How to add new Agents to osTicket

With osTicket deployed, one of the first things you’ll want to do is add Agents. Find out what agents are and how to add them.

I recently demonstrated how to deploy the open-source osTicket trouble ticket system. This platform offers all the features you’ll need for a help desk solution, with an at-a-glance dashboard, teams, roles, departments, emails, system logs, ticket replies, internal notes, status, signatures, tasks, knowledge bases and more.

Soon after you deploy osTicket, one of the first tasks you’ll need to take care of is adding agents. An osTicket agent is anyone that is given access to the help desk with the intent to resolve and respond to tickets. In other words, agents are your field and remote support technicians or anyone charged with solving the issues that are submitted to the osTicket system. Agents are a crucial aspect of osTicket.

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Without adding agents, you’ll be doing more work than you can imagine. Consider this: You have osTicket deployed and have not added any agents. Any ticket that is submitted will be viewed by the admin alone, who will then have to manually assign tickets via another system, such as email. That’s not a smart workflow. Given osTicket gives you everything necessary to make the journey smooth, you should take advantage.

In the name of working smarter, not harder, let’s find out how easy it is to add agents to your osTicket deployment.

What you’ll need to add an Agent to osTicket

To add agents to osTicket you’ll need a running instance of the platform and an osTicket user with admin rights. That’s it: Let’s add some Agents.

How to add your first osTicket Agent

Log into osTicket with your admin user and then click Admin Panel in the top right corner of the main window (Figure A).

Figure A

From the Admin Panel, click the Agents tab (Figure B).

Figure B

In the Agent section, you should see one existing Agent, which is your admin user. From there, click Add New Agent (Figure C).

Figure C

Fill out the details for the new agent in the resulting window (Figure D).

Figure D

After filling in the Account details, make sure to select Access and configure the new agent’s Primary Department and role. If necessary, you can also add Extended Access for the agent (Figure E).

Figure E

You can also customize the following for the new Agent:

• Permissions: Give the Agent permissions for Users, Organizations, Knowledgebase and Miscellaneous.
• Teams: Assign the new Agent to a Team.

Once you’ve configured the Agent to meet your specifications, click Create. Once created, the new Agent will receive an email to the address you configured, where they can verify the account, set a password and log in.

A fundamental necessity

Although adding Agents isn’t fundamental to getting osTicket up and running, they are a must for getting the most out of your help desk system. Without agents, you can’t assign tickets or allow any teams to function as they should. Once you get all of your Agents added, you’ll find osTicket to be one of the more user-friendly help desk systems on the market.

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