You can add team members (agents and admins) manually, through a bulk import of users, or through the Zendesk API. You must be an admin to add team members.
This article covers the following topics:
To add users in a bulk import, see Bulk importing users. To add users with the API, see Zendesk Developer Tools: Introduction.
Adding an agent or admin
Admins can add any type of user (end users, agents, and other admins).
The account owner can also add agent seats to your subscription. The account owner is included as an agent seat in your subscription.
Before you add a team member, you can check the Seats remaining section of the Team members page to find out whether you have any available seats. If you don’t have any seats left, you won’t be able to add the agent or admin.
The following video gives you an overview of how to add team members:
Adding team members [1:15]
-
In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Team > Team members.The Team members page opens.
- Click Add team member.
- Enter the team member’s Name and Email, then click Next.
- In the Assign role section, select the user’s Support role from the
Support drop-down list.
You set only the Support role now. You can set other roles later.
- Click Save.
The new user is saved. If the Also send a welcome email when a new user is created by an agent or administrator option is selected, the new user receives a welcome email and link to sign in.
- (Optional) Click the new team member, who initially appears at the top of the list, to access their profile and assign any additional roles.
After you add the new team member, you can open their Support profile to set user options and agent permissions. On Enterprise plans, agent permissions are not set in the profile, but are determined by the agent’s custom role.
About user options
The following table describes the options that can be set for a new user.
| Profile data | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | User's name. |
| Email address used for all email communications with the user. Team members can have more than one email address but one will be their primary email. |
|
| Role | Defines the user's function and access level in your Zendesk Support. There
are two user types: End user and Staff Member. Customers are assigned the role
end user. Staff members can be assigned a variety of roles, such as
agent or administrator. On Enterprise plans, you can create custom
roles for agents. Roles and product access are managed in Admin Center. Only admins can change a
user's role. For information about user roles, see Understanding Zendesk Support user roles. For information about custom roles, see Creating custom roles and assigning agents. |
| Contacts | Other contact information for the user, such as Phone, Twitter handle, Facebook page, and Google account. |
| Phone | Personal telephone number for the user. |
| Alias (Professional and Enterprise) | Alternative name for a team member to use on all communications with customers (also called end users) instead of their real name. If this field blank is blank, the team member's real name is used in email communications. |
| Signature | Closing line added to an agent's email notifications. |
| Tags | List of tags that will automatically be added to new tickets created by this
user. Separate tags with a space. Tags are added to new tickets only, not updated
tickets. This is an optional feature and you may not have enabled user tagging. For more information about user tags, see Adding tags to users and organizations. |
| Organization | A collection of users (typically customers, but can include team members)
created by an admin. On the Team plan, users can belong to only one organization.
On Professional and Enterprise, users can belong to multiple organizations, up to
300. A user does not have to belong to any organization, however. For more information, see About organizations and groups. |
| Language | Language the user will view your Zendesk Support in. This setting affects this user only. |
| Time zone | Local time zone for the user; used to time stamp tickets. This setting affects this user only. |
| Details | Additional details about the user. Address, for example. Details are visible to other team members but not customers. |
| Notes | Additional notes about the user. Notes are visible to other team members but not customers. |
About agent privileges and ticket access
When you add agents you need to define their privileges (groups they will be assigned to, their access to tickets, if they can make both public and private comments, and their forums access). These privileges are described in the following table.
| Privileges | Description |
|---|---|
| Groups | List of groups the agent belongs to. Agents must belong to at least one
group. Click the group name to edit the groups for the agent. For information about groups, see Creating groups. |
| Access |
Define the agent's access to tickets as one of the following:
|
| Comments | Determine the type of comments an agent can make on tickets.
|
11 Comments
I have an inward facing support scenario, all of my agents and end-users are employees. Since the options to add agents has moved to admin center, I can no longer add agents. Our corporate directory is synced via provisioning. I will not manually add user, as this will create a duplicate record for the same individual. It makes no sense, this move to admin center has fundamentally changed the way many features work and effectively broken them.
Would be helpful to indicate what happens when you add a user. For example, the user receives an email, etc.
In my case I have discovered how to add users, I must search for them within Support, select the user column, access their profile, then manage in admin center. It was far easier before, and I like the fact that I could easily see the entire agent pool, end-user pool, etc. from within Support. This has not been an improvement in my use case, it is more tedious.
I can't seem to find the setting for a custom role, that allows that role to add agents. All the permissions are set to allowed, but agents in the role can only add end-users. Is there a specific permission setting that toggles this? They don't get the end-user/staff member toggle option at all when they add a user.
Only Administrators do have the ability to add new agents to the account. Creating or editing other agent or admin profiles is a permission that is available to admins but can't be assigned to agents with custom roles.
The complete lists of permissions that agents with custom roles can't have are available in the article Creating custom roles and assigning agents
Hope this helps!
We're using SSO with our instance of Zendesk, and when I attempt to add a team member, I get a pop-up window telling me "We do not recommend creating users manually when you have remote authentication enabled." I can't seem to find what the recommended way to create users is, however, so I was hoping you could help.
This error message is just a reminder in case you have integrations set up between Zendesk and other platforms or services that utilize some sort of data sync or authentication. You should still be able to add end users/staff members, however, we do not have a way to remove the message unless you disable the authentication.
Regards,
Dion
I have been attempting to add a new agent to my team. I created the account, but they never received the activation email, and I did not see them on the list the next day. So I thought I must not have finalized the account creation. When I tried to create the account again, it errors out and states that the email is already in use, even though I cannot access the account in any way in the Admin Center. Any ideas on how to get this fixed? I just feel stuck and need to get this staff member access ASAP.
In your Support account can you try searching for this agents email and select the User tab when the search results appear? Do you see a profile when you search for this and are you able to click on that profile to go directly to the agents profile page?
Let me know!
I am trying to add a "light agent" and I keep getting a pop-up Email already in use.
How can I add him? Thank you!
Hi Kelly R, this means the email is already associated with an end-user, so you'll want to search for that end-user and toggle their User type to "Staff Member" and their Role to "Light Agent". The user will be added to the default group in your account, so don't forget to assign the user to the appropriate group(s) once they are set to their new user type and role.
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