We have accounts that only have phone numbers associated with them. There is no way to create a user account without an email. Please create an option where we can create a new user only with a phone number.
Accepted
Option to Remove Email from User Profile
- Employee
Hi Stephanie,
Brett from the Zendesk Product team here. You can create a user without an email address. Email is an optional field. All the ways a user can be created are described here.
Hello Brett,
Thank you for explaining that. I should have clarified my question better. How do I remove an email from an existing user? Once an email has been added if I need to remove it since that email is no longer valid there is no way to delete it. The user requires an email to be added.
Right I know I can add a new email if I had one. I just was looking for a simpler solution to just remove an email when I need to. Basically, I have to create a new user with just a phone number and then merge the tickets to the new user.
the current workaround as mentioned above is very slow to action and confusing for all of our agents.
If an end user asks us to remove their email address from our system our agents are stuck as there is no "remove" option. We can add a fake email which then gives us the option but agents won't know to do this so it ends up waiting a lot of time wrestling with something that should be much simpler.
We're currently entering quite a lot of emails manually for our end users and on the odd occasion where we add the email to the wrong user we cannot remove the email address from this incorrect user so are forced to edit the email and then leave this invalid email on the end users profile then add the correct email address onto the correct end user.
We also have had a few requests from end users to remove their contact details when they either no longer wish for us to hold this information or when they are no longer a customer of ours. Trying to explain to customers that an email needs to be linked to their profile but "we'll edit it to something fake" is unprofessional.
- Employee
Thanks for clarifying, Stephanie. I agree, removing an email address from a user who only has the one email address should be possible, and that work around isn't ideal.
We have it in our backlog to remove this restriction and allow the last email on a user to be removed. We're focusing on other priorities right now, so a fix wouldn't likely come in the short to medium term. I'll update here when a fix is scheduled.
Wonderful! Thank you for the update, Brett!
You can already remove the 2nd and any subsequent emails from end users.
This request is for removing any email address, mainly the only email that has been added to an end user profile.
I hope that it is this that is being worked on :)
We are also struggling where we need to remove the only email address that the end users have on account. The work around is complex as well as lengthy for agents. Could we please push this request. Thank you!!
This provides us with a really really poor experience. What if we have two people who are married:
John & Jane Smith
We currently have Jane Smith in Zendesk with the email jsmith@xyz.com
We find out that this email belongs to John Smith, but he's not a user yet
We want to create a new user for John Smith and move the email from one user to another, but don't have Jane's email yet.
How do we handle it without creating a world of chaos for our agents?
This is a really awful constraint that should be prioritized, IMO.
Following
We need a way to remove an incorrect "Primary" email until we can connect with the customer to get the correct one.
- Employee
- Employee
Thanks @brett17, hey folks, James here from the Product Team.
As Brett mentioned in July, this item is not planned, and that has not changed.
Unfortunately, the removal of an email from the user record is not straightforward. Zendesk is designed around users having an email address, and it being unique. There are many downstream features which are built around this idea. Removing the primary email from a user changes that, and affects many features of the product. Which make this simple feature request, incredibly complex to implement.
The good news is, we are moving the direction that will enable this capability in the future. The bad news is that change is a journey, will take time, and is slower than our customers would like.
The best I can offer today is the assurance that we hear you and that we're doing our best to get there.
I hope this helps,
James
Hi James Hanley - do we have any time lines as to when there would be any update as its a real struggle to remove them.
- Employee
Hey @roshni11, no timelines yet. I would be open to hearing more about your use case however, if you're open to meeting, or elaborating here.
James
I want to push back on the notion that "Zendesk is designed around users having an email address, and it being unique." The New User pop-up/modal allows a user to be created without an email address, and all of our phone-only users have no email address, so it is clearly possible to have users without email addresses.
In any case, I'll lay out at least one more use case which is relevant to our line of business:
A fair percentage of our customers have a generic email address for their primary user which is based on that user's title (CEO@abc.xyz, e.g.). When that individual moves on to other pursuits, their replacement assumes the same email address but they are a distinct individual person.
If all I do is change the name of the user on the account, that leads to confusion on past tickets that were opened by the previous user. Also, the new user may have completely different needs than the old one.
My only workaround at this point is to change the old user to "CEONoMore@abc.xyz" or something similar and then suspend them (completely optional but still protocol) so that I can assign the email address to a new user.
This is annoying enough for me to have to deal with, I certainly can't expect to be able to train a large contingent of people in our company to use this protocol just because we can't remove a primary email address.
Hi!
I have the same issue.
I need to remove the email address I added by accident to a ticket with just a phone number.
I can't. I can remove the phone. Option to remove the email is grayed out.
This association can't be present. The email has to be removed from that user, so only the phone number is associated. Now when I write the email address Zendesk automatically sets the phone number to that ticket.
I can't set a fake address. I have to have just a number.
it is unacceptable to have no possibility to amend these data!
Thank you in advance for answer.
Following, this is problematic for our users who often have no email and/or shared emails, phones.
do we have any update on this as its getting difficult for us.
I had the same issue and found a different workaround. It's annoying, but it worked.
Step 1. Change the requester on the ticket temporarily; 2. Delete the user with the email issue; 3. Create a new user for that individual; 4. Switch the requester on that ticket back to the new user that you recreated.
Note: I have not tried this with users who have old tickets that are closed.
Also, make sure to write down details you will need to re-add when you recreate the user, e.g. org, phone number, etc.
Enter your E-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.
If you have a new valid email address for the user, you can add that first, make it the user's Primary email address, then delete the old defunct one.