About team member product roles and access

All Suites

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus

Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise

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Explore team member roles and access settings in the Admin Center to manage roles like support, knowledge, AI agents, analytics, voice, chat, and QA. Set roles to control permissions and access levels, ensuring team members can perform tasks like managing settings, creating content, or handling customer interactions. Customize roles to fit your team's needs and enhance your support operations.

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
Knowledge roles
AI agents - Advanced roles
Analytics roles
Voice roles
Chat roles
Zendesk QA roles

Related articles

Support roles

The following table shows the Support roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Understanding Zendesk Support user roles and Creating custom roles and assigning agents.

Role	Description
Admin	Can manage all Support settings except billing and can also manage Talk settings, regardless of their Talk role.
Agent (Team, Growth, Professional)	Can view and update tickets. Admins can control which tickets each agent can view and update.
Contributor	Can provide limited support by viewing and adding private comments to tickets in their groups.
Legacy agent	Any agent on an Enterprise plan without a custom role assigned.
Light agent (Collaboration feature)	Can view and add private comments to tickets. Admins can control which tickets each light agent can view and update.
Custom roles (Enterprise and Enterprise Plus)	Admins can define their own agent roles. Role settings control which tickets an agent can view and update.

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, or a Light agents or Collaboration add-on, 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.

Knowledge roles

The following table shows the Knowledge roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Understanding Knowledge roles and privileges.

Role	Description
Admin	Can manage all settings and permissions in Knowledge admin.
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.
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.

AI agents - Advanced roles

Within the AI agents - Advanced add-on, there are three user roles:

Client admin: Can view, add, and edit all AI agents and users within an organization.
Client editor: Can view and edit all AI agents within an organization.
Client user: Can view and edit specified AI agents within an organization.

For instructions on creating users, see Adding agents and admins and setting ticket access. For information on controlling users’ access to specific AI agents within the add-on, see Managing user access to advanced AI agents.

Tip: If you need to delete an AI agent or create a new organization, contact Zendesk customer support.

The table below lists the specific access levels for each role.

Access	Role
Access	Client user	Client editor	Client admin
Features
Analytics	✔️	✔️	✔️
Training center	✔️	✔️	✔️
Content	✔️	✔️	✔️
Dialogue builder	✔️	✔️	✔️
Conversation logs	✔️	✔️	✔️
AI	✔️	✔️	✔️
Settings
AI agent settings	-	-	✔️
CRM integration	-	-	✔️
Generative replies	-	-	✔️
Entities	✔️	✔️	✔️
Actions	View only	✔️	✔️
AI agent access management
Browse user list	-	-	✔️
Manage user access to advanced AI agents	-	-	✔️
Edit AI agents	✔️ (specified only)	✔️ (all)	✔️ (all)
Exporting data
Conversation logs	✔️	✔️	✔️
Intents and training data	✔️	✔️	✔️
Translations	-	-	✔️
AI agent and organization management
Create AI agents	-	-	✔️
Delete AI agents	-	-	-
Manage organization	-	-	✔️
Create new organization	-	-	-

Analytics roles

The following table shows the Analytics roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Giving agents access to Explore.

Role	Description
Admin	Can manage all settings and permissions in Explore.
Editor	Can create and manage dashboards, queries, and datasets.
Viewer	Can access shared dashboards.
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.

Voice roles

The following table shows the Voice roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Giving agents access to Talk.

Note: Support Admins can also manage Voice settings, regardless of their Voice role.

Role	Description
Admin	Can manage all Talk settings but cannot make or receive calls. Does not require a Talk seat.
Team lead	A Talk admin who can also make or receive calls.
Agent	Can make or receive calls.
The Talk Admin role does not consume a seat when used in conjunction with a free Support seat such as Contributor or Light agent.

Chat roles

Chat roles are applied to live chat and messaging access. The following table shows the Chat roles available in Admin Center. As described in Giving agents access to messaging channels, an agent must be assigned a Chat Agent role to participate in messaging conversations.

For more information, see Understanding default roles in Zendesk Chat and Creating custom Chat roles and assigning users.

Role	Description
Admin	Can manage all Chat or messaging settings and provide chat support.
Agent	Can serve chats or messaging conversations, and provide support.
Agent (limited)	Can serve social messaging conversations and chats only.
Custom roles (Enterprise)	Admins can define their own Chat or messaging roles.

Zendesk QA roles

The following table shows the Zendesk QA roles available in Admin Center. For more information, see Understanding roles and permissions in Zendesk QA.

Zendesk QA permissions apply to the default workspace only. Additional workspace permissions can be added on the Zendesk QA side.

Role	Description
Admin	Can see everything and manage all settings.
Agent	Can view their own conversations, reply to feedback, and view their customer reviews. They have workspace-specific permissions and can view and edit data within their assigned workspaces only. They also have access to their own dashboard and can perform self-reviews, if enabled.
Reviewer	Can view all reviews but cannot edit workspace settings. Can perform peer reviews.
Workspace lead	Can view everything in the workspace and manage quizzes, assignments, groups, disputes, and calibration sessions. Cannot edit other workspace settings or scorecards.
Workspace manager	Can view all reviews and manage all workspace settings.
Connected user	Connected users don't have access to Zendesk QA. Their conversations are available for review, but these agents are unaware that they're being reviewed.