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A Collaborator is a limited type of support agent in Freshdesk. Collaborators represent any stakeholder that can assist full-time agents with ticket-related information, updates, opinions, or approvals to resolve a customer issue.

Using the Collaborators feature, you can loop in colleagues from other teams or third-party contacts. For example:

• When a customer reports a billing issue, you check with a colleague from the Billing team, who otherwise doesn't use your Freshdesk.
• As an e-commerce company, when a customer reports a billing issue, you loop in the third-party seller to provide a refund status.

You can add up to 5000 Collaborators in Freshdesk.

Collaborator privileges and limitations

There are 2 collaborator roles in Freshdesk:

• Ticket collaborators - can do limited work with tickets and view customer data and the knowledge base.
• Analytics collaborators - can do everything ticket collaborators can do, plus view analytics.

Admins can define permissions for Collaborators by creating a custom role.

1. Go to Admin > Team > Roles and click New Role.
2. Provide a Name (such as "Custom Collaborator") and Description.
3. Change the Agent Type to Collaborator.
4. Optionally, under Agents, click Add to bulk add this role to collaborators.
5. Under Permissions, select the permissions to add:
   • Tickets > Forward a conversation
   • Tickets > Edit ticket properties > Edit specific ticket properties (status, internal group, and internal agent)
   • Tickets > View or edit time entries (Edit only their time only)
   • Tickets > Manage ticket list views (Manage personal list views only)
   • Solutions > View solutions tab
   • Customers > View customers tab
   • Analytics > Access analytics (View only)
   • General > Schedule out of office
6. Scroll down and click Save.
7. To add this role to collaborators later, edit them and add this role under the Roles section. See Add or Edit Support Agents.

Set up collaborators

Admins can set up collaborators in a few different ways:

1. Add a new support agent and set Agent type to Collaborator. See Add or Edit Support Agents.
   • Remember to assign them a collaborator role and define their scope.
2. Convert a contact into a Collaborator. See Manage Customer Data in Freshdesk.
   • Support agents cannot be directly converted to Collaborators. However, you can delete the agent and then convert their contact into a Collaborator.
3. Allow agents to invite Collaborators.

Allowing agents to invite Collaborators reduces the dependency on admins and enables more efficient collaboration. To do so, you will need to create a custom role and assign it to agents.

1. Go to Admin > Team > Roles and click New Role.
2. Provide a Name (such as "Collaborator—Agent Invitation") and Description.
3. Leave the Agent Type as Support agent.
4. Optionally, under Agents, click Add to bulk add this role to support agents.
5. Under Permissions, go to the Administration section and select Perform Operational Admin actions > Manage agents > Invite collaborators and provide ticket access.
6. Scroll down and click Save.
7. To add this role to agents later, edit them and add this role under the Roles section. See Add or Edit Support Agents.

You can also bulk add roles via APIs. See API documentation.

Collaborator workflow in ticketing

Although collaborators contribute to tickets, SLA policies do not apply to them.

Collaborators receive an email and an in-app notification from Freshdesk when:

• They are invited by an admin.
• They are tagged in a ticket (@mention).
• They are assigned to a ticket or a group by an agent (via Shared Ownership).

Agents can invite collaborators to a ticket in 3 ways:

• If the collaborator is already added to Freshdesk:
  1. Create a private note and tag their name (@mention).
  2. A dialog lets you Provide ticket access or Notify only by email.
     
• If the collaborator hasn't been added to Freshdesk:
  1. Create a private note and tag their email address (@mention).
  2. The mention dialog shows that they can be added as collaborator. Click the dialog.
     
  3. Confirm your choice in the popup.
     
• If Shared Ownership is enabled, you can add the collaborator and their internal group in the ticket properties and click Update.
  

Track and measure Collaborator performance

As Admin, you will also be able to see the list of Collaborators invited under Audit Logs.

You can also run analytics on Collaborator actions. To do so, you must meet the following conditions:

• Shared Ownership is enabled.
• Collaborators are added to internal groups for which you'll run analytics.
• Collaborators have the privilege to edit ticket Status.
• Ensure Collaborators change ticket status after contributing to a ticket.

Now you can create reports on Collaborators. The following example tracks private notes added and resolution time.

1. Go to Analytics and click New Report.
2. Click "Untitled Report" and provide a suitable name, such as "Collaborator Performance".
3. From the Add Widgets panel, drag and drop a Chart onto your report.
4. In the Chart Configuration panel, configure your chart.
   1. Name your chart "Private Notes".
   2. In the Metric dropdown, type and select Private notes by agent.
   3. Click the Group By button and type and select Internal agent name.
   4. Review your chart and click Apply.
      
5. Click Add Widgets and repeat steps 3 and 4 with the following configuration.
   1. Name your chart "Resolution time".
   2. In the Metric dropdown, type and select Time spent in business hours.
   3. Click the Group By button and type and select Internal group name.
   4. Review your chart and click Apply.
      
6. In the top-right corner, click Save to save your report.

For additional help, contact support@freshdesk.com.