Assigning user roles to your team and customers

In Kayako, each user account is assigned to a particular role, which controls their level of access. Customer user accounts, for example, have only limited access to some Help Center features. Administrator accounts, on the other hand, have free rein of Kayako's settings and configurations.

In this article we'll go over the five out-of-the-box user roles in Kayako, the individual permissions that each role has, and the steps necessary for changing the role for a particular user.

Understanding the different user roles available

In order to control which users have access to specific features, Kayako has five standard user roles, each with different permissions:

• Customer — All new users are customers by default. They can sign in to the Help Center to start and keep and eye on their conversations with your support team.
• Collaborator — This role allows users other than your agents to view conversations and leave private notes on conversation timelines. Collaborators let you loop internal stakeholders into important conversations, without having to buy each one a seat on your account.  Learn more in our article on collaborators. 
• Agent — This role allows users to manage and respond to conversations and Help Center content, without giving them access to Kayako's configuration options.
• Administrator — More power, more responsibility. This role grants support managers and other power users access to broad range of permissions for customizing and configuring Kayako.
• Owner — The most powerful of all the user roles in Kayako (don't let it go to your head). When your organization signs up for Kayako, the initial user account that's created will automatically be assigned to the owner role. You can also assign the owner role to additional users.

NOTE: When calculating pricing, by the way, any user in the 'Agent', 'Admin', or 'Owner' role counts as one agent. Each plan allows for a set number of 'Collaborator' users, as well, and there's no limit on your 'Customer' users — we know you'll have loads!

Below is a table that describes which permissions each user role has.

PERMISSIONS	CUSTOMER	COLLABORATOR	AGENT	ADMIN	OWNER
HELP CENTER PERMISSIONS
Log in to the help center
Submit & reply to conversations
View help center articles
Edit their user profile
Edit existing help center articles
Publish help center articles
Manage the Help Center
CONVERSATION PERMISSIONS
Access the agent area
Be assigned to conversations
Post private notes to conversations
Reply publicly to conversations
Split and merge conversations
Trash conversations
MESSENGER PERMISSIONS
Sign in to messenger
Accept new messenger requests and invitations
USER & ORGANIZATION PERMISSIONS
Create and update users and organizations
Delete customer users and organizations
Manage teams
Delete staff users and teams
Change user roles
SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION PERMISSIONS
Access the admin area
Manage endpoints
Manage channels
Manage brands
Manage conversation views
Manage conversation macros
Manage localization
Manage automations
Manage SLAs and business hours
Manage conversation fields
Manage custom user and organization fields
Manage system configuration
ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT PERMISSIONS
Access account management
Change subscription plan
Update billing information

NOTE: If you're on the Scale or Enterprise plan, you can not only make changes to the 'Administrator' and 'Agent' user roles, but you can also add custom roles. Learn more in our article about customizing user roles.

Now that you have a good idea of what the different user roles do, let's look at how to change the role for a particular user.

Changing the role of a user

Each user account is assigned to a particular user role. You can change this assignment at anytime by editing their user profile.

NOTE: To edit user roles in Kayako, you will need an agent account with the 'Create and update users and organizations' permission.

To change the role for a user account:

1. Sign in to Kayako and go to the agent area.
2. Search for and open the user profile you want to edit.
3. From the Role field, select the user role you want to assign them.
4. Click the Submit button to save your changes.
   NOTE: If you're assigning a user to a more powerful role — from collaborator to agent, for example — a warning dialog box will pop up and ask you confirm the change.

And that's all there is to it. If you're on the Enterprise plan and you're interested in learning more about customizing user roles, you can learn more here.