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Explore team member roles and access settings to manage roles across various products. Assign roles like admin, agent, or contributor to control permissions and access. Customize roles for specific needs and understand differences between legacy and current roles. This helps streamline team management and ensures everyone has the right access to perform their tasks effectively.

The Zendesk Admin Center provides a central location for setting a team member’s roles and product access across multiple Zendesk products. A team member is anyone you add to a Zendesk account who is not an end user. Team members are also called staff, admins, and agents.

This article includes an overview of the team roles you can set in Admin Center and compares them with the legacy roles that were previously available within each product.

This article includes the following sections:
  • Support roles
  • Guide roles
  • Chat roles
  • Talk roles
  • Explore roles
  • Sell roles
Related articles
  • Setting roles and access in Zendesk Admin Center
  • Editing team member user profiles in Zendesk Admin Center

Support roles

The following table shows Support roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Understanding Zendesk Support user roles and Creating custom roles and assigning agents.
Role Description Legacy role
Admin Can manage all Support settings except billing and can also manage Talk settings, regardless of their Talk role. Administrator
Agent (Team, Growth, Professional) Can view and update tickets. Admins can control which tickets each agent can view and update. Agent. No change.
Contributor (Sell and Chat Phase 4 only) Can provide limited support by viewing and adding private comments to tickets in their groups. Contributor. No change.
Legacy agent Any agent on an Enterprise plan without a custom role assigned. Legacy agent. No change.
Light agent (Collaboration feature) Can view and add private comments to tickets. Admins can control which tickets each light agent can view and update. Light agent. No change.
Custom roles (Enterprise and Enterprise Plus) Admins can define their own agent roles. Role settings control which tickets an agent can view and update. Custom roles. No change.

About light agents and contributors

Light agents and contributors are similar roles, but with a few important differences:

  • You must have a Suite Growth plan or above to have light agents.
  • Contributors cannot access tickets outside their groups (Assigned tickets only or Tickets in agent's group). Light agents can access tickets outside their groups depending on what their admin has set for them (Assigned tickets only, Tickets in agent's group, Tickets in agent's org, All tickets).
  • Contributors do not require a paid seat and you can add as many as you want. Light agents are purchased and have limits, depending on your plan type.

Guide roles

The following table shows Guide roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Understanding Guide roles and privileges.
Role Description Legacy role
Admin Can manage all settings and permissions in Knowledge admin. Manager
Agent Can create, edit, and publish articles (if enabled by an admin).

This role does not consume a seat when used in conjunction with the Light agent seat. However, it does consume an extra seat when used in conjunction with the Contributor seat.

 Agent. No change.
Viewer Can view and comment on published articles. (The team member will have the same permissions and access as an end user.)

This role does not consume a seat when used in conjunction with a free Support seat such as Contributor or Light agent.

 None. This is a new role.
Note: You might see references to a legacy role called Guide Manager in user segments and management permissions in accounts created prior to the name change.

Chat roles

The following table shows Chat roles available in Admin Center. Chat Phase 4 roles are managed in Admin Center. For more information, see Understanding default roles in Zendesk Chat and Creating custom Chat roles and assigning users.
Role Description Legacy role
Admin Can manage all Chat settings and provide chat support. Admin. No change.
Agent Can serve chats and provide chat support. Agent. No change.
Agent (limited) Can serve social messaging conversations and chats only. None. This is a new role.
Custom roles (Enterprise) Admins can define their own Chat roles. Custom roles. No change. For Chat Phase 3, custom roles are still managed on the Chat Dashboard.

Talk roles

The following table shows Talk roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Giving agents access to Talk.
Note: Support Admins can also manage Talk settings, regardless of their Talk role.
Role Description Legacy role
Admin Can manage all Talk settings but cannot make or receive calls. Does not require a Talk seat. None. This is a new role. Previously, this was implied from the Support Admin role.
Team lead A Talk admin who can also make or receive calls. None. This is a new role.
Agent Can make or receive calls. Agent (Temporary change). Agents will not be able to view the Talk real-time dashboard and will have to be upgraded to Talk lead or Admin.
The Talk Admin role does not consume a seat when used in conjunction with a free Support seat such as Contributor or Light agent.

Explore roles

The following table shows Explore roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Giving agents access to Explore.
Role Description Legacy role
Admin Can manage all settings and permissions in Explore. Admin. No change.
Editor Can create and manage dashboards, queries, and datasets. Editor. No change.
Viewer Can access shared dashboards. Viewer. No change.
The Explore Viewer role does not consume a seat when used in conjunction with a free Support seat such as Contributor or Light agent. If an agent has a custom role and the role has the Manage channels and extensions permission enabled, Support and Talk agents can make changes to Talk settings.

Sell roles

The following table shows Sell roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Understanding access levels and privileges in Sell.
Role Description Legacy role
Admin Can manage all settings and permissions in Sell. Admin. No change.
Agent Can manage leads, contacts and deals. Agent. No change.
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