Administrators can change an agent's Support role, for example, by promoting an agent's role to administrator or downgrading it to end user. Before proceeding, we recommend reading Downgrading and removing an agent, which contains suggestions to avoid some of the common pitfalls in this process.
This article covers the following topics:
Upgrading an agent's role to administrator
Administrators can promote agents to the administrator role.
- In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Team > Team members.
- From the list, click the agent you want to upgrade.
- On the Roles and access tab of the agent's page, select Admin from the
Role drop-down list for Support.
- When you're finished, click Save.
An email is sent to all administrators notifying them that the agent has been added as an administrator.
The agent's existing group assignments remain; you can add or remove them from groups as needed.
Upgrading a light agent’s role
Admins can promote a light agent to an agent (or an admin). You need an available agent seat to change the role.
To promote a light agent
- In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Team > Team members.
- From the list, click the light agent you want to upgrade.
- On the Roles and access tab of the agent's page, open the Role drop-down
list for Support and change Light agent to Agent.
- When you're finished, click Save.
An email is sent to all administrators notifying them that the light agent’s role has changed.
Downgrading an agent's role
Administrators can downgrade an agent's role to end user.
To downgrade an agent's role
- In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Team > Team members.
- From the list, click the agent you want to downgrade.
- In the upper-right, click Manage in Support.
Alternatively, you can click Go to user profile under the list.
- On the agent's profile, set the User type to End user.
You'll see a warning screen that informs you of the privileges that will be lost by this user if you continue with the downgrade. Verify that this is what you want by selecting Yes, downgrade this user . Once you select this, your agent is no longer an agent and will no longer count towards your agent limit.
Explore users might experience issues with some reports when they downgrade an agent. Potential issues include:
- Reports that slice via user role can be affected, as the downgraded agent is now an end user.
- Report tabs with user filtering enabled will no longer show the downgraded agent in the drop-down.
If your Zendesk plan includes light agents, you may want to downgrade an agent to a light agent, then suspend them, to mitigate the impact on their Explore reports.
Removing a user from your account
After downgrading the agent to an end user, you can suspend them from the account. This removes them from your Support instance.
To suspend a user from your account
- In Support, click the
Customers icon (
) in the sidebar.
- Locate the agent who was downgraded to an end user and click Edit.
- Click the drop-down icon at the top-right of the profile and select Suspend
access.
Understanding role changes in the audit log
When an admin changes an agent's Support role, the change to the Support role will be attributed to the admin as the actor in the audit log. Any associated changes, such as roles in other products or ticket restrictions, will be attributed to the system user.
- The change to the Support role (the admin is attributed)
- The change to the Explore role (the system user is attributed)
5 comments
Andriana G
Hi Aimee, other than the obvious change in access, what will the impact be to a team member who is downgraded from Team Leader to Light Agent? Will there be any impact to the tickets they were assigned or copied on? Thanks
0
Dave Dyson
Light agents can be CC'd on tickets, but can't be assigned to one – you should reassign tickets assigned to the agent you're going to downgrade to Light Agent. See How do I change an agent to a light agent? and for more general information on what light agents can and can't do, see Understanding and setting light agent permissions
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Kara Kennedy
Are there any concerns to active documentation if the admin who created the documentation is downgraded to an end user? Integrations may be tied to the admin but any concerns with documentation?
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Brett Bowser
After downgrading an admin to an end-user the documentation will not be affected. You also have the option of changing the article author as mentioned here: Changing the author for an article
I hope this helps!
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Dave
Hi!
How can I switch two users—one with admin access and the other with light agent access—with each other? I want them to switch roles because I only have 12 seats. However, it won’t let me switch the admin user to light agent, as it's giving me an error about reassigned tickets. We have already taken ownership of all the tickets under her, but it still won’t let us switch the roles and access.
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