End users are the users who request support, also known as your customers. They interact with Zendesk and submit tickets. Regardless of the channel your customers use to request support, each customer must have an account. An end user's account contains both required and optional information.
Adding end users
There are many ways users can be added. They can add themselves by submitting a support request or agents and administrators can add them manually. If you are an administrator you can add several users at once using bulk import or add users via the Zendesk API. See Bulk importing users and Importing users with the Zendesk API.
This section will instruct you on how to add end-users by creating new user accounts in Zendesk Support. Both agents and administrators can perform this action. You might use this for example, if you're on the telephone with a customer who has never before requested support and therefore doesn't have an account. By creating a user account, you can then follow-up with an email.
There are additional end-user registration settings you can set, such as access to your Help Center, email verification, and support request settings. See Managing end-user settings for more information.
- Hover over the +Add tab in the top toolbar, then select User.
- Enter the user's Name and Email, then click the Role drop-down and select End-user.
- Click Save.
You can add additional information to the user's profile after clicking Save.
- When the user's profile opens, enter the user's information (described below).
Note: On Essential, the user data options are limited to Role, Email, Contacts, Details, and Notes.
Viewing a user's profile in Zendesk Support
You can view an end-user's profile either in Zendesk Support or Help Center. For information on viewing your own user profile, see Viewing your Zendesk Support user profile. For information on viewing a user's profile in Help Center, see Viewing user profiles from Help Center.
- Open a user's profile using one of the following methods in Zendesk Support:
- Click the Search icon (
) in the sidebar, then search for the end-user you want to edit.
- Click the tab for the ticket requester's profile in a ticket.
- Click the Search icon (
- Click through the different tabs on the main window to view the following information:
- Tickets: View a user's requested or CC'd tickets. See Viewing your tickets activity in your profile.
- Help Center: View a user's comments, posts, votes, and subscriptions.
- Security Settings: Reset a user's password. See Resetting users passwords.
- Click the + New Ticket button next to the user's name at the top right of the profile to create a new ticket on their behalf or the down arrow to perform actions such as merging, suspending, deleting, or assuming the identity of the user.
- View and edit user details on the left side of your profile. Below are the default user fields shown. If you have additional Zendesk Support features or have created custom fields, they will be included in the user details panel as well (see Adding custom fields to users).
User data Description Role Defines the user's function and access level. There are three user types: End-user, Agent, Administrator. By default, all new users are set to end-users. Agents can only add end-users. Only administrators can change a user's role. Access 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.-
View and edit own tickets only, meaning users can only see and comment on tickets where they are the requester.
Note: If you chose this setting, but the org setting gives users in the org access to all tickets, this user setting will be overridden by the org setting.
-
Can view tickets from user's org, meaning user can see (but not comment on) all tickets in their organization.
Note: If you chose this setting, and the org setting restricts access for users in the org to their own tickets only, this user setting will override the org setting.
Email This is the email address you added for the end-user. The email address must be unique to the end-user. You cannot use a duplicate email address. Contacts You can also add additional contact information for users using the Add contacts link. See Adding user contact information. Tags List of tags you want automatically added to new tickets created by the end-user. Separate tags with a space. Tags are added to new tickets only, not updated tickets. This is an optional feature and you might not have enabled user tagging. See Adding tags to users and organizations. Organization If you use organizations, and you want to add this end-user to one, click Add organization, then enter the name of the organization. Click Add organization again if you'd like to add this user to multiple organizations (see Enabling multiple organizations for users). 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.
If your administrator has set up user mapping, which automatically adds new users to an organization based on their email domain, you can leave this blank.
Language Language the user will view your instance of Zendesk Support in. This setting affects this user only. The end-user's Help Center will appear in the selected language and some system messages and email notifications may also be in the selected language. Time zone The end-user's local time zone; used to time stamp tickets submitted by this user. This setting affects this user only. Details Additional details about the end-user. Address, for example. Details are visible to agents only, not end-users. Notes Any notes about the end-user. Notes are visible to agents only, not end-users. -
View and edit own tickets only, meaning users can only see and comment on tickets where they are the requester.
Editing users
In Zendesk Support, you can make edits to a user's profile, including editing their user profile details, adding or editing user contact information, and more. You can suspend, delete, or assume the identity of the user.
