	A Staff agent's primary role is to solve tickets. They can create tickets on behalf of an end user, edit tickets within their groups, view reports, and add or edit personal views and macros.
Team Leader	Team leaders have greater access to your Zendesk than staff agents. They can read and edit all tickets, moderate forums, create tickets on behalf of an end user, and create and edit end users, groups, and organizations.

Other unique agent roles

Depending on your Zendesk plan and the products and features it provides, you might see these unique agents roles in your account.

Table 2. Unique agent roles

Agent role	Description
Chat-only Agent	This role is not supported. See the Contributor role.
Contributor	If you are using Zendesk Chat Phase 4 with an integrated Support account, each new Chat agent is also added to your Support account as a contributor. Contributors in Support have limited privileges; for instance, contributors can view some tickets, but cannot respond or otherwise interact with them. Contributors do not occupy an agent seat in Support, unless they are manually upgraded to an agent role. If you have a Sell-only account, existing Sell users will be added to a Support account as contributors. If you have a Chat-only Phase 4 account, and later create an integrated Support account, existing Chat agents will be added to your Support account as contributors. For more information, see Creating agents and departments in the Zendesk Chat Help Center.
Legacy Agent	This is a transitory role that includes all agents who have yet to be assigned to a role. For all these agents, we are maintaining the permissions they previously had on the plan you upgraded from. Also, you cannot assign agents to this transitory role. Lastly, this role will disappear after all its members have been assigned to other roles.
Light Agent	Light agent is a limited agent role. Light agents can be CC'd on tickets, can view tickets, and can add private comments to tickets within their groups. They cannot be assigned to or edit tickets. Light agents can be given permission to view reports or they can be restricted from viewing any reports. They cannot create or edit a report. You can add an unlimited number of light agents. See Understanding light agent permissions.

Creating custom agent roles

You can create your own agent roles or base a new role on one of the predefined agent roles. You can either edit or clone the Staff, Team Leader, and Advisor roles, or create a new role from scratch. You can create a maximum of 197 custom roles for your account.

To create a new agent role from a predefined role

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > People.
2. Select Roles.

   

   All of the agent roles (predefined and custom roles, if any) are displayed.

3. Locate the role you want to clone and hover the mouse button over edit.

   You'll see an edit link to edit an existing role and a clone link to make a copy of the role.

4. Select clone.
5. Enter a new Name and Description for the role.
6. Define and create the agent role as described below in Agent permissions.
7. When you've finished defining the new role, click Save.

To add a new custom agent role

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > People.
2. Select role.

   

3. Enter a role Name and Description and then select the permissions for the role. See Agent permissions.
4. Click Save.

Permissions that agents with custom roles can have

When creating custom agent roles, you choose from an extensive list of permissions that define what agents can do.

