This feature is available on-demand currently. Please write to support@freshdesk.com to get it enabled for your account.


Support Admins might want to free up agent licenses now and then with agents moving in and out of the system. While removing agents and repurposing licenses makes sense, it is essential and only honorable to retain all their contributions independently. This particularly comes in handy during business and company audits.


Going forward, with the ‘Deactivate’ agent option, Admins will be able to deactivate an agent, thus freeing up an agent seat while gracefully retaining their contributions. Admins can deactivate any type of agent - occasional, full-time, and collaborators.


A quick guide to deactivating an agent:

  • Login to Freshdesk as an Admin

  • Go to Admin > Agents

  • Click on the ‘more’ icon against an agent and select deactivate from the dropdown



  • You will see a pop-up with information about the agent’s access changes



  • Hit ‘Yes, deactivate’ if you would like to confirm deactivation

  • And you’re done!


Once the agent is deactivated, they will move to the ‘Deactivated agents’ list - 



  • You can reactivate them as per need or delete them (convert to a contact) from this list


  • Once reactivated, the agent will get an ‘activation email’ to activate their access

  • When you reactivate, the association of assigned tickets and authored solution articles will continue


What happens when you deactivate an agent?

Access:

  • The agent will not be able to log in to Freshdesk; they will see an error message: ‘You’re not allowed to access this page’.
  • If this agent is part of multiple accounts in the same org with the same email address, they will continue to access other accounts except the one they’re deactivated in.


Tickets:

  • No tickets can be assigned to them once they are deactivated. 
  • All tickets with the SLA timer running, like tickets in the ‘Open’ or ‘Pending’ queue assigned to this agent, will go to the unassigned queue.
  • All ‘Resolved’ and ‘Closed’ tickets will remain assigned to this agent until they are reopened.


Configuration:

  • You will continue to be able to filter by this deactivated agent.
  • You will be able to search the helpdesk globally with this agent’s information.
  • The agent will be removed from all account-level configurations except ‘Automations’ and ‘Scenario Automations’ - you will have to manually remove the agent from any automation rules and scenarios you’ve configured.
  • Automation rules:
    • If ‘assign to this agent’ is the only action in the rule, then the rule will not run.
    • If there are multiple actions in the rule, the ‘Assign to agent’ action alone will automatically be skipped.
  • After deactivating a full-time agent A and assigning that agent license to another agent B, if you try to reactivate agent A again, they will become an occasional agent.


Analytics and Reporting:

  • All reporting data with respect to this agent’s contribution will remain.
  • All reports created by this agent will be moved to Trash, and all schedules created by the agent will be deleted permanently.