If you were on the phone or corresponded over email with a support agent, the agent sent this email request directly to you (the customer full administrator) to request temporary access to your organization:

This temporary access allows them to fix configuration issues, such as single sign-on (SSO) authentication issues.

The email request contains the following information:

  • The name of the support agent who requested access to your organization

  • A Grant Access button

Support Agents

The support agent (or Help Desk agent) who temporarily access your organization has one of the following roles:

  • Partner who manages your organization and provides support

  • Administrators in a partner organization who provide support to customer organizations

  • Cisco TAC engineer

Help Desk is the support tool that agents use to troubleshoot configuration on a customer organization.

Grant Access or Deny Access

After you click Grant Access from the email, your browser opens. From there, you can decide to either grant or deny access to the agent. If you don't choose an option, the access request times out in 1 hour.

Only grant access if you've been in contact with the support agent. If this request is unexpected, click Reject and open a support case to report this request.

What the Agent Has Access To

When you grant access to the support agent, you'll see this screen in your browser:

The agent is also notified. For a total of 1 hour (starting from when you approved the access request), the agent is given temporary full administrator privileges and can open your organization view in Control Hub during this timeframe. Agents access your organization only for the purposes of troubleshooting and support. When the 1-hour time period passes, the agent can no longer access your organization or make any changes.

Read-Only Access

Read-only access is different than temporary full admin access. If you enable read-only access, Cisco support can access your organization and view its settings, but support cannot make any changes to your organization. In Control Hub, you can go to Settings, scroll to Support Access, and check or uncheck Allow Cisco Support read-only access to your organization.

Whether you allow or deny read-only access, you can still grant temporary full admin access to a support agent.