To use Explore, your agents need to be licensed (see Explore pricing), and given access. How you give access depends on the version of Zendesk Support you are using.
Use this article to learn how to make sure your have the right access to your business information in Explore Professional. If you're using Explore Lite, all of your agents have view-only access to the pre-built dashboards.
This article contains the following topics:
Giving agents access with Support Professional
If you are using Zendesk Support Professional and have the Support Administrator role, you configure access to Explore in two places:
Understanding the default Explore role
The default role is configured on the admin page of Explore. This role is applied to an agent when they first connect to Explore and a role has not been set in Zendesk Support. You must be an Explore admin to configure the default role.
Example: You imported agents from a CSV file so no Explore role is applied. When the agent first signs on, they are applied the Explore default role.
Always set the default role, When agents are added in bulk, for example from a CSV file, you’ll have set a base level of access. If you need to, you can modify access for selected users from their agent profile later. You can change the default role for new Explore users on the Account information page of the Explore admin menu.
Setting the default role for new users
Use the following procedure to change the default role that will be applied to new users who have no access to Explore.
To change the default Explore user role
- In Explore, click the admin icon (
).
- The Dashboard email delivery page opens. From the menu on this page, click the account information icon (
).
- From the Default Explore role drop-down list, choose the role you want to apply by default to all new Explore users, or choose No access if you want to manually give access to new users.
- When you are finished, click Update account.
Understanding Explore roles
Explore roles are configured by an Admin in the Zendesk Admin Center and override any default role that has been previously applied.
If Explore is not checked in the Admin Center, the agent cannot access Explore regardless of any other access settings.
Configuring user roles
Use the following procedure to give a user access to Explore. You must be a Support Administrator to configure users.
To configure a user to access Explore
- In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then click Manage > People.
- On the People page, select your user name. The user you choose must have the User type of Staff member.
- In the users profile, under Role, click Manage in Admin Center.
Zendesk Admin Center opens on the Roles and access tab.
- In the Explore section of the page, enable the Access checkbox. If you don't enable this checkbox, you can't access Explore.
- From the Role dropdown, choose the role you want from the following table:
Role Permissions Admin Includes all editor permissions plus the following:
- Update editor permissions for custom datasets (see Setting editor and admin permissions).
- Change default colors for charts and color-encoded metrics.
- Edit Excel settings when exporting dashboards. This includes column and tab separators, decimal precision, decimal separator, and thousands separator.
- Manage dashboard delivery schedules for all Explore users.
Editor - Create and customize new dashboards, queries, and datasets.
- Edit created and shared dashboards, queries, and datasets.
- Share dashboards with Support agents or Support groups.
- Set dashboard email delivery schedules (see Sharing dashboards through email) .
Viewer - View dashboards shared with them.
- Cannot create queries or dashboards
- When you are finished, click Save.
- Repeat the steps for other users you want to configure.
The user now has the access to Explore you configured.
Giving agents access with Support Enterprise custom roles
If you are using Zendesk Support Enterprise and have the Support Administrator role, you configure access to Explore by using custom roles, accessed from the Support console. Custom roles let you control access to various Zendesk products to multiple users simultaneously. If you apply any of the default custom roles to any of your users, they will be automatically granted the following Explore role:
Support Enterprise custom role | Explore role |
---|---|
Administrator | Create reports and manage permissions |
Team Leader | Create reports |
Staff | View reports |
Light Agent | View reports |
New custom role | View reports |
Advisor | No access |
For more help with custom roles, see Creating custom roles and assigning agents.
Additionally, you can configure access to Explore in your own custom roles.
To configure Explore settings in a custom role
- In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Manage > People.
- Click Roles.
- From the list of roles, choose the role you want to configure Explore access for and click edit. For details about how to create a new role, see Creating custom roles and assigning agents
- On the role setting page, configure the Explore > What can this agent do in Explore? setting. Choose from the following permissions:
Role Permissions Create reports and manage permissions Includes all editor permissions plus the following:
- Update editor permissions for custom datasets (see Setting editor and admin permissions).
