What the standard roles can do

The roles that come with Zendesk, what each allows, and when the standard set stops being enough.

The roles that come with Zendesk, what each allows, and when the standard set stops being enough.

The standard roles

Role is not the same as access

The role says what somebody can do; ticket access says which tickets they can do it to. Two agents on the same role can see entirely different amounts of the account.

Confusing the two is the most common access mistake there is.

The standard roles cover most teams

Agent for people who answer, admin for two or three, light agent for colleagues who need to see. That covers the majority of organisations without any custom work.

When you need more

• Team leads who should manage views and macros without full admin.
• Agents who must not delete tickets or export data.
• A group who may use one channel and not another.

Those need custom roles, which are an Enterprise capability.

Do not solve it with admin

Granting admin because somebody needs one extra permission gives them every permission. It is the shortcut that turns three admins into eleven over two years.

Review who holds which

Quarterly. It costs nothing to reduce a role, and access that outlives its reason is what every review finds.

See also

• Creating custom roles
• Light agents: what they can and cannot do
• Setting ticket access per agent