About team member product roles and access

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25 Comments

  • Austin Villanueva

    Hi 

    I'm not sure if it is the right place to ask but it is quite hard to see information about staff member role. So regarding staff member, is there an available API calls for staff member role? similar to what agent or administrator can do with API token key. I look up the documentation but nothing said about staff member. Please let me know if you have any information.

    Thank you.

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  • Pedro Reis

    Honestly, I don't understand the difference between a contributor and a light agent. Can someone clarify this?

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  • Juraj Jarmek

    Hello @...,

    A good guide can be found here:

    Creating custom roles and assigning agents

    Contributor:

    If you are using Zendesk Chat Phase 4 with an integrated Support account, each new Chat agent is also added to your Support account as a contributor. Contributors in Support have limited privileges; for instance, contributors can view some tickets, but cannot respond or otherwise interact with them. Contributors do not occupy an agent seat in Support unless they are manually upgraded to an agent role.

    If you have a Sell-only account, existing Sell users will be added to a Support account as contributors.

    If you have a Chat-only Phase 4 account, and later create an integrated Support account, existing Chat agents will be added to your Support account as contributors. For more information, see Creating agents and departments in the Zendesk Chat Help Center.

    Light-agents:

    The light agent is a limited agent role. Light agents can be CC'd on tickets, can view tickets, and can add private comments to tickets within their groups. They cannot be assigned to or edit tickets. Light agents can be given permission to view reports or they can be restricted from viewing any reports. They cannot create or edit a report. The number of light agents you can add depends on your plan. See Understanding light agent permissions.
     
    Basically, it boils down to how those agents are created.
    If you have agents that have only full access to either Zendesk Chat or Zendesk Sell but not to Zendesk Support, they will be created as Contributors, so that they still may have some kind of access to Zendesk Support.

    Light agents can be added separately with the collaboration add-on, which is included in our Growth, Professional and Enterprise plans. So for them, you would not need a seat in either Sell or Chat, but they would be added separately. They would also not be reserving a seat, but because of that would have limited functionality.

    Hope that answers your question.

    1
  • Ben Fulton

    Hi, I'm looking for some more precise answers about what Contributors can access.

    "...for instance, contributors can view some tickets, but cannot respond or otherwise interact with them."

    This seems unnecessarily vague—*which* exact tickets can the Contributor role view? Tickets assign to their group? Tickets with some other qualifier?

    6
  • Is there a more exhaustive list in an article somewhere that details exactly what roles in the Professional plan can and can't do apart from ticket access? For example, the Agent role in the Professional plan, what can and can't they do with other aspects of Support such as configuration, user profiles (create, view, edit etc), Organisation profiles etc. Also, can they see tickets that they are a follower on or cc'd on?

    I've tried searching but only found this article and the article Understanding Zendesk Support user roles that uses the word 'may' but is not definitive.

    Many thanks :)

    1
  • Ahn Letran
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hello, Chad!

    This list is what we currently have with regards to user roles. If we could improve on this list, we'd like to get your feedback on it, too. Agent roles and permissions depend on the account itself, if they are given access to tickets outside their group, if they can view other macros, edit them, etc. If there's any missing point here, we'd look into it for you and have it addressed to our documents team.

    Thanks!

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  • Oli

    Hey team,

    I have the same question has Ben Fulton. The documentation I can find around the "Contributor" role is vague, with this line – contributors can view some tickets, but cannot respond or otherwise interact with them – being used in this comment section and another article.

    Exactly which kinds of tickets can the Contributor role view?

    2
  • Jaroslav

    Hi, 

    do I understand correctly, that if I want for example allow the Customer Care managers to edit Macros for their teams, I need to give them an Administrator role so they are able to do almost everything in the given Zendesk instance (which is not safe)? 

    There is mentioned that Custom roles are in Enterprise, but I do not want to believe that such a basic feature is only in top price plans (we are currently on Suite Professional). :) 

    Thanks a lot!

    0
  • Beto
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Jaroslav, thank you for your question!

    Regular Agents are able to create Macros, but only for their personal use. The ability to create Macros for other teammates is indeed reserved only for Administrators. The other option is, as you mentioned creating a custom role, but custom roles are reserved for the enterprise level subscription.

    I can confirm that creating Macros for other team members is only available for Administrators on your current subscription.

    I hope this was helpful!

