Overview
Defining custom user roles is a great way to let each member of your support team play to their strengths. You can modify user roles and permissions so you can let say senior-level support advocates to build automated workflows. You can create a custom administrator role to grant them access to Kayako's automation-related features, in addition to their regular agent-level access.
Prerequisites
- To modify user roles and permissions or create new user roles in Kayako, you will need an administrator account with the 'Manage roles and permissions' permission.
- Scale or Enterprise plans are required for creating or adding new custom roles. Pre-built user roles can be customized regardless of your price plan.
Solution
Although Kayako comes with five pre-built user roles, with varying degrees of power and access, that's not always enough. Perhaps you have a self-service team that needs control over Help Center content but won't be updating or responding to conversations. Create a new 'Self-service' user role. Or maybe you want your team leads to be able to add and modify custom conversation fields. Build them an 'Agent + Conversation Fields' role.
As mentioned above, if you're on the Scale or Enterprise plans, you'll also have the option to create custom user roles, to suit your team's needs. For each custom role you add, you can fine-tune their permissions so they have as much or as little access as they need.
There are two types of custom user roles you can create in Kayako: agent roles and administrator roles. For each custom role you create, you'll choose one of these role types. The role type determines which permissions you can choose from for the new role.
Custom agent roles are based on the permissions for the default 'Agent' user role. Custom administrator roles are based on the permissions for the default 'Administrator' role. If you need a refresher on which default roles have which permissions, refer to our user guide article about assigning roles.
Once you choose a role type, you'll be able to assign any variation of those permissions that you'd like.
Adding and configuring a new user role:
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Sign in to Kayako and go to the admin area.
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Under the 'Team Settings' heading, click the Roles and permissions link.
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Here, you'll see the default user roles and any custom roles that have been added already. Click the Add new role button.
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In the Role name field, type a descriptive name for the new role - e.g., you want an agent with automation permission so you would type 'Agent + Automations'.
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From the Role type dropdown, select 'Administrator' or 'Agent'. This will reveal the full array of permissions to choose from depending on the role type you selected.
- Check or Uncheck the options you want to assign to the new custom role.
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If you want our new role to include all of the normal agent permissions, leave everything in 'Conversations', 'Users and organizations', and 'Help Center' checked.
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- Click the Save button to create your new role.
Configuring or modifying an existing user role:
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Sign in to Kayako and go to the admin area.
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Under the 'Team Settings' heading, click the Roles and permissions link.
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Here, you'll see the default user roles and any custom roles that have been added already. Click the role you want to modify.
- Check or Uncheck the options you want to assign to the role or remove from it.
- Click the Save button to create your new role.
Testing
After adding or configuring a custom user role, this role will now be available for use. All you have to do is edit the user profile for your staff users, and assign them to the new role. The new custom role you created should appear in the drop-down list.
If a role has been modified, you may ask the user to try accessing or checking if the feature you disabled from their access is still visible or not. For example, if you disabled the 'View suspended messages' from an agent role, the Suspended folder in the agent area should no longer be visible to anyone who is assigned to that particular role.