Permissions	Description
Tickets	You can define an agent's access to tickets, the types of comments they can make, and their editing permissions. An agent may access tickets in one of the following ways: Assigned to this agent only Requested by users in this agent's organization All within this agent's groups All (including suspended tickets) Agent can assign to any group: Assign tickets to agents in any group, not just other agents within their group. This option is only available when All is selected. Notwithstanding ticket access restrictions, cc'ing an agent (including a Light Agent) on any ticket lets the agent receive email notifications of all public and private updates to the ticket. Interacting with tickets: Edit tickets : Be assigned to tickets and edit properties. Delete tickets: Delete tickets and mark a ticket as spam if they have permission to delete the end user. Merge tickets: Merge two tickets. Edit ticket tags: Add and remove tags on tickets. Agents without this can still set custom fields, but can't add tags with macros. Note: The ability to delete tickets is an agent-level permission. Agents can add ticket comments in one of the following ways: Private only Public and private Additional ticket settings: Manage ticket fields: Create, modify, and delete ticket fields. Manage ticket forms: Create, modify, and delete ticket forms. View satisfaction prediction for tickets: View the predicted satisfaction ratings for tickets. Agents without this permission can still see the satisfaction prediction in views they can access.
People	You can define an agent's access to users and user profiles. An agent may view and edit end-user profiles in one of the following ways: Read only: View end user profiles, but can't create new end users. Add and edit within their organization: Newly-created end users will automatically be assigned to the agent's organization. If your account has multiple organizations, the end user is assigned to the agent's default organization. Add, edit, and delete for all end users: Newly-created end users won't have an organization associated with them. Manage organizations: Create and modify organizations for users. This option is only available when Add, edit, and delete for all end users is selected. Manage groups: Create and modify groups for users. This option is only available when Add, edit, and delete for all end users is selected. End-user editing rights enables the agent to verify end-users. Only admins can change a user's role. Browsing and searching for users: View all users in your account: Search for users by name, email address, phone number, or organization. Doesn’t affect the agent’s ability to add end users or edit their profiles. Adding and modifying user and organization fields: Manage user fields: Create, modify, and delete custom fields for user profiles. Manage organization fields: Create, modify, and delete custom fields for organizations. Viewing and managing customer lists: Customer lists are collections of end users based on criteria such as system attributes, tags, and custom fields. Agents may access customer lists in one of the following ways: See customer lists only Add and edit personal customer lists Add and edit personal and groups customer lists Add and edit personal, group, and global customer lists
Channels	Depending on the channels that have been enabled for your account, agents may also be allowed to do any of the following: Manage channels and extensions: Manage channels including email, social messaging apps, and other modes of communication. Extensions include targets and integrations. Manage Facebook pages: Add Facebook pages that create tickets from Facebook wall posts. Access saved Twitter searches: Access Tweets from the Twitter saved search stream. Access Chat requests: Access chats from end users. Answer phone calls: Answer calls from end users.
Agent workflow	The Agent workflow section includes access and editing permissions for views, reports, customer lists, macros, and dynamic content. Views are predefined conditions for a collection of tickets. Agents may access views in one of the following ways: Play views only See views only Add and edit personal views Add and edit personal and group views Add and edit personal, group and global views Macros apply predefined actions to a ticket. Agents may do the following with Macros: Cannot add or edit: Can apply macros, but can't add or edit them. Add and edit personal macros Add and edit personal and group macros Add and edit personal, group, and global macros Note: To create or edit multiple-group macros, agents must be assigned a role with permission to add and edit global macros (not just “group” macros, which will limit them to single-group macros). Additional agent workflow settings: Access dynamic content: View, add, and edit dynamic content. Manage contextual workspaces: View, add, and edit contextual workspaces. Contribute to side conversations: Reply to or start new side conversations with third parties or other agents outside the ticket flow. Without this, agents can only view side conversations. This option is only available if your Zendesk plan includes side conversations (see Using side conversations in tickets).
Business rules	You can decide if agents can manage business rules. Manage business rules: View, add, edit, and delete business rules, including routing, triggers, automations, and service level agreements (SLAs).
Help Center (if enabled)	You can give agents Help Center permissions. Manage Guide: Access the help center as an admin to manage articles, themes, and setting. When this option is selected, agents in this role have Guide admin permissions. When this option is not selected, agents in this role have Guide viewer permissions. For more information, see Understanding Guide roles. When this setting is not selected, it does not necessarily mean that agents can't add and edit articles and posts. Permission to add and edit articles is determined by user management permissions set on each article (see Setting agent editing and publishing permissions on articles). Permission to add and edit posts is set at the topic level and applies to all posts in the topic (see Allowing agents to add or edit posts in community topics).
Analytics (if Explore is enabled)	You can configure the level of access that agents have to analytics by defining what agents can do with reports in Explore. Explore permissions include: View reports: View reports only. Create reports: Create, edit, and share reports. Create reports and manage permissions: Full admin permissions to Explore. Additional Analytics settings include: View Talk dashboard: View details about calls on the Talk dashboard. For more details, see Giving agents access to Explore.

Permissions that agents with custom roles can't have

There are some permissions that are available to admins that you can't assign to agents with custom roles. For example:

• Create or edit other agent or admin profiles
• Install apps
• Change a user's role
• Create custom agent roles
• Bulk import orgs or users
• Delete call recordings from tickets
• Assume other agents
• Edit subscriptions (including trials)
• Access Admin Center

For more information about agent and admin permissions, see Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.

Assigning custom roles to agents

You can assign a role to an agent by editing their profile, or you can assign a role to multiple agents at the same time.

To change the role of a single agent

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, select Manage > People, then click the link to browse agents.
2. Click Edit next to the agent's name.
3. In the agent's profile, locate the Role field and click Manage in Admin Center.

   The Roles and access tab in Admin Center opens.

4. Select a Role from the drop-down.

   

   For more information, see Setting roles and access in Admin Center.

The change is saved immediately.

To change the role of more than one agent

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, select Manage > People, then click the link to browse agents.
2. Select the checkbox next to the names of the agents you want to update and click the Edit button at the top of the list.

   

3. Select the role, then click Submit.