Adding agents and admins and setting ticket access

Team, Professional, or Enterprise







Verified AI summary ◀▼
Add agents and admins to your team manually, via bulk import, or through the API. Define user roles, privileges, and ticket access to ensure effective support operations. Customize user profiles with options like email, role, and organization. On Enterprise plans, use custom roles to manage permissions. Check seat availability before adding team members to optimize your support structure.




You can add team members (agents and admins) manually, through a bulk import of users, or
through the Zendesk API. You must be an admin to add team members.
This article covers the following topics:

Adding an agent or admin
About the user options
About agent privileges and ticket
access

To add users in a bulk import, see Bulk importing users. To add users with the API, see Zendesk Developer Tools: Introduction.


Tip: To learn more about adding users and defining their roles, see the Zendesk Support for Admins training course.

Related articles:
About the Team members page
Restricting agent ticket access by brand




Adding an agent or admin

Admins and agents in custom roles with permission can add
agents, but they can't add or manage account owners. Admins can also add other admins.
The account owner can also add agent seats to your subscription. The
account owner is included as an agent seat in your subscription.
Before you add a team member, you can check the Seats remaining
section of the Team members page to find out whether you have any available seats. If you don’t
have any seats left, you won’t be able to add the agent or admin.

To add an agent or admin

In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Team > Team members. The Team members page opens.

Click Create team member.
Enter the team member’s Name and Email, then click Next.
In the Assign role section, select the user’s Support role from the
Support drop-down list, then click Next. You set only the Support role
now. You can set other roles later.
If the team member is an AI agents -
Advanced user only and should not consume a Zendesk seat, select
Contributor.

If the team member you're adding isn't an admin and your account has multiple brands,
you may be prompted to select brands for the team member, depending on your brand settings. Select the brands that the team
member should have access to. This restricts the agent from accessing tickets in other
brands.
Click Save. The new user is saved. If the Also send a welcome
email when a new user is created by an agent or administrator option is selected, the new user receives a welcome
email and link to sign in.

(Optional) Click the new team member, who initially appears at the
top of the list, to access their profile and assign any additional roles.


After you add the new team member, you can open their Support profile to set user options and agent permissions. On
Enterprise plans, agent permissions are not set in the profile, but are determined by the
agent’s custom role.



About user options

The following table describes the options that can be set for a new user.









Profile data
Description




Name
User's name.


Email
Email address used for all email communications with the user. Team members
can have more than one email address but one will be their primary
email.



Role
Defines the user's function and access level in your Zendesk Support. There
are two user types: End user and Staff Member. Customers are assigned the role
end user. Staff members can be assigned a variety of roles, such as
agent or administrator. On Enterprise plans, you can create custom
roles for agents. Roles and product access are managed in Admin Center. Only admins can change a
user's role. For information about user roles, see Understanding Zendesk Support user roles. For
information about custom roles, see Creating custom roles and assigning
agents.



Contacts
Other contact information for the user, such as Phone, X (formerly Twitter)
handle, Facebook page, and Google account.


Phone
Personal telephone number for the user.


Alias (Professional and Enterprise)
Alternative name for a team member to use on all communications with
customers (also called end users) instead of their real name. If this field blank
is blank, the team member's real name is used in email communications.


Signature
Closing line added to an agent's email notifications.


Tags
List of tags that will automatically be added to new tickets created by this
user. Separate tags with a space. Tags are added to new tickets only, not updated
tickets. This is an optional feature, and you may not have enabled user
tagging. For more information about user tags, see Adding tags to users and
organizations.



Organization
A collection of users (typically customers, but can include team members)
created by an admin. On the Team plan, users can belong to only one organization.
On Professional and Enterprise, users can belong to multiple organizations, up to
300. A user does not have to belong to any organization, however. For more
information, see About organizations and groups.



Language
Language the user will view your Zendesk Support in. This setting affects
this user only.


Time zone
Local time zone for the user; used to time stamp tickets. This setting
affects this user only.


Details
Additional details about the user. Address, for example. Details are visible
to other team members but not customers.


Notes
Additional notes about the user. Notes are visible to other team members but
not customers.








About agent privileges and ticket access

When you add agents you need to define their privileges (groups they will be assigned to,
their access to tickets, if they can make both public and private comments, and their forums
access). These privileges are described in the following table.

Note: On Enterprise plans, you set the agent's groups in the agent's profile, but you do
not set agent permissions and ticket access in the agent's profile. Agent
permissions and access (except for groups) are determined by the agent's custom role.











Privileges
Description




Brand membership

Defines the brands in which the user can view, search, and access
tickets. Depending on your configuration, team members may be added
to brands automatically when they are created, but you can modify their brand
membership as needed.
A team member’s role can further refine their access. For example, a team
member’s role might limit them to only tickets in their groups.
For more information about brand membership, see Restricting agent ticket access by
brand.



Groups
List of groups the agent belongs to. Agents must belong to at least one
group. Click the group name to edit the groups for the agent. For information
about groups, see Creating groups.



Access

Define the agent's access to tickets as one of the following:
All tickets
Tickets in agent's groups
Tickets in agent's org
Assigned tickets only If you select to restrict the agent to an
organization, you must also set the agent's organization (on the Add
user page). See Restricting agents to
an organization.
Notwithstanding ticket access
restrictions, CC'ing an agent on any ticket lets the agent receive email
notifications of all public and private updates to the
ticket.
Agents must have All tickets access to create or edit
end users. However, agents with any ticket access level can create users
when setting the ticket requester to a new user.


Note: On Enterprise plans, you do not set ticket access in agent profiles.
Agent permissions are determined by the agent's custom role (see Creating custom roles and assigning
agents).







Comments
Determine the type of comments an agent can make on tickets.

Notes and replies enables the agent to add both internal notes and
public replies to tickets.

Notes only enables the agent to add only internal notes to
tickets.