The road to One TOPdesk user
User management should be simple, keeping maintenance low, and risk for security sensitive errors at a minimum. That's why we want to move towards one type of user in TOPdesk, combining your login for the SSP and the operator section. Read on to learn what you can expect, and how you can make this transition a positive experience.
In TOPdesk, operators and callers (SSP users) are registered as completely separate entities. And although both might represent the same person, currently there is no connection between the two in TOPdesk. For someone who has worked with TOPdesk for a long time, this might seem second nature. But the strict separation between SSP users and operators no longer reflects the daily reality for many TOPdesk customers. For example, someone working as an operator for the IT service desk might be a caller to the HR department via the SSP. We want to develop features that are available to TOPdesk users, regardless of the task or role they fulfil at that moment. This is why the One TOPdesk User project started.
To make that possible, we need a consistent way to represent all users in TOPdesk. In the images below, you can see the way we want to change how a user is represented in TOPdesk. Image 1 is the old representation: a user that is both a caller and an operator is represented by two separate cards, that the system does not know are related. Image 2 is the new representation: each user is represented by a person card, regardless of their role. If the user is an operator, the operator card is linked to the user's person card. The person card becomes the authoritative source of truth for the user's personal data, and the system knows which operator and person cards belong together.
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Image 1: Old conceptual representation of users in TOPdesk
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Image 2: New conceptual representation of users in TOPdesk
Overview of phases
As an administrator, you would probably prefer not to register the same personal data about one user on two different cards. It is double the amount of work and more error prone. Therefore, we want to eliminate the need for you to maintain registration of a single person on two different cards. We need to complete the following phases in order to get there:
Phase 1: Linking operator and person cards – completed
Step 1: Manual linking - completed
Step 2: Operator creation with a person card linked – completed
Step 3: Bulk linking - completed
important
Since February 2026, creating or changing links for existing operators is no longer possible. A link can only be set up when creating a new operator card.
Phase 2: All users have a person card - in progress – in progress
note
In this stage, person cards are created for operators that didn't have a person linked to them. This means that eventually every (human) operator has a linked person card. Some exceptions apply, such as API accounts. Any automatically generated person cards will have the new Caller checkbox deselected - read the chapter Hiding persons who aren't callers for more information.
Phase 3: Unification of identities - coming later - coming later
What will happen to my operator accounts without a corresponding human user?
We know that there are use cases where linking an operator to a person is not so straightforward, for example in the case of suppliers, admin or consultant accounts. In phase 2, all unlinked operator accounts will get an automatically generated person card, which will contain the same login information from the operator cards, if this login information is not already used by another person card. These person cards generated by the system will not receive any extra permissions and therefore will have no rights to the SSP either. So you shouldn't worry about these affecting your usual workflows; nevertheless, linking them is a required step in the journey toward the One TOPdesk User project.
important
You don't need to link your API accounts.
Since October 2025, you can create new API accounts without a linked person, while you can no longer link API accounts. Operator accounts that have a check on the API account checkbox have automatically been converted to an API account.
Until the end of July 2026, you could manually convert an operator card into an API account card. We removed this temporary feature by now.
tip
Read more about our recommended best practices in KI 18571 on MyTOPdesk.