- Change default colors for charts and color-encoded metrics.
- Edit Excel settings when exporting dashboards. This includes column and tab separators, decimal precision, decimal separator, and thousands separator.
- Manage dashboard delivery schedules for all Explore users.
Create reports - Create and customize new dashboards, queries, and datasets.
- Edit created and shared dashboards, queries, and datasets.
- Share dashboards with Support agents or Support groups.
- Set dashboard email delivery schedules (see Sharing dashboards through email) .
View reports - View dashboards shared with them.
- Cannot create queries or dashboards
- When you are finished, click Update role.
Now, whenever the custom role is assigned to one or more users, that user will be granted the Explore access level you configured.
25 Comments
I am a bit confused - Note: Light agents cannot access Explore.
My understanding is that eventually Explore is replacing Insights. Currently light agents have access to Insights, why would you remove this functionality for Explore???
Hey Reshma,
It looks like this functionality was not ready to be released in time for the Explore launch. However, this is planned to be released in Q2 of this year. Take a look at this comment from our Explore Product Marketing team for more information.
Cheers!
I am having trouble understanding this part:
Important: When you manually add a new agent to your Zendesk account, or view the profile of an agent who has not yet accessed Explore, they are granted Editor permissions to Explore regardless of the default role you configured. If you want the agent to have a different permission level, you must manually change it.
To me it reads: "Whatever default role you set, as soon as you add a new agent they are an editor."
Why are we even setting a default role, as it seems to be never applied. The only reason I would need a default role is when you add an agent to Zendesk... I'm also having trouble understanding this bit: "or view the profile of an agent who has not yet accessed Explore" How does viewing a profile change access, this also does not make sense to me?
I get even more confused when I read the explanation when setting a default role... To me this reads. "When a user (this includes agents) gets added to Zendesk, they are given this role." This contradicts what is written in the statement I mentioned above.
Can somebody please explain how I can prevent new agents from being an editor by default without me having to go over them manually. With an organisation as big as ours this is not workable.
Finally I feel there it is a privacy concern to give just about everyone access to all the data by default... Maybe this is something to think about.
By default, Explore comes with a Support Dashboard. All agents data is contained therein. I do like having that as an admin, but I don't want everyone knowing how everyone is doing or not doing. I've recently changed the permission levels for the agents to No Access to prevent problems from occurring.
I would on the other hand like to create personal dashboards for every agent. That way they can see how they are doing. Plus I would like to have managers be able to view how their team is doing. How do I set it up so people can only see what they need to see? Is this even possible?
Hi Joe,
Gail from our support team here :)
You can set up specific dashboard permissions for individual people and groups to manage who sees what information. If you'd prefer not to have all your agents logging into Explore at all, you could set up scheduled emails that contain their personal dashboards, rather than having them log in. Note that right now you can only schedule emails to groups, so unfortunately you would have to create a group for each agent's reporting in order to make that work. Our article on Sharing dashboards has more information on the settings https://explore.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000998408-Sharing-dashboards
All the best,
Today we ran into the same question/concerns that Mirjam has. Frankly I can't think of a valid use case that explains why the default behaviour for role permissions is the way it is.
Not only is it confusing, but as Mirjam said, it's simply not feasible for admins to have to manually update each individual agent's permissions to undo an automated default action. That's so backwards! Automation should solve manual labor, not create it.
Thanks Gail Leinweber! I'll look into that.
Is it possible to bulk edit role for many users?
I was expecting to be able to do this from "Manage > People" or from the Admin settings of Explore, but the option does not seem to be available?
Hi Mark,
I can definitely understand the desire to be able to bulk edit these permissions, but that isn't currently a feature of user permissions in Explore (or other products like Talk or Chat). You will need to set the Explore permissions on an individual basis for the users.
