How to set who can do what

Settings › Permissions lists one row per action, under the line "The minimum role required for each action. Changes apply immediately." Each row has a choice in three columns, admin, lead and member, and you pick the lowest rank allowed to do that thing.

Before you start

Settings is for admins only, so this page is an admin's job. See What is workspace admin?.

How does it work?

Click the rank you want on a row and it saves straight away. There is no Save button: the row shows Saving… for a moment and the change is live for everybody.

• member means everybody in the workspace can.
• lead means department leads, plus admins. For a task or project, it has to be a lead of the department that work belongs to.
• admin means admins only, plus the workspace owner.

Somebody becomes a lead through the Lead switch on Settings › Members, covered in How to add people and set roles.

What is in the list?

A row for each action Tideswell can check, each named for what it lets a person do, such as Create tasks, Approve purchase orders or View suppliers. There are also four rows for every Object your team has built.

An Object's rows are written in your own words: Repairs · View, Repairs · Create, Repairs · Update and Repairs · Archive. A new Object starts with View, Create and Update at member and Archive at lead. See How to set who can see and edit an Object.

The page is one long list. Your browser's Find is the quickest way to a particular row.

Which rows cover which part of Tideswell?

The rows fall into these groups. The rank in brackets is where each row starts in a new workspace.

Tasks

• Create tasks, Edit tasks, Complete tasks and Assign tasks (member).
• Delete other people's tasks and comments (lead). Anyone can delete their own.
• Mark tasks as blocked by other tasks (member) and Set tasks to repeat (lead).
• Leave comments and Attach Shopify products to tasks and documents (member).

Projects and planning

• Create projects and Edit, archive and delete projects (lead).
• Create and edit campaigns and cycles (admin) and Create, edit and delete milestones (lead).
• Add planned items to projects (member) and Edit or remove anyone's planned items (lead).

Documents, chat and customers

• Create documents and Edit documents (member), and Delete documents (lead).
• Create channels (admin) and Create outreach (member).
• View customers and View orders (lead).

Selling

• See sales, inventory, reports and the daily brief, which opens Selling › Analytics, Selling › Inventory, Selling › Demand, Selling › Reports, Buying › Data feeds, the daily brief and a customer's order history (lead).
• Change stock, receiving and store settings (lead).
• View products, View product variants and View inventory (lead).
• View special orders, Create special orders and Edit special orders (member).
• Record payments on special orders and write off balances (lead).
• View stock counts and Scan items into stock counts (member).
• Start stock counts and Approve stock counts and post them to Shopify (lead).

Buying

• View purchase orders and the buying calendar and Edit purchase orders and the buying calendar (lead).
• Approve purchase orders (lead).
• View production orders, Create production orders and Edit production orders (member).
• View suppliers, Edit suppliers, View bills and Edit bills (lead).
• Invite a supplier or buyer and Remove a supplier or buyer's access (lead), and See who outside the company has access (member).

Wholesale

• View wholesale orders, Edit wholesale orders, View wholesale invoices, Edit wholesale invoices, View wholesale accounts and Edit wholesale accounts (lead).

The Agent, the Brain and automations

• Use the agent (member).
• See what the Brain has noticed and Ask the Brain to suggest a change (member).
• Dismiss or turn down the Brain's suggestions (lead).
• Record decisions and View decisions (lead).
• Manage automations (admin), View workflows (member), and Build and edit workflows and Publish workflows (admin).

The workspace

• Rename organization, Create departments, Edit departments, Archive departments, Permanently delete departments, Invite members, Change member roles, Assign members to departments, Deactivate members, Edit these permissions, Manage integrations, Define Objects, Configure modules and View the audit log (admin).

Which rows are worth changing?

The ones people ask about, and they are usually these.

Create projects starts at lead and often wants to be member in a small team. Create channels starts at admin, and a team that opens channels for every launch may want it at lead.

Approve purchase orders decides who can sign off spending, so set it deliberately. Nobody can approve their own request, whatever this row says, as How to route a purchase order for approval explains.

See sales, inventory, reports and the daily brief starts at lead, so a member does not see Selling › Analytics until you lower it. View suppliers, View customers and View bills are the rows to keep at lead when part of the team should not see your suppliers, your customers or what you owe. View bills is also what puts Buying › Bills in somebody's menu.

Approve stock counts and post them to Shopify changes the stock Shopify holds, so set it deliberately. When the workspace asks for a second sign-off, neither the person who asked nor the person who started the count can sign it, as How to count your stock explains.

Use the agent starts at member. Raise it if only some people should ask the Agent questions, as What is the Agent? describes.

Leave the rest alone until something is wrong. The defaults were chosen to work.

Why did lowering a row not let somebody into Settings?

Because Settings is for admins only, whatever the rows say. Rows for work that happens on a Settings screen, such as Create departments or Invite members, only ever reach admins.

To let somebody work in Settings, make them an admin on Settings › Members. Keep those rows at admin so the page reads the way the workspace works.

Why can I not change the Edit these permissions row?

Because Edit these permissions is locked to admin. Its lead and member buttons are greyed out, with the tooltip "Locked to admin to prevent lockout".

That is the safety catch that stops a workspace from locking itself out of its own settings.

Why does a row say archived?

Because archiving one of your own Objects keeps its four rows, marked (archived), as in Repairs (archived) · View. Restoring the Object brings back the access it had.

Those rows have no effect while the Object is archived. See How to rename, reorder or retire an Object.

How do you work out why somebody cannot do something?

Start with How to work out who can do what in your workspace rather than this page. It walks the three layers in order: the module, the permission, and the department the record belongs to.

Most reports that look like a permission problem are department scope. Dana leads Marketing, so a lead control is live for her on a Marketing task and not on a Warehouse one. The fix is her departments on Settings › Members, not a row here.

Why someone cannot get in or cannot edit is the step-by-step version.