Announcing the requirement for unique custom role names

Announced on	Phase 1 rollout on	Phase 2 rollout on
November 2, 2021	November 16, 2021	March 28, 2022

Zendesk is going to start enforcing uniqueness for custom agent role names.

What's changing?

Changes related to this requirement are happening in two phases.

Phase 1

Zendesk is adding restrictions to the naming of custom agent roles in order to eliminate duplicate role names across your instance. Previously, Enterprise customers could re-use names of existing custom roles when creating new custom roles. That won't be possible in the future. New custom agent role names must not match the names of existing roles or be too similar to native role names (Admin, Contributor, and Light Agent). 

Phase 2

During phase two, any existing duplicate role names will be amended to include a number at the end in parentheses. For example, the native custom role Admin will remain unchanged, but a duplicate custom role also named Admin would be renamed to Admin (1). If necessary, the added number will increment by one for each instance of a duplicated name.

Why is Zendesk doing this?

Native roles are created and managed by Zendesk, while custom agent roles are created and managed by admins. The restrictions to naming custom agent roles are intended to reduce confusion around roles and their respective permissions by creating a clear distinction between native roles and custom roles.

What do I need to do?

We recommend that you proactively rename any custom roles with duplicate names. However, if you still have custom roles with duplicate names on the rollout date, the changes described above will be applied to your account automatically.