The Employee self-service portal (ESSP) is a platform exclusive for support agents and internal stakeholders such as IT administrators, Partners, HR personnel, Compliance or regulatory teams and the like.
ESSP provides a self-learning platform to the Desk users by giving them ready access to:
Knowledge base articles
Zoho Desk users can access all articles including the 'agent only' articles that can be used as reference material while addressing customer and employee queries or grievances.
For example,
- Support agent can cross check the new pricing details and service-wise breakdown while responding to the customer's query.
- The system administrator can verify the software installation guideline before installing new software for a trainee.
- HR executive can read the new reimbursement policy to address frequent queries by employees.
Training and certification (powered by TrainerCentral)
TrainerCentral (an online training and certification platform) when integrated with Desk gives businesses a unified platform to conduct and monitor employee training activities. Businesses can create content for educational and training purposes and also monitor the completion status or create reports right from Desk. The target users can take up the course from their Desk account.
Training as self-service can be useful in many instances, such as:
- Employee or partner onboarding training can be conducted in Zoho Desk.
- Support trainees can take up professional and etiquette training at their pace.
- Mandatory training on Compliance and security regulations can be monitored time to time to ensure auditory compliance.
- Businesses can also create courses on various professional and non-professional topics for users to take up on need basis.
Availability
Permission Required- Users with the permission to access Support Channels can enable Employee Self-service Portal.
- Users can perform actions in the Training module as relevant to the provided permission.
Admins or agent profile with Support channel permission can enable the TrainerCentral integration. Once enabled, a portal will be created in TrainerCentral and admin access will be provided in TrainerCentral also.
Enabling Employee self-service portal in the Help Center
The admin can enable the Employee Self-Service Portal from the Help Center (Setup > Channels > Help Center).
The portal needs to be enabled for the respective department.
Once enabled, the
Employee sub tab is created under Help Center and the
Employee self-service portal icon (
) is displayed on the top menu.
This step automatically enables the Integration between Zoho Desk and TrainerCentral.
To enable employee portal
- Navigate to Setup > Help Center > Manage Portals.
- Toggle Employee Self-Service Portal.

- Enable the TrainerCentral integration to create the training materials.
- In the employee portal, toggle Training module if required.
Integration of TrainerCentral with Desk
TrainerCentral is an online training platform by Zoho that provides self-learning opportunities. It can be widely used for internal training, employee and partner onboarding, compliance training etc. by organizations.
Upon enabling the employee self-service portal by default the integration of TrainerCentral with Desk is completed, it allows:
- Desk users or trainers to create courses in the Training module within Desk interface.
- Agents or Desk users to take up courses and assignments via employee self-service portal instead of redirecting to other platforms.
This integration creates the Training module in Desk where the courses and the completion status can be viewed.
Training module under Modules and Tabs.
Understanding the Training module
The Training module in Zoho Desk is designed to help employees learn through self-paced courses that help them stay updated and relevant to the workforce. It serves as a centralized space where training materials can be created, organized, and assigned based on department.
The training module can include multiple course materials created for specific departments. Within each course, a series of lessons can be added to educate agents on particular products, features, or internal processes.
These lessons can include a variety of content types such as:
- Text-based instructions
- Videos and GIFs
- Images and diagrams
- Interactive elements like polls, quizzes, and assignments
The module permission can be set from the Setup > Customization > Modules and Fields. Based on which users can create, view, delete or update the courses.
- The agent profile with create and update permission can create training materials in the training module.
- The agent profile with view permission will only be able to view the created training materials within the training module.
The Training option gets enabled in the Employee self-service portal for the agents to take up courses within Zoho Desk.
Managing KB and Training modules
The employee self-service portal offers two modules.
The admins can select one of the following modules to be displayed in the employee portal.
- Knowledge base - The default option available in the employee portal for agents. All the articles published in the KB module will get listed for the employees to access within Zoho Desk. The articles created in categories of the agent's departments can be accessed from the Employee self-service portal - Knowledge base module.
- Training - This option gets enabled once the TrainerCentral option is enabled. On enabling this, the agents will be able to take up the training materials created under the Training tab within the Employee self-service portal.

Personalizing the Appearance of the ESSP
The appearance of the Employee portal can be customized by the admins to Default or Custom modes. This is not a user-specific appearance.
To select the portal appearance
- Navigate to Setup > Help Center > Manage Portals.
- In the Employee Self-Service Portal, select the appearance mode as Default or Custom.
- Click Update.

Creating courses in the Training module
Users with the create and update permission for the Training module can create and access training materials directly from the Training module. The courses are created via TrainerCentral.
To create a training material
- Navigate to the Training module and click the + option.
- Provide the course name, subtitle, and the description and click Create Course.

- In the TrainerCentral course creation page, enter the lesson title, description, assignments and change the settings as per your requirement.

- In the Settings tab, configure the course compliance metrics.

- Once you have completed with the required information, select the Publish tab and click Publish now.

- Click Publish from the confirmation window to make the course accessible to all users.

Note
- Clicking on a course from the Training module will take agents to the course edit page.
- A course can be unpublished at any point from the Publish tab and can be restored later as well.

- The edit, update, and delete options for the training materials are displayed based on the profile permission set for the training module.
- The Reports tab displays the name and email id of agents who have attempted the course, along with the date, course progress, and status. The learners data can also be recalculated or exported whenever required.

Working in the employee self-service portal
The agents can access the Employee self-service portal icon (
) in the top menu bar.
Note- The agents can click the Full Screen View (
) at the bottom left of the employee self-service portal to view the articles and training materials in full screen and access the articles in ease.
- The agents can click the Split Screen View (
) at the bottom left to view the articles and training materials in split view and not full screen.
Knowledge Base module
The knowledge base articles that are published are displayed in the Knowledge base tab of the employee self-service portal.
The agents can perform the following actions in the Employee self-service portal Kb articles:
- View the articles created in their department
- Follow the category
- Add a comment to the article
- Share the article
- Print
- Download article as PDF
Training module
The training materials that are created for the agents will be listed in the Training tab of the employee self-service portal.
The agents can perform the following actions in the Employee self-service portal training materials:
- Read the course
- Take up assignments
- Upload files and images as a part of the assignment
- View their course completion percentage
What's next in the Training tab?
As a part of our continuous enhancements, we will be supporting the following options in the upcoming releases.
- Notification to agents when a course is created in their department
- Success and failure rate of agents
- Course assignment
- List of completed courses
- In progress courses