How to remove users from a group in Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk's Help Center API exposes two complementary DELETE endpoints that let you remove one or more users from a group — either by targeting the group directly or by targeting the user's group memberships.

Why this matters

When you restructure your Help Center community or offboard portal users, stale group memberships can expose content to the wrong audience or skew community moderation. Knowing which endpoint to call — and when — keeps your user-group relationships clean without accidentally deleting the group itself. This is especially relevant for teams managing large Help Centers programmatically via the Zoho Desk API.

> Beam Help is an independent expert support service for Zoho — not official Zoho support.

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Step-by-step

There are two supported approaches. Choose the one that fits your workflow.

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Approach A — Remove multiple users from a specific group

Step 1. Identify your helpcenterid and the groupid of the group you want to modify. Both values are available from your Help Center admin panel or from a prior API list call. ^[1]

Step 2. Send a DELETE request to the following endpoint, passing any required user identifiers in the p (payload/parameters) dictionary: ^[1]

DELETE /api/v1/helpcenter/{helpcenter_id}/groups/{group_id}/users

Step 3. In Python, the call looks like this — substitute your real IDs before running: ^[1]

result = desk_api.remove_users_from_group(
    helpcenter_id="your_helpcenter_id",
    group_id="your_group_id",
    p={"userIds": ["user_id_1", "user_id_2"]}  # pass target user IDs here
)

A successful response confirms the users have been disassociated from that group. ^[1]

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Approach B — Remove a single user from all their groups at once

Step 1. Identify your helpcenterid and the userid of the specific portal user you want to ungroup. ^[2]

Step 2. Send a DELETE request to the user-centric endpoint: ^[2]

DELETE /api/v1/helpcenter/{helpcenter_id}/users/{user_id}/groups

Step 3. In Python, the equivalent call is: ^[2]

result = desk_api.remove_user_from_groups(
    helpcenter_id="your_helpcenter_id",
    user_id="target_user_id",
    p={}  # pass optional filters if needed
)

This removes the specified user from every group they belong to within that Help Center in a single request. ^[2]

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Authentication and scopes

Step 4. Ensure your OAuth token includes the correct Zoho Desk scopes before making either call. At minimum, your token should carry Desk.settings.DELETE (or Desk.settings.ALL) to authorise group membership changes. ^[3]

Desk.settings.ALL
Desk.settings.DELETE

If your token was issued with only READ or WRITE scopes, the API will reject the DELETE request. ^[3]

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Common pitfalls

• Confusing "remove users from group" with "delete the group" — The endpoint DELETE /api/v1/helpcenter/{helpcenterid}/groups/{groupid} deletes the entire group, not just its members. ^[5] Always double-check you are calling the /users sub-resource, not the group root.
• Wrong product endpoint — There is a separate CRM endpoint DELETE /settings/usergroups/{ugid} for Zoho CRM user groups. ^[4] That endpoint has no effect on Zoho Desk Help Center groups; do not mix them up.
• Missing orgid — The Zoho Desk API client requires a valid orgid (your Desk organisation ID) to route requests correctly. If this value is absent, the client may attempt auto-discovery on the first call, which can delay or fail your request. ^[8] Confirm org_id is stored and passed to the client before running bulk operations.
• Passing an empty payload — For Approach A, if the p dictionary does not include the target user IDs, the API may return an error or silently do nothing. Always populate the user identifier list explicitly. ^[1]

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What to check

• Verify the group membership after the call by fetching the group's user list and confirming the removed users no longer appear.
• Confirm your OAuth scopes include Desk.settings.DELETE or Desk.settings.ALL — a 403 Forbidden response almost always points to a missing scope. ^[3]
• Ensure you targeted the right endpoint — check that your request URL contains /groups/{groupid}/users (Approach A) or /users/{userid}/groups (Approach B), and not the bare /groups/{group_id} path that would delete the group entirely. ^[1][2][5]