Authenticating users in Chat

Fastpath: Dashboard > Settings > Security

Tip: This article only applies if you have Zendesk Chat Phase 4. See Determining your Zendesk Chat account version. If you're on a previous version, authentication is managed in Zendesk Support. For details, see Global security and sign-in resources.

An important step in setting up your Zendesk Chat account is configuring how to authenticate staff members and end users, collectively referred to as users in this article.

Note: You can manage the authentication settings if you're an administrator in either Chat or Support. Agents cannot configure these options.

The authentication options for end users apply to Help Center access only. You can require end users to sign in to your Help Center to submit or view their tickets on a web page. To authenticate end users who use the Chat or Web widgets, see Enabling authenticated visitors in the Chat widget or Enabling authenticated visitors in the integrated Web Widget.

You can authenticate users in Chat by using Zendesk's own user authentication (the standard sign-in process) or you can remotely authenticate users using single sign-on (SSO) and then seamlessly sign them in to Zendesk. You can also let users sign in using popular business or social authentication services such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, or X (formerly Twitter).

The settings are managed in Admin Center, a separate Zendesk application. For details, see Managing security settings in Admin Center.

To access the authentication settings from Chat

1. From the Chat dashboard, select Settings > Account, then click the Security tab.
2. Select Manage under Authentication Options.

   Admin Center will open automatically.

For settings details, see the following topics in Managing security settings in Admin Center in the cross-product Help Center:

• Enabling Zendesk authentication
• Enabling social and business single sign-on (SSO)
• Enabling single sign-on (SSO)

If you use Zendesk authentication, you can manage additional security settings. See the following topics:

• Restricting access by IP addresses (Enterprise)
• Sending password-change notifications
• Requiring 2-factor authentication
• Setting an inactivity time-out period