Light agents have limited permissions but can stay informed about tickets and, when needed, provide subject matter expertise and advice by adding private comments. All comments by light agents are private, including the first comment of any tickets they create.
You can't clone or modify the light agent role, except for the two settings for tickets and reporting. Light agents cannot be enabled as Talk agents. Light agents are available as a feature of the Collaboration add-on (see About add-ons).
This article contains the following sections:
About light agent permissions
The light agent role has the following access and permissions.
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Tickets |
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People |
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Guide |
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Reports |
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Views |
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Business rules |
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Channels |
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Mail API |
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Apps |
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Updating reporting and ticket permissions for light agents
For light agents, you can set permissions for ticket access and reports viewing only.
Where you set the light agent permissions depends on your plan. If you are on Enterprise, it might appear that you can edit more options, but those options are not actually editable.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > People. - Click roles.
- Next to Light agent, click edit.
You can change settings in the Tickets and Tools sections only. You cannot change any other settings for light agents.
- Next to Tickets, select an option for What kind of tickets can this agent access:
- All within this agent's group(s) for light agents to access only tickets in their groups.
- Requested by users in this agent's organization for light agents to access only tickets requested by users in their organization.
- All for light agents to access all tickets.
- If you selected All within this agent's group(s) above, and you want light agents to still be able to assign tickets to any group when they're the requester, also select Agent can assign to any group.
- Next to Tools, for What can this agent do with reports, set reporting permissions to Can view only or Cannot view.
- Click Update role.
- Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Settings >Agents.
- Next to Light Agent access, select an option for What kind of tickets can this agent access:
- All within this agent's group(s) for light agents to access only tickets in their groups.
- Requested by users in this agent's organization for light agents to access only tickets requested by users in their organization.
- All for light agents to access all tickets.
- If you selected All within this agent's group(s) above, and you want light agents to still be able to assign tickets to any group when they're the requester, also select Agent can assign to any group.
- For What can this agent do with reports, set reporting permissions to Can view only or Cannot view.
- Click Save.
110 Comments
Appreciate the additional information Jonathan!
Definitely worth mentioning in cases where the light-agent is the requester :)
Thanks Jonathan, easiest way to export those agents/users and update their tags?
Conza, assuming that you are referring to light agents -- how many light agents do you have?
Correct. Agents - 10, Light Agents - 650+
Conza, depending on your in-house coding capacity, it might be simplest to use the ZD API. Alternatively, you could use Customer Lists to export users to CSV, then use bulk user import to update the tags on only the light agents. (After careful testing, of course!)
Is it possible to set a whole organization as a lite agent?
Hey Kevin,
Light-agents is a role that is only available at an end-user level. Unfortunately you cannot set this at an organization level. What sort of workflow are you looking to implement that would require light-agents at this level?
Let us know!
Hi,
Here is my situation. I have a small organization with 3 support agents using ZD Support at company HQ. They all have Professional licences. Occasionally they need to involve one of our 10 store managers, who are not currently using ZD, in either directly answering the customers request or just providing feedback.
We have currently added those 10 store managers as end users in ZD and agents are CC'ing them to cases where they need to get involved in the conversation with the customer. However, this is super limited in functionality - it only works with email tickets (for FB the responses from CC's person gets added as comment to case but never posted to Facebook), it is impossible to share the ticket with store managers without first sending a reply to the customer, and all store manager responses are public, so it is impossible to engage in "behind the scenes" conversation between agent and store manager, before providing public reply.
Then I thought that maybe buying licences for 10 light agents and enabling side conversations might be a solution, but no - it turns out that then our store managers would not be able to simply reply to email from Zendesk to respond to customer, as all light agent replies are added as internal comments.
So what are our options? Buying another 10 pro licences for all store managers would be a serious overkill, as there are few tickets when they need to get involved.
I see in the article that Light Agents don't have permission to add CCs to a ticket, but I have a sales rep who says that she was able add CCs sometime within the last two weeks. Jessie mentioned in a comment from two years ago that Light Agents did have the ability to add CCs to tickets through the agent dashboard. Was that permission changed recently?
Hi Jason -
With the recently released CCs and Followers functionality, Light Agents cannot currently add cc's to a ticket. However, older plans that have not yet upgraded to this functionality may be on a set up that does allow this, as it was possible in some legacy systems. I suspect that you are on a system that has some of the legacy functionality.
Hi team,
The new Using-CCs-followers-and-mentions - I feel has broken what I had previously setup - where the Light Agents as Requester - they no longer get email notifications when our AGENTS respond.
But also - when they reply to a ticket, it no longer sets the ticket to OPEN.
At a loss for why its no longer working. Creating a ton of issues here.
I have gone ahead and added "light_agent" tag - for all light agents, so that should help crafting matters - but shouldn't have broken previous triggers.
It's as if the requester can't see the private comments, although they're a light agent now...
Any ideas?
Hi Lior,
No, Light Agents are the only role we enabled for that sort of function.
@Lior, Nicole: Can't you just add those people as CCs in the ticket? Then they'll get a notification.
Additionally they could create themselves an end-user profile so they can track the tickets they're CC'd on.
@Fabio, that certainly could be one method to keeping users in the loop when a ticket is created so thanks for sharing :)
@Lior, you may also want to look into notifying an external target. More information here: Notifying external targets. This would allow you to send out an email notification to a 3rd party any time a ticket is created. They won't be able to take any action on the ticket but they could at least keep an eye out if anything urgent comes in.
Hope this helps!
@brett @fabio Thank for your suggestions! This is really helpful :)
Happy to help Lior :)
I just want to confirm that light agents can see internal comments, is that correct?
If that is correct, can someone help me figure out the additional cost of light agents for my company account?
Hey Kevin,
You're correct and light-agents can see internal comments on tickets. I'll get a ticket created and passed over to your Account Manager to discuss pricing further.
Cheers!
I understand all the things that light agents cannot do, but I do not understand why they can't reassign tickets.
If I have a specific team of light agents dedicated to a specific type of issues and it is fine that they can only make private comments.
But why they can't reassign a ticket back to the full agent?
In my workflow I would great a group only of light agents where we need to assign tickets and we need internal comments from them, when the light agents makes the comment and want to send it back to the full agent, so he/she is aware, how do we update the assignee of the ticket, it does not make sense to be kept as assigned to the light agent.
Light agent cannot reassign back tickets to who escalated the ticket to them, why?
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