---
title: How to add people and set roles
url: https://tideswell.xyz/docs/workspace-admin/members-and-roles
description: Invite a teammate into the departments they belong to, set them as member or admin, and make them a department lead.
---
> Documentation index: fetch https://tideswell.xyz/llms.txt to discover every page before exploring further.
# How to add people and set roles
**Settings › Members** holds the roster and the pending invites. This is where people arrive,
where they get their departments, and where their access ends.
## Before you start [#before-you-start]
The whole Settings area is admin-only, and inviting, changing roles and assigning departments
each have their own permission that starts at admin.
## How do you invite somebody? [#how-do-you-invite-somebody]
**Invite member**, then type their email. Choose whether they arrive as a **Member** or an
**Admin**, tick which departments they join, and flip the **Lead** switch for any department they
should lead.
Do the departments now rather than later. A person invited into the right teams can work the
moment they sign in, and a person invited with none has to come back and ask.
**Then send them the link yourself.** Tideswell reserves the seat rather than emailing them, and
the confirmation tells you to have them sign in at your workspace's address with the invited
email. That step is easy to forget and is the usual reason a new starter is sitting waiting.
They have to sign in with **exactly** that email address. Signing in with a personal address
instead does not pick up the invite, which is the second most common new-starter problem.
An invite lasts 14 days, and there can be one pending invite per email at a time.
## What are the three ranks? [#what-are-the-three-ranks]
**Member**, **lead** and **admin**.
**Member** and **Admin** are what you pick from the dropdown. Admin unlocks the whole Settings
area.
**Lead** is not in that dropdown. Somebody becomes a lead by having the **Lead** switch turned on
for a department, and lead sits between member and admin for permissions.
The **owner** is whoever created the workspace. They always count as an admin and can never be
deactivated.
## How do you change somebody's role or departments? [#how-do-you-change-somebodys-role-or-departments]
Pick a role from their dropdown and press **Apply**. For departments, open their **Departments**
dropdown, tick the ones they belong to, set the **Lead** switch per department, and press
**Apply** for each.
One behaviour to watch: the department tick and the **Lead** switch always travel together.
Submitting a department row with Lead switched off **demotes** an existing lead of that
department. Check the switch before you press Apply on somebody who already leads a team.
## How do you remove somebody's access? [#how-do-you-remove-somebodys-access]
**Deactivate** them. The confirmation warns that they lose access immediately, including live
chat connections.
**Read that confirmation properly.** There is no reactivate button on this screen: a deactivated
person shows greyed out with a status badge, and restoring them is not something the roster does.
Deactivating keeps their account and their history. It removes their access to this workspace.
Before you deactivate somebody, check two things. Whether they own any workflows, since every
action a workflow takes uses its owner's access, per