Understanding Freshsales agent roles and privileges

We have recently refreshed our branding across our offerings and changed the names of our pricing plans. If you have signed up before Aug 9, 2021, please click Previous plans to view your applicable plans.
We assure you that this change will not impact your product experience, and no action is required on your part.

With the Freshdesk-Freshsales integration, you will now see a new agent role called Freshsales agent to control and manage your Freshsales user’s access privileges in Freshdesk.

The existing Freshsales users will be mapped as Freshsales agents in Freshdesk if they do not have access to Freshdesk or are not saved as existing contacts. Users with existing Freshdesk roles will continue to retain the same role on being added to Freshsales.

This article contains the following sections:

1. Overview
2. Understanding Freshsales agent role permissions and restrictions
   • Viewing the Freshsales agent permissions
   • Converting existing Freshdesk users to Freshsales agents

Overview

Currently, Freshsales users cannot access Freshdesk features such as attaching files to a ticket, ticket templates, canned responses, dependent fields, dynamic sections, and collaboration features unless they are support agents in Freshdesk. The new Freshsales agent role provides access to all these features without purchasing another Freshdesk license. With the enhanced integration, your sales agents can access their contact’s support tickets directly on Freshdesk. 

Benefits:

• Collaborate between your sales and support teams at ease
• Allow sales agents to quickly access support tickets and perform support tasks like updating ticket properties or responding to tickets directly on Freshdesk
• Control and manage sales agents with the new Freshsales agent role

 
Check out this article for more details on viewing Freshdesk tickets from Freshsales. Please note that access to features is subject to their availability on you current Freshdesk plan.

Understanding Freshsales agent role permissions and restrictions

The new Freshsales agent role will be available in the following scenarios:

• When you sign up for Freshsales via Freshdesk
• When you install the Freshdesk app from Freshsales 

Freshsales agents are added with a default restricted ticket scope, which differs from other restricted agent roles. A Freshsales agent with a restricted scope can access a ticket if one of the conditions is met:

• If the agent was mentioned (@mention) in the ticket they are trying to access (or)
• If agent has access to the corresponding contact in Freshsales

If you want to change the default scope for the agent, go to Admin > Agent > Agent Name > Edit Agent. You can also assign specific group-level privileges for the sales agent to view and edit tickets of a specific group.

As tickets cannot be assigned to Freshsales agents, they will only get a view and edit access to group-level tickets.

Viewing the Freshsales agent permissions

To view the default permissions of a Freshsales agent:

1. As an admin, go to Freshdesk > Admin > Roles.
   Note: You can view the default permissions assigned, but you cannot edit them. 
2. Select Freshsales agent. Under permissions, you can see the access given to a Freshsales agent for different categories.
3. To change permissions, you can create and assign custom roles for Freshsales agents.

Freshsales agent permissions

If you are a Freshdesk admin, note the following restrictions in managing Freshsales agents:

1. You cannot add new Freshsales agents directly on Freshdesk. This can be done only via Freshsales.
   For this reason, you will not see the “Freshsales agent” role while adding new agents in Freshdesk. However, you can still delete the Freshsales agents from Freshdesk.
2. Since Freshsales agents are specific to Freshsales, you cannot assign them to any tickets in Freshdesk. Also, Freshsales agents do not have access to the Phone and Chat channels.
3. The Freshsales agents have limited capabilities within Freshdesk. You can see the list of permissions in the table above.
4. You cannot use the “convert to agent” option in Freshdesk to convert contacts to Freshsales agents.

Converting existing Freshdesk users to Freshsales agents

When you integrate Freshdesk and Freshsales, your existing Freshsales users will be mapped to the new Freshsales agent role in Freshdesk only when they do not have access to Freshdesk or are not saved as existing contacts. 

However, if you want to convert an existing Freshdesk contact/agent to a Freshsales agent, hard delete the agent/contact from Freshdesk before you integrate. This will ensure they are automatically converted to Freshsales agents during Freshdesk-Freshsales integration. If you have already integrated, follow the steps here:

1. To add an existing Freshdesk agent as a Freshsales agent, hard delete the agent from Freshdesk. Go to Admin > Agents and delete the agent. When you delete an agent, they will be added as a contact in Freshdesk. Proceed to the next step to remove all the contact information.
   
   Note: All the tickets associated with the deleted agent will be moved to "unassigned." To avoid this, assign a dummy email address for the agent. For details, check this article.
2. To add an existing Freshdesk contact as a Freshsales agent, hard delete the existing contact. Go to the Contacts section in Freshdesk and delete the contact.To remove all the contact information completely, go to the Deleted Contacts section and delete the contact's profile.
3. Once the above steps are complete, please deactivate and again activate the user in Freshsales. This will create the user as a Freshsales agent in Freshdesk.

Note: When you delete a contact, who is not a Freshdesk agent, all activities associated with the contact like forums topics, emails, tickets, and other related activities will be removed from Freshdesk. To avoid this, change the contact's email ID to a dummy value instead of deleting the contact.

For example, if the agent to be added as Freshsales agent is emily.dean@freshdesk.com, replace this email address in the Freshdesk contacts as emily.dean_placeholder@freshdesk.com. This will retain the ticket details and you can proceed with integration or adding the Freshsales agent without deleting the contact.