Insights from the Permissions & Audit Log PM Roundtable Community Event - July '23

On July 27, the Zendesk Community hosted our latest PM Roundtable where the product team connected with community members to hear and address feedback on Permissions & Audit Logs in Zendesk. After hearing from customers on what changes would best serve them, the product team drafted this response on key points raised during our roundtable. We’ve shared their summary, resources from the event, and a complete event recording of our event.

Response from the Product Team

Dear Zendesk customers, 

We want to summarize what we heard from you on what could be improved regarding the Permissions and Audit log at our roundtable session on July 27, 2023. Thanks to everyone who attended and for being open and transparent about what’s working and not for you, your teams, and your business. 

Audit log 

• You would like the ability to customize which events are shown in the Audit log, and this selection should persist each time you visit. Some of you never want to see sign-in events, and some of you only want to see events from certain Actors (like the new hires who might need additional coaching), and we should give you the ability to create the most appropriate view for you.
  
  
• You want to be able to search the Audit log. Maybe not so much search but a keyword match across all the columns. The filter capabilities of the Audit log get you most of the way to find the event you’re looking for, but sometimes the information you have available is so sparse that filtering won’t get you there. Searching would be a faster and simpler way to narrow down what you’re looking for. 
• It would help if you could be proactively notified about events that are happening. Some changes are so important and impactful to your business that you want to be made aware of when they happen, preferably through email, so that you can take immediate action. 

Permissions

• Giving agents in custom roles the ability to only onboard and off-board team members. This “Jr. Admin” should be allowed to assign custom roles and update permissions. They shouldn’t be able to do anything else in Zendesk but manage team members.
  
  
• Business rules are powerful, and you’d like to restrict who can create, edit, assign, and delete business rules based on the agent's group or brand membership. If I’m an agent in Group A, I should only be allowed to create and assign triggers for Group A.
  
  
• There’s a lot of overhead in managing business rules for groups. Ideally, a business rule could be created by brand and applied to any groups spun up under that brand. The goal is to reduce admin overhead in remembering and administering business rules and create a set-and-forget model.

Permissions and Audit logs are two core capabilities at the heart of setting up the agent and end-user experiences you want, but there are areas within each that we need to continue to address to meet your expectations. We appreciate everyone sharing their invaluable perspective with us, and we'll strive towards making improvements on what we heard from you. Please keep sharing your feedback and let us know how we can make Zendesk work better for your CX needs. 

Event Recording