This guide is for full agents and team leads who route work to light agents: Ayin caregivers who work tickets in Zendesk but cannot reply to external customers. It covers how to assign a ticket to a light agent, how to see what they are working, and how the reply desk works when a light agent needs you to send a customer reply.
Light Agent is a field, not the Assignee
A light agent cannot be the ticket Assignee. Instead, the ticket's Light Agent field (in the ticket sidebar) records which light agent is working it. The Assignee field is not changed by any of the steps below; a ticket can carry both a full-agent Assignee and a Light Agent.
The Light Agent field is set by macros, never typed. That is also how light agents set it for themselves.
Assign a ticket to a light agent
- Open the ticket and click Apply macro at the bottom of the reply area.
- Choose Light Agent - Assign, then the group, then the person.
- Submit the ticket (any submit option).
On submission, Zendesk:
- moves the ticket into the chosen group,
- sets the Light Agent field to that person,
- emails them (Zendesk ticket #<number> assigned to you: <subject>, from Ayin Support),
- adds them as a follower, so they receive later updates.
The macro inserts an internal note with a human-readable line and two code lines. Leave the code lines as they are; you can add your own note above or below them. You can assign into any group that appears in the menu, including groups you are not a member of.
Only light agents appear in the menu, listed under each group they belong to. The menu is rebuilt automatically overnight from group membership, so a new light agent appears the next morning and a departed one disappears. To add or remove someone, change their Zendesk role or group through the normal IT request; do not ask for the menu to be edited by hand.
Reassign, or take it back
- To move the work to a different light agent, apply Light Agent - Assign again with the new name. The field changes, the new person is notified, and the previous person stays a follower.
- To clear the Light Agent, apply Light Agent - Unassign. The ticket leaves the light-agent queue views; the Assignee and group are unchanged.
Apply one Light Agent macro per submit.
See what light agents are working
Two shared views exist for every group that has light agents:
- <Group> - Light agent queue — every open ticket in the group with a Light Agent set, grouped by person, most recently updated first. Use it to balance work and to spot stale tickets. Tickets with no Light Agent are not in it; they are in the group's usual views.
- <Group> - Ready for reply — the reply desk, below.
Both views are visible to the group's members. The Light Agent field can also be used as a condition or column in any view, and in ticket search.
Managers have the Light Agent Operations dashboard in Explore for assignments, solves, backlog and reply-desk timing by person and by department.
The reply desk: sending a light agent's drafted reply
Light agents never send public replies. When a customer needs an answer, the light agent writes it as an internal note and applies Light Agent - Ready for reply, which flags the ticket and lists it in <Group> - Ready for reply, oldest first.
Someone on your team watches that view. For each ticket:
- Open it and read the most recent internal note; that is the drafted answer.
- Send it as a public reply, editing as needed, and set the status as you normally would.
The flag clears automatically the moment a full agent posts a public reply. It does not clear on an internal note, or when the requester writes in. If a ticket turns out not to need a reply, remove the la_ready tag from the ticket's Tags field by hand.
Each department decides who watches its Ready for reply view and how often.
Do not use the Light Agent status macros yourself
Light Agent - Solved / Pending / On-hold exist so that light agents can change status. As a full agent, set the status with the submit button as usual. The macros also tag the ticket as light-agent work, which would miscount it in the dashboard.
What changed on <cutover date>
- The per-department Assign > Name macros (Claims, Customer Service) are retired; use Light Agent - Assign > Group > Name for every department.
- The CIM Light Agent and PR/MAP Agent fields are retired and removed from the forms. Views and Explore reports built on them stop working; use the Light Agent field and the Light Agent Operations dashboard. Values on old tickets are kept.
- Light agents now receive an assignment email and follow their tickets, and each has a personal My tickets - Light Agent view, so you no longer need to tell them a ticket is theirs.
- CIM Category macros are unchanged.