Content last updated 2025-12-23

Management permission groups

Documentation on Zendesk management permission groups

This guide covers how to create, edit, and manage Zendesk help center management permission groups at GitLab. Administrators should review the Administrator tasks section.

Note: This is closely tied to User segments

Understanding management permission groups

What are management permission groups

As per Zendesk:

Management permissions define editing and publishing permissions for agents. You apply management permissions to an article to determine agent editing and publishing access for that article.

How we manage management permission groups

While Zendesk offers a full way to manage management permission groups via the UI, we turn to a more version controlled methodology. This allows for a set review process, the ability to perform rollbacks as needed, etc.

That being the case, we utilize sync repos.

Permission types

  • Edit: User segments that can create and edit article drafts
  • Publish: User segments that can publish articles (make them live)

Typically, a broader group has edit access while a smaller group has publish access for quality control.

Creating a management permission group as a non-admin

For the creation of a management permission group, please create a Feature Request issue (as it will require manual intervention by the Customer Support Operations team).

Editing a management permission group as a non-admin

For the modification of a management permission group, please create a Feature Request issue (as it will require manual intervention by the Customer Support Operations team).

Deleting a management permission group as a non-admin

To request the deactivation of a management permission group, please create a Feature Request issue (as it will require manual intervention by the Customer Support Operations team).

Current management permission groups

Zendesk Global

Permission group Edit permissions Publish permissions
Administrators Admins Admins
Support Team Admins, Support Editors Admins, Support Publishers

Zendesk US Government

Permission group Edit permissions Publish permissions
Administrators Admins Admins
Support Team Admins, Support Editors Admins, Support Publishers

Administrator tasks

Viewing management permission groups

To see the current management permission groups in Zendesk:

  1. Access the knowledge center
  2. Click the User permissions content icon on the left side:
  3. Click Management permissions on the left side:

Creating a management permission group

For the creation of a management permission group, you will need to create a MR in the sync repo. The exact changes being made will depend on the request itself. A starting template you can use would be:

---
name: 'Your name here'
previous_name: 'Your name here'
edit:
- User Segment Name 1
- User Segment Name 2
publish:
- User Segment Name 1
- User Segment Name 2
- User Segment Name 3

Note: The edit and publish attributes use user segment names. To find available user segments, see User segments documentation.

After a peer reviews and approves your MR, you can merge the MR. When the next deployment occurs, it will be synced to Zendesk.

Editing a management permission group

To edit a management permission group, you will need to create a MR in the sync repo. The exact changes being made will depend on the request itself.

After a peer reviews and approves your MR, you can merge the MR. When the next deployment occurs, it will be synced to Zendesk.

Changing the name of a management permission group

If you need to change the title of a management permission group, copy the current value into the previous_name attribute and then change the name attribute. This allows the sync to still locate the management permission group in question to update.

Deleting a management permission group

As the sync repos do not perform deletions, you will have to do 2 actions to delete a group.

First, you must delete the corresponding file from the sync repo. After a peer reviews and approves your MR, you can merge the MR.

After that is done, you then must delete it from Zendesk itself.

To delete a management permission group from Zendesk:

  1. Navigate to the Management permission groups page
  2. Click the three vertical dots to the right of the name of the management permission group you wish to delete
  3. Click Delete

Note: It does not ask for confirmation, so exercise caution.

Performing an exception deployment

To perform an exception deployment for management permission groups, navigate to the management permission groups sync project in question, go to the scheduled pipelines page, and click the play button for the sync item. This will trigger a sync job for the management permission groups.

Common issues and troubleshooting

Not seeing management permission group changes after a merge

As management permission groups follow the Standard deployment type, they would only be deployed during a normal deployment cycle (or when an exception deployment has been done)

Last modified February 12, 2026: Remove aliases from frontmatter (f895738e)