Changing an agent's role

Change an agent's role to adjust their responsibilities. Upgrade agents to administrators or light agents to agents, or downgrade agents to end users. After downgrading, you can suspend users. Role changes appear in the audit log, showing who made the change and any system-attributed adjustments. Be aware of potential impacts on reports when downgrading roles.




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 the agent to an administrator
role
Upgrading a light agent’s role
Downgrading the agent to an end-user
role
Removing a user from your
account
Understanding role changes in the audit log




Upgrading an agent's role to administrator

Administrators can promote agents to the administrator role.

To promote an agent 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 and agents in custom roles with permission can promote a
light agent to an agent. Admins can promote light agents to admins. 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 and agents in custom roles with permission 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.




Note: Downgrading the agent does not change your agent seat count. You will be charged for the
same number of agents unless you change your subscription (see Changing plan subscriptions).

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 Customers
( ) in the sidebar.
Click the name of the agent who was downgraded to an end user.
Click the drop-down icon at the top right of the profile and select
Suspend.

Enter the reason for the suspension and select Suspend user.





Understanding role changes in the audit log

When an admin or agent in a custom role with permission 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.
For example, when an admin changes an agent's custom role and the new custom role includes
editor access to Explore, you'll see two changes in the audit logs:
The change to the Support role (the admin is attributed)
The change to the Explore role (the system user is attributed)