Setting roles and access in Zendesk Admin Center

Fastpath: Admin Center > Account > Roles and access

This article describes how to use Zendesk Admin Center to view and change roles for staff members. It also describes how to use Admin Center to enable and disable product access.

This article includes the following sections:

• About staff roles and access
• Opening the staff profile
• Setting staff roles
• Setting Viewer roles for Guide and Explore
• Enabling and disabling product access
• Limitations

Related articles

• Updating staff profiles in Zendesk Admin Center
• About staff roles in Zendesk Admin Center

About staff roles and access

The Zendesk Admin Center provides a central location for setting a staff member’s roles and product access across multiple Zendesk products. Previously, you had to navigate across multiple locations to set roles or enable product access for staff members who used more than one Zendesk product.

A staff member is anyone you add to a Zendesk account who is not an end user. For example, in Support, a staff member can be an account owner, an administrator, an agent, a light agent, or a user with a custom role.

Admins can set product access for all staff members, including themselves. Admins can set staff roles for any staff member, except themselves. They need another admin to do that. The account owner can set access and staff roles for any user, including themselves.

The following video shows you how to open one of your agent's profiles and manage their role settings. You can enable or block access to different products for each agent. You can also specify what level of permission they have for each product.

[Video] Example: Assigning roles and access for Explore (1:32)

Opening the staff profile

There are several ways to open a staff profile in Admin Center, depending on which product you’re using. Here are some examples:

To open the page from Support

1. In Support, search for and open the staff member’s profile page.
2. In the menu on the left, click Manage in Admin Center under Role.

   

   The Admin Center opens to show the staff member’s Roles and access page in Account.

To open the page from Chat Phase 3 and 4

1. In Chat, open the Edit Agent page.
2. Click the Edit Profile button.

   

   The agent’s Admin Center profile opens in a new tab.

3. Click the Roles and access tab.

Note: For Chat Phase 3, custom roles are still managed in the Chat Dashboard.

To open the page from Sell

1. In Sell, click the Settings icon (), then select Preferences > Manage Users.
2. Click the name of the user you want to edit, then click the Edit permissions button.

   The agent’s profile in Admin Center opens in a new tab.

3. Click the Roles and access tab.

Setting staff roles

To set a role in Admin Center

1. Open the staff profile in Admin Center.

   For details, see Opening the staff profile.

2. Click the Roles and access tab.
3. In the Role column, use drop-down to select the new role you want to apply to the staff member.

   

4. Click Save.
5. Repeat this procedure for each user whose role you want to set.

Your role choices vary depending on the product type. For more information, see About staff roles in Zendesk Admin Center.

Some staff roles cannot be set from the drop-down because there are product dependencies. For example, if you have an Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan, roles for Guide and Explore can’t be changed because they are dependent on Support custom roles.

Setting Viewer roles for Guide and Explore

Staff roles you can set for Guide and Explore include a Viewer role you can use to grant access without providing full agent permissions. For example, the Explore Viewer role enables staff members (including light agents) to view dashboards shared with them, but they cannot create queries and dashboards. The Guide Viewer roles provides staff members with the same permissions as end users. They can't be granted create, edit, and publish privileges. For details, see About staff roles in Zendesk Admin Center.

Enabling and disabling product access

Enabling product access typically requires a license (seat). Disabling access frees up a license. To make sure you don’t exceed the number of licenses you have purchased for a product, Admin Center shows when your subscription limit is reached.

To enable or disable product access

1. Open the Staff Profile page in Admin Center.

   For details, see Opening the staff profile.

2. Click the Roles and access tab.
3. In the Access column, select the products you want to enable for the staff member and deselect the products you don't want the staff member to access.

   

4. Click Save.
5. Repeat this procedure for each user whose access you want to set.

Limitations

You can use Admin Center to manage staff roles and product access. Product-specific settings are still managed separately within each product. For example:

• Adding end users
• Downgrading users from a staff member to an end user
• Deleting staff members (with the exception of Chat 4-only and Sell-only accounts). Chat 4-only accounts and Sell-only accounts can delete staff members from Admin Center.