Teams and roles

Every member of a workspace has a role, which decides what they can change. Teams decide who owns which work: a team such as Billing or Legal can have its own email addresses, business hours, signature and assignment method, and a private team keeps its tickets for its own people.

1. New team: create a team. Admins create teams.
2. A team: its colour, name, description and the addresses that send email to it. Click it to open its settings.
3. Private: only the team’s people see its tickets. See Private teams.
4. People: who is on the team. A private team’s people are shown only to its members and to admins.
5. Open and Unassigned: the team’s live ticket counts.

Roles

Roles are ordered: each one can do everything the role below it can.

Role	Can
owner	Everything, including deleting the workspace and transferring ownership.
admin	Manage settings: members, teams, mailboxes, brands and widgets, routing, API keys, webhooks, automations and SLA policies.
agent	Work tickets, contacts and the knowledge base.
viewer	Read only. On a team, a viewer can only be an observer.

Admins invite people by email with a role. The invitation link expires, and pending invitations can be revoked. When someone accepts, they join with the invited role. Changing a role or removing a member takes effect at once: a removed member’s sessions and live connections are closed. Member and role changes are recorded in the audit log.

Create a team

1. Open Settings, then Teams

   

2. Click New team and fill it in

   Give the team a name and, optionally, a description of what it handles (up to 280 characters, shown in pickers). Pick a colour: it is used for the team’s dot and chips everywhere.

   

   Add me as the lead puts you on the team as its lead. Private team keeps its tickets for its people from the start.

3. Add people and give each a team role

   On the team’s page, under Members, click Add people. Each person has a role on the team, separate from their workspace role.

   

   Team role	Does
   Lead	Manages the team’s settings and members, and works its tickets.
   Member	Works the team’s tickets and gets new ones by assignment.
   Observer	Sees the team’s tickets and can comment, but is never assigned.

   New tickets are assigned only to leads and members. A team always keeps at least one lead.

4. Give the team an address

   Under Addresses, the mailboxes whose email goes to this team are listed. Click Add an address to connect one, or set the team on an existing mailbox in Mailboxes.

   

   Also routed here lists the routing rules and widget topics that send tickets to the team as well. See Routing.

Good to know

• A team’s settings can be changed by an admin or by the team’s lead. Only admins make a team private or public.
• Team names are listed for everyone in the workspace, so pickers and filters always work.
• Open a team’s own inbox with Open inbox on its page, or from Teams in the sidebar.

Hours, assignment and signature

Each team can work its own way. Anything left unset follows the workspace.

Business hours

Choose Workspace hours, or Own schedule with a time zone, a weekly schedule and holidays. A team’s hours drive the SLA timers on its tickets, whether a chat widget that sends chats to the team shows as open or closed, and when Ollie answers as after hours.

Assignment

Assign new tickets picks how a new ticket of the team gets a person: Round robin (teammates take turns), Load balanced (whoever has the fewest open tickets), or Off (tickets wait in Unassigned). A team’s method wins over its address’s, which wins over the workspace default. Assignment settings opens the workspace’s assignment page. See Triage and assignment.

Signature

A team signature is added to replies on the team’s tickets in place of the address’s signature. Leave it empty to use each address’s own. Click a variable to insert it; it is filled in when the reply goes out.

Variable	Becomes
{{agent.name}}, {{agent.first_name}}	The person replying. Empty on automated emails.
{{team.name}}	The ticket’s team, or the brand when it has none.
{{brand.name}}	The ticket’s brand.
{{mailbox.email}}	The address the reply goes out from.
{{ticket.number}}, {{ticket.subject}}	The ticket.
{{contact.name}}	The customer.

Private teams

A private team’s tickets are visible only to the team’s leads, members and observers, to the person a ticket is assigned to, and to API keys and webhooks that were given the team. Everyone else, admins and owners included, does not see them: they are left out of lists, views, search and counts, and opening one by its link shows that it does not exist.

1. Make a team private

   On the team’s page, turn on Private team under Privacy. The confirmation says how many people stop seeing its open tickets. Only admins change a team’s privacy, and the change is recorded in the audit log.

2. Join a private team as an admin

   An admin who is not on a private team still manages its settings, and sees a note that its tickets are for its members only. To see its tickets, click Join to see tickets.

   

   You join as an observer. The team’s leads are told that you joined, and it is recorded in the audit log.

   

3. Give an API key or webhook a private team

   API keys and webhooks see private teams’ tickets only when the team is included. In the key’s or webhook’s Private teams field, include the teams it needs. Only people on a private team can include it, so the others are locked.

   

Note

• When a team becomes public again, or is deleted, it is removed from every API key and webhook. Making it private again does not give it back: include it again where it is needed.
• A private team’s addresses are only for its members: other people cannot send replies from them.

Saved replies, views and SLA for a team

Several settings can be scoped to one team:

• SLA policies: set Team on a policy and it applies only to that team’s tickets, before policies for any team. See SLA policies.
• Saved replies: set Offered on to a team and the reply is offered only on that team’s tickets. A private team’s saved replies are listed only to its members.
• Views: set Who sees this view to A team and everyone on the team sees it in their sidebar. Admins and the team’s leads create team views. See Saved replies and views.

Work a team’s tickets

Teams in the sidebar lists My teams, with the tickets of every team you are on, and each of your teams. A team’s inbox has Unassigned, Open, Pending and All tabs.

Move a ticket to another team

Click the ticket’s Team in its details and pick the new team. Before you confirm, opendesk shows what changes: who gets the ticket under the new team’s assignment method, and whether replies go out from a different address.

When the ticket’s reply address belongs to the old team (or to no team), and the ticket’s brand has an address for the new team, replies switch to the new team’s address. The customer’s thread stays together: the threading headers and the [#n] subject tag are kept. The ticket’s activity records the move and the address change.

Delete a team

Open the team, then Delete team at the bottom of its page. The dialog lists what the team still has, and asks where it goes.

• With Move them to, its open, pending and on hold tickets, addresses, widgets and widget topics, and routing rules move to the other team. Moved tickets are assigned again in the new team.
• With No team, they lose their team, and the team’s routing rules are deleted.
• A private team that still has tickets must move them, and then all of them move, solved and closed included.

Ownership

A workspace has an owner. The owner can transfer ownership to another member, and can delete the workspace, which removes all of its data. Both actions require two-factor authentication and a recent sign-in.

Two-factor authentication

Every member can turn on time-based one-time passwords (TOTP) in their account settings, with any authenticator app. When you enable it, you receive single-use recovery codes. Store them safely: each one works once.

Sessions

Your account settings list your active sessions with their device and last use. Revoke any session to sign it out everywhere, including its live connections. Changing your password signs out your other sessions.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account from your account settings. Your data is removed, not hidden. If you are the only owner of a workspace with other members, transfer ownership first.

Related

• Routing
• Brands and widgets
• Connect a mailbox
• Triage and assignment