Workflow recipe: How can restricted agents assign tickets to agents outside of their groups?

What's my plan?

Administrators have the ability to prevent certain agents from seeing tickets in other groups, or that aren't assigned to them (see Agent group permissions and searching tickets). This type of restriction can be incredibly valuable as it limits exposure of sensitive data sent by your customers to those that don't have a need to see it. For more information about ticket access and other agent permissions, check About agent privileges and ticket access.

This type of restriction impacts an agent's ability to search for tickets and also prevents them from assigning a ticket to an agent outside of their groups, unless an agent is assigned to a role that allows these agents to assign tickets to any group (see Creating custom roles and assigning agents). For example, if your agents use a macro that has an action to assign a ticket to a different group, restricted agents see that the macro appears to not actually reassign the ticket. This presents a common question that we see here in our Advocacy team: "How can I allow my restricted agents to assign tickets to other agents outside of their group?"

To work around restricted agent permissions, we suggest using triggers and automations to take action on these tickets. Triggers and automations fire on a ticket regardless of the assignee's permissions or role, so combining a custom ticket field (like a check box, or a drop-down field) with a trigger allows your restricted agents to effectively assign tickets wherever they need to go. The example below accomplishes this goal in two steps:

• Creating a custom ticket field for group assignment
• Creating a trigger to assign tickets to other groups

Step 1: Creating a custom ticket field for group assignment

In this example, we've created a custom drop-down field called "Escalate to:".

To add the custom field

1. In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Fields.
2. Click Add field and select Drop-down.
3. Add a Display name, the name shown to agents.
4. Add the different groups under Field Values as per the picture below.
5. Click Save.

Note: If you have a single ticket form, the new field will automatically appear on the form. If you have multiple ticket forms, you need to add the ticket field to any ticket forms where you want it to appear.

Step 2: Creating a trigger to assign tickets to other groups

Next, we need to create three triggers—one for each of the destination groups. These triggers are designed to fire when the ticket is updated, and also remove the value of the custom "Escalate to:" field. This type of configuration ensures the trigger doesn't attempt to fire again on future updates, unless a new group needs to be assigned.

To create this trigger

1. In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
2. Click Add trigger.
3. Click the Add condition button under Meet ALL of the following conditions add:
   • Ticket Is Updated
   • Escalate to: Is Tier 2
4. Under Actions add:
   
   • Group Tier 2
   • Escalate: -

The GIF below shows how a restricted agent then escalates the ticket.

To escalate a ticket

1. Open the ticket that needs to be escalated.
2. Change the Escalate to: field to the respective Group ("Tier 2" in the example).
3. Click the Submit as button.

When the ticket updates, this restricted agent no longer has access to the ticket, as it is now in a group outside its assigned groups.

As you can see, this helpful workaround allow you to keep your agent restrictions set up the way you like, while also allowing agents to assign to the groups that you allow them to see.

How does this work for you? Do you have any other workarounds that you've deployed in your organization? Post your use-case in the comments section below, and let's share some ideas!