Understanding Shared agent roles and privileges

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

The existing Freshsales users will be mapped as Shared 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 upon being added to Freshsales.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Overview
• Understanding Shared agent role permissions and restrictions
  • Viewing the Shared agent permissions
    • Shared agent permissions
  • Converting existing Freshdesk users to Shared 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 agents in Freshdesk. The new Shared agent role provides access to all these features without purchasing another Freshdesk license. With the enhanced integration, your sales agents can access their support tickets directly on Freshdesk. 

Benefits:

• Collaborate between your sales and support teams with 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 Shared 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 your current Freshdesk plan.

Understanding Shared agent role permissions and restrictions

The Shared 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 

Shared agents are added with a default restricted ticket scope, which differs from other restricted agent roles. A Shared 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 the 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 Shared agents, they will only get a view and edit access to group-level tickets.

Viewing the Shared agent permissions

To view the default permissions of a Shared agent:

• As an admin, go to Freshdesk > Admin > Roles

Note: You can view the default permissions assigned, but you cannot edit them.

• Select Shared agent
  • Under permissions, you can see the access given to a Freshsales agent for different categories
• To change permissions, you can create and assign custom roles for Freshsales agents

Shared agent permissions

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

1. You cannot add new Shared agents directly on Freshdesk. This can be done only via Freshsales.
   For this reason, you will not see the 'Shared agent' role while adding new agents in Freshdesk. However, you can still delete the Shared agents from Freshdesk.
2. Since Shared agents are specific to Freshsales, you cannot assign them to any tickets in Freshdesk. Also, Shared agents do not have access to the Phone and Chat channels.
3. The Shared 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 Shared agents.

Converting existing Freshdesk users to Shared agents

When you integrate Freshdesk and Freshsales, your existing Freshsales users will be mapped to the Shared 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 Shared agent, hard delete the agent/contact from Freshdesk before integrating. This will ensure they are automatically converted to Shared agents during Freshdesk-Freshsales integration. If you have already integrated, follow the steps here:

1. To add an existing Freshdesk agent as a Shared 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 a Freshdesk contact as a Shared 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 activate the user in Freshsales. This will create the user as a Shared 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 a Shared 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 Shared agent without deleting the contact.