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  • Silas Johnson

    We have the growth suite. I'm finding it very difficulty to see who is technically an agent and who isn't. When you search in people inside admin portal, it aggregates light agents, contributors, admins, etc and calls them all agents under their profile photo in the list. This is very confusing. Is the only way to know who is registered as an agent to go into their profile and check their permissions individually? Does an agent count as an agent across all platforms of the suite? (ie agent for guide but same person contributor for support counts as 1 agent ?). 

    Thank you!

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  • Jeff C
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Silas,

    We are working to improve this experience in the future however as of this time, you are about right that you will need to go into the User Profile directly and check which roles he has for each product.

    As for your other question, this should help -  What counts as an agent seat? and Managing agent seats for Support.

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  • Dante Zanoni

    If a Contributor submits a ticket, and they are sent a CSAT, are thy able to give feedback or will access be denied like that of an Agent or Light Agent?

     

    Thank you

     

    Dante Zanoni

    1
  • Brett Bowser
    Zendesk Community Manager
    Hey Dante,

    Great question! Only the requester of the ticket will be able to rate their experience with a ticket. Followers/CC's will not be able to get access to this functionality.
     
    Let me know if you have any other questions!
    0
  • Thanks Brett Bowser.

    What if the ticket requester is also a Contributor (Zendesk role)?

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  • Brett Bowser
    Zendesk Community Manager
    Hey Gravity,

    If the ticket requester is also a contributor they should still get the option to rate the ticket. As long as they are an end-user on the account and not another agent who is a contributor. 
    0
  • Nicholas Cipolla

    "Note: Although the Guide role name has changed from Guide Manger to Guide Admin, references to Managers in user segments and management permissions still exist in accounts created prior to the name change."

    Pretty sure you meant to say Manager, not Manger. Christmas is coming up soon though... ;)

    0
  • Lisa Kelly
    Zendesk Documentation Team

    Thank you, Nicholas
    It's fixed now. 

    1
  • Bill Brooks

    I'd like to give access to all tickets to several Light Agents in our company.  For full agents, I see how to do this in the admin center.  However, for light agents, the same option does not seem to exist.  I can only let them see tickets from their groups.  This article suggests that allowing a light agent to see all tickets is possible.  Can you please let me know how to do that?

    Thanks,


    Bill

    0
  • Lisa Kelly
    Zendesk Documentation Team

    Hi Bill,

    You set ticket access permission as part of the Light agent role in Enterprise plans. See screen capture below.
    See Managing custom roles for details. 

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  • Francesca Roig

    Hey, everyone! I reached a point where I'm not sure if there's a possible solution or workaround.
    It is common that agents proactively identify the need for a new macro and request the creation to an admin since they can only create individual ones.
    That requires a certain amount of work outside of Zendesk: they'll usually create a doc file with the text they need, and share it with an admin who will then copy-paste it into a new macro and make it available for other users.

    My point is, I do appreciate reviewing each macro before making it available, but the work to get it done could be simplified if, as an admin, I could access their personal macros and edit, or at least create a copy.

    I don't seem to have access to it, so I tried to enable agents to create shared macros and I see here this is Enterprise only. Even so, that would have been a workaround, a full solution is the admin having access to all information, no exception. That kind of access wouldn't only facilitate macro creation but also allow some management over what agents are creating, I don't want them to be allowed to create and use an individual macro containing incorrect information, for example, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it.

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  • Colleen Hall
    Zendesk Documentation Team

    Hey Francesca Roig,

    We recently introduced the ability for admins to view and edit all macros in their account, including agents' personal macros, using the Zendesk API. Please see the announcement and Zendesk's API endpoint for macros for more information! There are plans to include this functionality in the Admin UI later this year.

    0
  • Chris Reid

    Can contributors access shared views if they are apart of the Group that the view is associated with? 

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  • My Sell roles only lets me add an Admin or User, not an Agent. I'm assuming that Sell Agents are the same as Sell Users?

    (Side note: Not sure why the Light Agent role is in a different language)

    0
  • Ivan Miquiabas
    Zendesk Customer Care
    Hi Chris Reid,
     
    Thanks for reaching out! Yes for as long as they are associated in a group where they are a part of. 
     

     
     
    Cheers! 
    0
  • Hannah Lucid

    Is there a way to set a default agent role? Right now ours defaults to contributor and we'd really like it to be a custom role we've setup for a majority of our agents. 

    0

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