- Navigate to a user's profile in Zendesk Support (see Viewing a user's profile in Zendesk Support).
- Click the user's name to enter a new profile name.
- Click the down arrow next to the +New ticket button at the top right of the profile to merge, suspend, delete, or assume the identity of the user.
- To edit a user's details, click the field box you would like to edit. You can also add user's contact information from this location.
For details of the default user fields, see the table in the previous section.
For information about deleting users, see Deleting users.
Adding user contact information
A user account can contain multiple types of contact information, including email, phone, and social media accounts.
A user account can contain multiple email addresses. Each time you add an email address, a verification email is sent to that address and must be confirmed before the email address is valid. One email address is set as the primary, which means that notifications are sent to that address. You can change the primary email address to any of the other verified email addresses.
You can also add multiple phone numbers, Google accounts, and Twitter accounts. Note that you can only add one Facebook account.
- Navigate to the user's profile in Zendesk Support (see Viewing a user's profile in Zendesk Support).
- In the user's profile, click Add contact and select the type of contact you want to add, then enter the contact information in the field that appears.
- Repeat as needed.
- When you are finished, you can close the user's profile by navigating away from it.
To delete a user's contact information
- In the user's profile, click the arrow next to contact information box, then select Remove from the drop-down list.
- In the user's profile, click the email address and select Resend verification email or Verify now.
75 Comments
Thanks for a good article. Love the details for what you cover, but I would like more info on how to find users.
Specifically: How can I find end-users without an organization?
Jorgen
You can enter this in the search bar:
This will list users with no organization.
More details are in the search reference here.
Aha! Great! Exactely what I needed. :)
And thanks for the search reference. That will be helpful.
Thanks Graeme. <3
When I add a new user from the back end and email, does the new user get a welcome email to set up password or do I need to initiate that contact?
Hey Sandra - it depends on your settings. To clarify, do you have a Help Center set up? And do you or don't you want them to be receiving the welcome email?
If you do not have a Help Center that is published, no emails will go out.
If you do have a Help Center published, you'll want to go into Settings > Customers, then scroll down to the section titled "Account emails." There, you'll see a check box where you can select "Also send a welcome email when a new user is created by an agent or administrator." Select this box if you DO want them to receive emails, or not if you don't.
Let us know if that helps or if you have further questions.
How to restrict deleting the users only to admins? Why Agents need to have that option?
Hey Aswin -
This can be done with custom roles, but those are only available for Enterprise accounts. If you're interested in learning more about it, you can find that info here:
Creating custom roles and assigning agents (Enterprise)
One of my agents (who is setup as an admin) reported that when he clicks the email address, the Edit Email is grayed out. I as the owner am able to edit the email address. Why is the admin not able to edit the email address?
Hey Brian -
Welcome to the Zendesk Community! Can you clarify what your admin is trying to do and which email address you're referring to? There are several actions described in the article and others listed in the comments above, and I want to make sure I'm answering the right question for you. :)
Hi,
I have a problem: the person who we have added, has not received an email for joining Zendesk. And we he tries to enter it, he gets automatic reply "oops, the page you are looking for..." I see him as a user in Zendesk and his email is correct, what could possibly go wrong?
Thank you in advance for your help,
Br. Jaana
Hey Jaana -
That sounds like it might be a bug or need some account-level troubleshooting, so I've asked one of our Customer Advocates to help out. Someone will be by shortly.
In the meantime, I see that this is your first post - Welcome to the Zendesk Community! I encourage you to head over to the The Lounge to familiarize yourself with our Community Guidelines and to post in the Introductions thread to introduce yourself to everyone.
We look forward to seeing you around the Community. Happy Zendesking!
Hey Jaana!
Justin here from the Advocacy team.
From the sound of your issue, it seems like what I would expect to happen if the customer facing portal (Help Center) is not yet activated. When the Help Center is inactive, end-users will not get an email to setup their account, as they cannot reach the page where they would need to go to in order to login. From in the agent interface, if you go to the product tray in the upper right and click on Guide, you should be able to tell whether or not the page is activated and accessible to external users.
If it is activated and they are seeing this page, you may have some other issue affecting the account. If that's the case, send us an email to support@zendesk.com along with your account subdomain and we can take a closer look.
