On Enterprise plans, you can define your own agent roles and assign agents to those roles. This allows you to define agent roles that suit your own organizational structure and workflow.
Admins and agents in custom roles with permission can create and assign custom roles. However, agents can't modify their own role assignments or permissions or manage admin roles.
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Creating custom agent roles
You can create your own agent roles or base a new role on a native role that is predefined for you. You can either edit or clone most existing non-admin roles, or create a new role from scratch. You can create a maximum of 197 custom roles for your account. Each of your custom roles must have a unique name that isn’t too similar to the names of existing roles, such as Admin or Administrator.
- In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Team > Roles.
- Click Create role. Alternatively, you can copy an existing role for your new role. Hover over the row of the role you want to clone, then click the options icon () and select Clone.
- Enter a unique Name and Description for the role.
The name must not be too similar to the name of existing roles, such as Admin or Administrator.
- Define and create the agent role as described in Permissions that agents with custom roles can have.
- When you've finished defining the new role, click Save.
Permissions that agents with custom roles can have
When creating custom agent roles, you choose from an extensive list of permissions that define what agents can do.
Permissions | Description |
---|---|
Tickets |
You can define an agent's access to tickets, the types of comments they can make, and their editing permissions. An agent may access tickets that aren't suspended in one of the following ways:
Notwithstanding ticket access restrictions, cc'ing an agent (including a Light Agent) on any ticket lets the agent receive email notifications of all public and private updates to the ticket. An agent may manage suspended tickets in one
of the following ways:
Interacting with tickets:
Agents can add ticket comments in one of the following ways:
Additional ticket settings:
|
Custom objects | You can define an agent's access to each custom object in your
account. By default, agents don't have access to custom objects. They
can be granted any combination of the following permissions for each
custom object.
Permission to View is automatically selected if you select any other type of permission for an object. |
People |
You can define an agent's access to users and user profiles. An agent may view and edit individual end user profiles in one of the following ways:
Permissions to edit end users enables the agent to verify end users. Only admins can change an end user's role. Searching for end users:
Managing team member assignment to roles:
Managing custom agent roles:
Viewing and managing customer lists with the Customer List add-on (for accounts created prior to September 9, 2020):
Managing groups:
Managing organizations:
Other user-related permissions:
|
Channels |
Depending on the channels and admin permissions that have been
enabled for your account, agents may also be allowed to do any of
the following:
|
Agent workflow |
The Agent workflow section includes access and editing permissions for views, macros, and dynamic content. Views are predefined conditions for a collection of tickets. Agents may access views in one of the following ways:
Additional views settings:
Macros apply predefined actions to a ticket. Agents may do the following with macros:
Additional agent workflow settings:
|
Business rules |
You can decide if agents can manage business rules.
|
Security and privacy |
You can give agents security and privacy permissions when using the Advanced Data Privacy and Protection add-on. Manage deletion schedules permissions include:
|
Help center (if enabled) |
You can give agents help center permissions.
When this option is selected, agents in this role have Guide admin permissions. When this option is not selected, agents in this role have Guide viewer permissions. For more information, see Understanding Guide roles. When this setting is not selected, it does not necessarily mean that agents can't add and edit articles and posts. Permission to add and edit articles is determined by user management permissions set on each article (see Setting agent editing and publishing permissions on articles). Permission to add and edit posts is set at the topic level and applies to all posts in the topic (see Allowing agents to add or edit posts in community topics). |
Analytics (if Explore is enabled) |
If Explore is enabled, you can configure the level of access that agents have to analytics in Explore, Support, and Talk.
Explore permissions
For additional details, see Giving users access to Explore.
Reports permissions (in Support):
View Talk dashboard
|
Permissions that agents with custom roles can't have
There are some permissions that are available to admins that you can't assign to agents with custom roles. For example:
- Create or edit other agent or admin profiles
- Install apps
- Change a user's role
- Create custom agent roles
- Bulk import orgs or users
- Delete call recordings from tickets
- Assume other agents
- Edit subscriptions (including trials)
- Generate and manage API tokens
For more information about agent and admin permissions, see Understanding Zendesk Support user roles.
Assigning agents to custom roles
You can assign agents to a custom role from the role's settings or from the agent's profile.
To add agents to a custom role
- In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Team > Roles.
- On the role you want to add agents to, click the options icon () and select Edit.
A detailed view of the custom role's settings is displayed. A list of team members in this role is visible in a panel on the right.
- Click the Actions menu, then Assign role.
The Assign role window is displayed.
- In the Select team members field, select a team member from the list or
search for a team member’s name and select it from the search results.
To add additional team members, search again and select another team member.
To remove an agent from the Select team members field, click the x next to their name.
- Click Assign role.
An updated list of agents in the role is displayed on the role settings page.