@Gail
As this is something that is currently available in Insights, in the form of a Zendesk role, this will need to be in Explore, otherwise it will be much inferior. Manually editing 100s of users is not feasible for a large organisation.
Please could the PM explain the timelines involved in adding this feature to match Insights?
Mark is correct - Explore roles should be rolled up into the existing agent role profiles. Managing individual users is error-prone and will ultimately lead to one-offs & misconfigurations. Group policies governed by each agent's role membership is a necessary solution for standardized, scalable adoption of Explore. Is there an ETA or roadmap item on that feature?
Hi, All.
I'm hopping in on behalf of the Explore team to provide an update on a couple of feature requests we're seeing in this thread. Upon review, it looks like the following issues are coming up frequently in this thread:
1. When will Light Agents have access to Explore
2. When will Explore be integrated into Support Enterprise Custom Roles
I've heard directly from the team that both of these features will be shipping in the coming months and rolled out to customers this quarter! Thanks for your patience while we continue to improve the Explore experience.
Hello,
Any news when Explore will be enabled for Light Agents?
Thank you
Hey Jacuk-Zurak,
We currently have this functionality in Early Access. If this is something you're interested in, you can find out more here: Announcing Support Enterprise custom roles and light agent access support EAP for Zendesk Explore
The link provided above will include an option to sign up for this EAP.
Cheers!
Is there a way to report on who currently has what access to Explore?
Hello Roslyn Officer,
Currently, as the base product stands, this is not possible. However, there is an EAP currently open you can participate in that will allow you to configure access to Explore by using custom roles. If this doesn't serve as a suitable workaround for you, I would recommend sharing your ask on our product feedback forum so our developers can consider it for a future update.
Documentation for using custom roles to manage Explore access EAP
Best regards.
I see that this is changed and bound do the role again like Insights... Why? Because how it is described here is more secure in terms of data protection. We have certain admins that should not see all data.
Hello Mirjam Happel,
I understand how adjusting admin roles to implement different levels of permission access can be somewhat cumbersome, depending on your setup. At the time as the base, product stands the only way to accomplish this would be to create another admin role that has only viewer access. I would recommend sharing your use case on our product feedback forums so our developers can consider changes for future updates.
Tying this to a role has an issue. In our case, not everyone in the role is allowed to view explore. Since a user can have only 1 role, it's hard to create multiple versions of roles, one with explore access and one without. A better solution would have been based on Group, since a user can be assigned multiple groups. We could create a group that gives access to explore, and assign it to users who need access.
Hi Amit Chauhan this sounds like an interesting suggestion. Would you be willing to take a moment and post this in our product feedback forum at https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/360001200913 That way, other customers can see and vote on the suggestion to give the product team an idea of which features to prioritize. Thanks again for your suggestion!
Any news about light agent permission to see explore reports????
Hello Sonia Radaelli,
Light agents have access to Explore now! Here is the announcement - Enterprise custom roles and light agent access support for Zendesk Explore.
Best regards.
Insights has the ability to restrict what users can choose in drop down lists in dashboards, this allows creating a dashboard but limiting what individual users/groups can view data on (primarily limiting them to only being able to see data about themselves). Configuring a dashboard for every individual user is completely infeasible, as is configuring email notifications daily. Insights needs to not be removed until either queries or filters can be limited per user/group, and this needs to be accessible to all insights legacy users, else we will need to move to another product, and we'll stop recommending clients use Zendesk as they keep removing features.
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Hi there,
Thank you for your feedback on this article! If you have a moment, please post your feedback in the Explore feedback Community Section so our Product Managers can review it and other users can upvote your suggestion.
I'd like to offer the following resources we have for moving from Insights to Explore! Our Product Teams are working to address any feature parities and please get in contact with your account representative with any concerns on the Insights EOL timeline and assistance in migrating to Explore.
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