TABLE OF CONTENTS


With Collaborators, support managers and agents can add or invite colleagues from other teams or third-party contacts into the ticket as a Collaborator. They can be any stakeholder who assists full-time agents with ticket-related information, updates, opinions, or approvals to resolve a customer ticket.


Inviting a collaborator to a ticket


You can invite a collaborator to a ticket by tagging their name (@mention) in a private note.



If the collaborator does not have ticket access, you can choose to provide ticket access.



If the collaborator is not available in Freshdesk, you can invite them by tagging their email address.



Confirm your choice and add them to Freshdesk.



You can also invite Collaborators by assigning them to a ticket using Shared Ownership. By doing so, the collaborator is also accountable for resolving the ticket. 


Simply add the collaborator and the internal group that the collaborator belongs to on the right pane and click ‘Update’. 



You can measure the performance of Collaborators using the Analytics feature. Know more, here.


Adding Collaborators and defining their scope from Admin page


An admin can add a Collaborator and define their scope from the Admin page,

  • Go to Admin > Team > Agents > New Agent

  • Select Collaborator as the Agent type

  • Add their email address and name



Note: Ticket Collaborator and Analytics Collaborators roles will be created by default and they cannot be edited.


Note: An agent can be a Ticket Collaborator as well as an Analytics Collaborator at the same time.

While adding a Collaborator, you can also define their ticket scope,

  • Global Access - Can view all tickets in the helpdesk.

  • Assigned to their Group - Can view tickets assigned to them and their group.

  • Restricted Access - Can view tickets they are tagged in and where they are secondary owners.



  • Add the role as Ticket Collaborator or Analytics Collaborators

  • Click Create agent.



Once added, the collaborator will receive the invitation link in their email.


Allowing agents to add Collaborators


Admins can let agents invite Collaborators to your account by providing the relevant permissions. This will reduce the dependency on admins and also leads to faster collaboration and customer responses.


You can do this by creating a custom role to allow agents to invite Collaborators. Then you have to assign this custom role to those Agents you want to give access to invite collaborators.


Let us take a custom collaborator role called ‘Collaborators - Agent Invitation’ as an example. To create this custom Collaborator role,

  • Go to Admin > Team > Roles

  • Click New Role

  • Give a name (e.g, Collaborators - Agent Invitation)

  • Select the Agent type as Support Agent



  • Under Permissions, Go to the Administration section and select Perform Operational Admin actions > Manage agents > Invite collaborators and provide ticket access

  • Save the settings



Next, 

  • Go to Admin > Team > Agents 

  • Select the Agent you want to give this access to and click Edit Agent.



  • In Roles, Add ‘Collaborators - Agent Invitation’.

  • Click Update agent.



Note: If you want to give Collaborator access in bulk through APIs. Please refer to our API documentation for more information.


Custom Collaborator permissions


You can define the granular level permissions for Collaborators while you are creating a custom Collaborator role,

  • Forward a conversation

  • Edit ticket status

  • View solutions tab

  • View customers tab


Note:'Edit ticket status' is not available in the default ticket colaborator role


To create a custom role for a collaborator,

  • Go to Admin > Team > Roles

  • Click New Role

  • Give a name (e.g, Custom Collaborators)

  • Select the Agent type as Collaborator


Now you can select the permission you want to assign for the custom collaborator role from the Tickets, Solutions, or Customers section respectively.


To edit ticket status, follow the above-mentioned steps and then

  • Under Tickets, Select 'Edit ticket properties' > 'Edit only the ticket status'



Converting a Collaborator into Agent


You cannot directly convert a Collaborator into an Agent. To convert a Collaborator into an Agent, you need to first convert them into a contact and then convert the contact into an Agent.


To convert a Collaborator into a contact,


  • Go to Admin > Teams > Agents > Collaborators
  • Select the Collaborator you wish to convert to a contact
  • Click Convert to a Contact > Confirm



To convert a contact to an agent,

  • Go to Customers > Contacts

  • Select the contact you want to convert into a Agent

  • Click Convert to Agent > Support - Full time agent > Convert




Converting a contact into Collaborator


To convert a contact into a Collaborator,

  • Go to Customers > Contacts

  • Select the contact you want to convert into a Collaborator

  • Click Convert to Agent > Collaborator > Convert




Deleting a Collaborator


You can delete a Collaborator at any point in time and they’ll be converted into a Contact on your Freshdesk account (similar to what happens upon deleting other agent types).

  • Go to Admin > Team > Agents > Collaborators
  • Select the Collaborator you want to delete
  • Click Delete > Confirm



Collaborator Notifications


If you are a Collaborator, you will get an email and In-app notification from Freshdesk when,

  • You are invited by an admin,

  • You are tagged (@mention),

  • Assigned to a ticket (shared ownership) or a group by an agent (@mention).


Audit Logs


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



Note: Audit log feature is available in Forest plan only.