I hope that helps!
Hi .. just to be sure...
When I delete a end user or agent, I can no longer access this end user/Agent. Then I'am aware, that I nolonger have access to the data.
Can I be 100% sure that Zendesk does not store this information somewhere ?
Concerns GDPR
Hi Helle -
I'm checking into this answer for you. Stay tuned.
Hi, echoing the above concern, I am using Zendesk API to delete users/organizations. In that case, are these users still available through the API? I seem to be able to use zendesk API to find deleted users by id with the 'active' key set to false. Is this data only really destroyed upon cancellation of the support provider's account?
Hi, the above account deletion question is having general importance, because millions of EU users are affected by the new GDPR regulation (DL 25.5.2018).
BR, Miihkali
Hey Mikhail -
You can learn all about how we're preparing for the GDPR regulations here:
Zendesk EU Data Protection
If you have specific questions related to GDPR, you should email privacy@zendesk.com
HeyO Arin & Mikhail,
Just to add to Nicole's comment - our system keeps only the name portion of the user-record for historical purposes. This is used to display the name in closed tickets/articles/comments created by that user. Any personal information (phone numbers, email addresses, facebook/twitter ID) is immediately purged from the system when the user is deleted.
Thank you for answering! Also, I see that the 'active' property on a user is readonly, but is there any way to re-activate the user's account thereby giving us the ability to keep the zendesk user id if the user decides to reopen their zendesk user account?
Hi Arin,
We don't have the ability to re-activate a user's account at the moment. The biggest reason for this I can see: we remove the email addresses/other identities from the user, so it'd be hard (I don't like to say "impossible", but this feels close) to confirm they are actually the same user.
Before I delete any end-users, I want to make sure that I'm not losing any information from their tickets that is valuable in my reporting. If I delete a user, is their ticket information still reflected in the data?
Hi Amanda!
In order to delete an end-user, all of the tickets they've request must be in Closed status. Once a ticket has been moved to closed, none of that ticket's information can be altered in anyway, including being removed.
So, long story short, all the ticket data will remain intact if you remove an end user from your Zendesk. Hope that helps!
Is there any functional difference between the Details and Notes user data fields?
Hi Byron,
I checked in with our product team and there do not appear to be any functional differences between those fields. One was a field from our legacy system and the other came about with newer versions of Support. Basically, it gives you a way to track to different types of "notes" about your users.
Hello,
"You cannot delete end-users who are requesters on tickets that are not closed."
That is an issue if a user requests to be deleted immediately with all connected information as the upcoming GDPR requires. Zendesk needs to implement an option to delete a user and all related tickets even if these tickets are not closed yet. That should be one click with an additional confirmation dialog - no workarounds or API modifications.
Can we expect this to happen in May to be compliant with the GDPR?
Hi Eckhard -
The short answer is yes, there will be a way to meet the erasure obligation in time to be GDPR compliant.
Legal has told us that there will be a new permanent user delete functionality that will allow user PII to be scrubbed across open tickets, and there will be ways to delete an entire ticket or scrub information from closed tickets as well.
Product also noted that, while the idea of making this "one click" is one that appeals to all of us, the early version(s) of this functionality will likely involve a few steps and may require use of the API. There are many things in the works for GDPR and while we'd like to make them all the ideal versions right away, the first priority is ensuring that we provide all of the tools for compliance come May. Improvements on the implementation can then be made in future iterations.
If you have additional questions, I encourage you to reach out to privacy@zendesk.com.
Hello Nicole,
Thank you for the additional information, much appreciated! I really hope that "may require the API" won't be necessary end of May anymore. Deleting a user and the related content should be a basic feature. It's a bit like Microsoft asking its customers to use the API to change the text size ;-)
Hi! Nicole, you mentioned the new permanent user delete functionality that will allow user PII to be scrubbed across open tickets. This sounds good, but when can we expect it? May 25 is approaching quickly.
Also, Dweight stated that Zendesk keeps only the name portion of the user-record for historical purposes for deleted agents. Surely, this is considered PII even on its own (not in combination with eg telephone nr)?
Thank You for all valuable comments above.
Hi Sofia -
I haven't received a hard ETA, but product assures us it will be available by May 25.
I'll ask Dwight to jump in and clarify that point.
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