Light agents are available as a feature of the Collaboration add-on. Light agents have limited permissions but can stay informed about tickets and, when needed, provide subject matter expertise and advice by adding private comments to the ticket. All ticket comments by light agents are private, including the first comment of any tickets they create.
This article contains the following sections:
Understanding what light agents can do
Light agents have the following access and permissions.
| Area | Light agents can... | Light agents can't... |
|---|---|---|
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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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| Zendesk Chat |
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| Zendesk Talk | Light agents cannot be enabled as Talk agents. |
Configuring light agent ticket access and reporting permissions
The method you use to configure permissions for light agents varies depending on whether you are on a Support Professional or Enterprise plan. Most of the light agent permissions can't be configured. You can configure options for ticket access for light agents, and, if you're on Support Professional or above, you can additionally configure access to reports. The other light agent permissions shown in the table above can't be changed.
Configuring light agent permissions with Support Professional
If you're using Support Professional, you can configure light agent permissions for reports and ticket access.
To edit reporting and ticket permissions for light agents (Support Professional)
- 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 end users in this agent's organization for light agents to access only tickets requested by end 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 Insights reporting permissions to Can view only or Cannot view. Light agents with Support Professional cannot view or access Explore reports.
- When you are finished, click Save.
Configuring light agent permissions with Support Enterprise
If you're using Support Enterprise, you can only configure light agent permissions for ticket access.
To edit reporting and ticket permissions for light agents (Enterprise)
You can't clone or modify the light agent role, except for the two settings for tickets and reporting.
- Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > People.
- On the People page, click roles.
- Next to the Light agent role, click edit.
If you are using Explore, you can only change settings in the Tickets section.
- Under 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 end users in this agent's organization for light agents to access only tickets requested by end users in their organization. Light agents with Support Enterprise can't access queries or edit Explore reports, but you can share Explore dashboards with them in view only mode.
- 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.
- Click Update role.
138 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?
Hi Antonio,
This is one of the restrictions of the light agent concept. I might have a solution for you.
But before we go there, what do you mean by having a ticket assigned to a light agent.
To my knowledge a ticket can never be assigned to a light agent.
In terms of reassignment. Let the light agent add an internal note.
Something like !reassign tommy
And create a trigger with conditions
Set action
Hi Antonio, I'd say it's mostly because the role was created with the objective of consulting information rather than participating in updating it. That said, I understand how that limitation can be an inconvenience when building workflows.
I don't really understand your question about reassignation. You mention "send it back to the full agent", but since light agents can't be assignees, the agent value wouldn't necessarily change, right?
Workaround. Anyway, this is how we did it in a couple of workflows, for your consideration:
The feasibility of this will depend on how many regular agents participate in that specific workflowm and/or how you have it configured (in terms of macros and views, for example).
Dear Pedro,
Thank your your kind answer but as a matter of fact by playing with a trigger and a macro, I was able to achieve 2 key aspect that are clearly missing.
I have signed up for collaboration addon and it is NOT free, I signed up mainly for side conversation which is a functionality that zendesk has been lacking for a long time.
As far as light agent is concerned 2 key aspects of collaborating internally with tickets are missing from this "collaboration" add on: ability for light agents to 1) reassign tickets and 2) update statuses.
If you can achieve these things with trigger why you don't allow the admin decide within the group setting of the light agent, if they can update ticket status and reassign tickets, it defeats the purpose to be able to do it with trigger and not with role settings.
The concept of light agent (in my humble opinion) is an agent that does not interact with final customer and only works internally with the main support customer facing department, through internal comments. This is awesome.
For me light agent make sense as a group of agent (for example finance) that only do internal consulting, where support level one need to escalate internal questions (support will assign it to light agent group obviously), and then when consulting done, light agent need to let the support team know what is the outcome of the consultation to the main support group, it is a collaboration add-on right?
customer > support level one > light agent internal department > support level one > customer
How can the 2 groups collaborate between each other if they cannot change the status to OPEN and reassign the ticket back to the Support group? How would they know there is a new comment? An email? Checking the latest status update in a view? Forget it.
It is such a basic functionality to be aware of ticket changes, that if you don't change the ticket status, you won't know the result of the collaboration.
I have created a macro with predefined text, and a trigger that reassign and a change the status, but it would have been much easier to allow the admin the set up the right settings withing the role settings.
Thanks
Hi Antonio,
Disclaimer: I don't work at Zendesk.
I sympathize with you, and I feel your 'pain'. And I also agree it wouldn't be a strange fit inside the role settings. A long with many other things that could (should) be in there. In the end it all comes down to choices, choices from the past, now and in the future. The light agents exist for many many years, and their haven't been much changes around that role. My outside (and personal) opinion on this is, there are other more pressing topics that the product teams need to work on.
Your feedback is very welcome. The community team is (partially) here to collect that feedback, and feed that back in to the Product teams, which happens regularly. I will make sure once this comes up, your feedback will be in there. These teams have their own priorities, and not everything makes it into the product.
It would be great if lite agents could access reporting in Explore now that Insights is gone. It means we have to have our a licence to all our insights, quality, workforce management teams, etc, when they don't need access to any of the other systems or talk to customers.
Hey Dion,
Light-agent access to Explore is currently in Early Access. You can find out more information here: Announcing Support Enterprise custom roles and light agent access support EAP for Zendesk Explore
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Cheers!
I totally agree with Antonio saying that light agent is an agent that can only use internal note but I don't understand why first of all cannot change status of a ticket and also cannot assignee a ticket to another agent.
I'm very surprise that light agent that exist from many years hasn't be upgraded till today
bye
So above the article states that light agents can make Private Comments, but one of my light agents just got an error prompt when trying to post an internal comment. Is there a reason this might happen. He successfully commented on another ticket, so we can't figure out why this might be. He is a light agent and is in the group that the ticket is assigned. The ticket he successfully commented on was set as "NEW", but the ticket he could not comment on was "OPEN". Any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated.
@Jonathan Most likely would be a temporary glitch. Is this reproducible after doing a hard reload of the ZD support page? If so, what exactly is the error prompt?
It says, "Ticket cannot be created/updated by user". He tried refreshing the page and resubmitting the comment and it still didn't work.
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