Multiple roles, what does that mean?

Why you might give one person more than one role, and how their permissions add up.

When you assign roles to a member, you can tick more than one box. That seems redundant ("isn't one role enough?"), but it's how you build flexible access without having to author a giant custom role for every situation.

How permissions stack

A member's effective permissions are the sum (technical term: bitwise OR) of every role they hold. If any role grants a permission, the member has it. Roles never take permissions away from each other.

Tina is a Member (so she can do her own tasks) and a Developer (so she can use API keys). She can do both, neither role removes anything from the other.

When this is useful

• Cross-functional people, Your office manager is also a sales lead? Give them Member + Manager.
• Temporary elevation, Want someone to act as Admin for a week? Add Admin alongside their normal role; remove it when the week is up.
• Composable custom roles, Build small focused roles (e.g. Reports Viewer, Invoice Sender, Lead Owner) and mix them on each member, instead of authoring one giant role per person.

Adding or removing a role

1. Open Dashboard → Members.
2. Click the pencil icon next to the member (or open their detail page and click Manage Roles).
3. The dialog shows every role with a checkbox. The roles they currently have are ticked.
4. Tick or untick, order doesn't matter. Save.

The change takes effect the next time the member loads a page.

Things to know

• Owner is special. It cannot be ticked or unticked from this dialog, ownership transfers go through a separate flow to prevent accidents.
• Removing the last role leaves the member with no permissions. They can still sign in but won't see any features. That's a useful "soft suspend", toggle a role back on later to restore access.
• You can only assign roles you have. If a role grants a permission you don't hold, the row is greyed out. Ask an Owner or Admin to do it.