Roles and what each can do

The six helpdesk roles from Admin to Observer, the organization roles above them, and a table of what each role may change.

On this page

Everyone in a helpdesk has one role, set by an admin when they are invited and changed later in Settings > Users. Roles stack: each one can do everything the roles below it can, and a little more. The same table is in the helpdesk under Settings > Access > What each role can do.

The roles in short#

Role	Meant for
Admin	The people who run the helpdesk: users, channels, rules, fields, integrations, billing and every other setting
Lead agent	Team leads who keep the shared toolkit in shape: macros, shared views, tags, and which AI Agent skills are on
Agent	Day-to-day support: replies, notes, tags, assignment, macros, plus writing AI Agent skill drafts
Basic agent	People who answer tickets but should not change shared tools
Lite agent	Same powers as Basic agent today (see the note below)
Observer	Read-only: tickets, customers and reports, with no replies and no changes. Observers cannot be assigned tickets

What each role can do#

	Admin	Lead agent	Agent	Basic agent	Lite agent	Observer
Read tickets, customers and reports	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Be assigned tickets	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Reply, write notes, tag, assign, snooze, close, merge	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Create, edit, merge and delete customers	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Create a new tag while tagging a ticket	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Make private views only they see	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Write and edit AI Agent skill drafts	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Rename, recolour, merge and delete tags	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Create and change macros, shared views and view sections	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Switch AI Agent skills on and off	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Create teams and change who is in them	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Rules, ticket and customer fields, satisfaction survey, SLAs, flows	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Channels: email, chat, contact forms, help center	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Store connection, HTTP integrations, AI Agent settings and actions	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Invite people, change roles, deactivate users, agent statuses	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Create and revoke API keys	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Business hours, imports and other helpdesk settings	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Audit log and data access log	Yes	No	No	No	No	No

Store actions that move money, such as a refund, follow their own setting: admins can always run them, and agents and lead agents can only when an admin has allowed it in the store settings. Basic and lite agents never can. See Order actions.

Every role can edit its own profile, notifications and status.

Organization roles#

Above the helpdesk sits your organization, with four roles of its own. When someone is invited to a helpdesk, the helpdesk role decides their organization role: admins become organization admins, observers become viewers and everyone else becomes a member.

Organization role	What it adds
Owner	Everything an admin can do, plus: add or remove owners, rename or delete the organization, and download a full export of a helpdesk's tickets and customers. Owners sign in with Google only
Admin	Add helpdesks to the organization, manage its members and invitations, connect mailboxes and stores
Member	Work in the organization's helpdesks with the helpdesk role they were given
Viewer	Read only, in every helpdesk of the organization

An organization always keeps at least one owner.

Accounts that are not people#

Automation is the role of accounts that act for software rather than a person: Haylee, the AI agent, and integrations you build with the REST API. Haylee's account drafts replies, adds notes and tags, and can create and edit macros, views, rules and ticket fields, but not delete them. Rules she creates are saved switched off and fields she creates stay optional until a person changes them. What she may do on her own is set in AI Agent > Actions.
Growth Dept staff can open your helpdesk when you ask us for support. They see it read-only, and what they read is listed in Settings > Data access like anyone else's reads. See Data access log.

Change someone's role#

An admin opens Settings > Users, chooses the person, picks the new Role and saves it. Nobody can change their own role; ask another admin. Read Users for deactivating and reactivating people.

Still stuck?

Write to the Growth Dept team and a person answers. Say which helpdesk you work in and what you were trying to do.

support@growthdept.ai