How to add people and set roles

Settings › Members holds the roster of everyone in the workspace and, below it, the pending invites. This is where people arrive, where they get their departments, and where their access ends.

Before you start

Settings sits at the foot of the menu, and only admins see it.

Inviting, changing roles, assigning departments and deactivating each have their own row in Settings › Permissions: Invite members, Change member roles, Assign members to departments and Deactivate members. All four start at admin. See How to set who can do what.

How do you invite somebody?

Press Invite member, fill in the dialog, and then tell the person to sign in.

1. Press Invite member. The dialog says it will "Reserve a seat for a teammate by email."
2. Type their Email.
3. Under Role, choose Member (the default) or Admin.
4. Under Departments, tick each department they join, and turn on the Lead switch beside any department they should lead.
5. Press Create invite.

The Lead switch only counts for a department that is also ticked. If the dialog shows "No departments yet.", create them first in How to set up departments.

Does the invite reach them by email?

No. Tideswell reserves the seat and shows "Invite created." Send the person this workspace's address yourself, by chat or email, and tell them to sign in with the invited email.

They must sign in with exactly the address you typed. The first sign-in code they enter picks up the invite and gives them the role and departments you chose, so they can work straight away.

An invite lasts 14 days. Each email can have one pending invite at a time, and a second one is refused with "A pending invite already exists for that email."

How do you cancel an invite?

Find it under Pending invites, below the roster, and press Revoke.

Each pending invite shows the email, the role, the date it expires and how many departments it includes. Revoking is also how you correct an invite with the wrong role or departments: revoke it, then invite the same email again.

What are the ranks?

Member, lead and admin.

Member and Admin are the two roles you pick when you invite. Admin opens the whole Settings area.

Lead is not a role you pick. Somebody becomes a lead when the Lead switch is on for a department, and lead sits between member and admin. A lead of one department is a plain member in the others, which How to work out who can do what in your workspace explains.

The owner is whoever created the workspace. They always count as an admin.

How do you change somebody's role or departments?

For the role, pick member or admin from the dropdown in their Role column and press Apply.

For departments, open the Departments button in their row. It shows how many they belong to, for example Departments (2). Each department has its own row with a tick box, a Lead switch and an Apply button, so press Apply on each row you change.

Check the Lead switch before you press Apply on somebody who already leads that team. The tick and the switch are saved together, so applying a ticked row with the switch off removes their lead.

How do you remove somebody's access?

Press Deactivate at the end of their row and confirm. The confirmation reads, for example, "Deactivate Priya Raman? They lose access immediately."

Their row stays on the roster, dimmed, with a left badge. Deactivating keeps their account and everything they wrote; it removes their access to this workspace only.

Before you deactivate somebody, check two things:

• Workflows they own. A workflow acts with its owner's access, so a workflow owned by a deactivated person fails each time it runs. See What are workflows?.
• Wholesale accounts that name them as Rep. The Rep shows as a dash once they are deactivated, so pick a new one on each account. See How to add an account and set payment terms.

The owner's row has no Deactivate button.

How do you bring a deactivated person back?

Invite their email again with Invite member. When they sign in with that address, their membership becomes active again and their row is no longer dimmed.

They keep the role and departments they had before they left, as well as what the new invite gives them. Check their row on the roster afterwards, and change their role or departments if anything needs it.

What should most people be?

Members, in the departments they work in, with a lead for each team.

Keep admins to a few people, because admin is what opens Settings.

Most requests to be made admin are really for one action outside Settings, such as approving purchase orders. Check that action's row in Settings › Permissions first: making the person a lead of their department may be enough. See How to set who can do what.

How do you read the roster?

The roster has four columns, Member, Email, Role and Departments, with fifty people to a page.

Click Member, Email or Role to sort by it. Drag a column heading left or right to change the column order; your order is saved to your account and follows you to any computer.

The Member column shows a person's photo, name and handle. Somebody with no name set shows their handle, or a dash if they have neither, and their email is always in the Email column.

Where do supplier reps go?

A supplier's rep is invited from that supplier's page, not from here, and sees only that supplier's purchase orders. See How to let a supplier's rep confirm their orders.