Welcome to Labstep! You've now created your Organisation (or just joined one) and taken the first step on your Labstep journey. In this article, we'll explain how to differentiate between organisation and workspace roles and what each means.

In this section:

Organisation roles are an important aspect of managing your team and ensuring that everyone has the appropriate level of access and responsibility within your organisation. We will discuss the different roles available and their respective permissions.

The Admin role is the highest level of access within an organisation. Admins have full control over all aspects of the organisation, including managing members, creating and deleting workspaces, managing billing, and changing organisation settings. They also have the ability to add and remove other admins.

Admins are typically the organisation's founders or owners or individuals who have been given full trust and responsibility by the organisation's leadership to manage it. You can see who the organisation's admins are in the Users tab of your Organisation.

The Member role is the standard role within an organisation. Members can join any open workspace within the organisation but can only access Invite-only workspaces that they have been added to explicitly. They can create new workspaces if Admins allow them to. They can also assign roles within the workspaces they own.

Members are typically employees or team members who are actively working on projects within the organisation.

The Guest role is the most limited role within an organisation. Guests have access to specific projects within the organisation, as determined by the workspace's owner or admin. Guests can't see the list of workspaces or users within an organisation or join open workspaces. They can only see the specific workspaces they have been granted access to and only have the specific permissions they are granted within that workspace.

Guests are typically external collaborators, such as clients or contractors, who need limited access to specific projects within the organisation. Users with a Guest role still count towards your billing. If you are concerned about this, please contact us at info@labstep.com or reach out to your account manager.

In a workspace, there are different roles that users can have. These roles determine the level of access and permissions that a user has within the workspace. Understanding these roles is important for managing your workspace effectively.

The Owner is the user with full control over the workspace. They can add or remove members, change roles, and make changes to the workspace settings.

The owner also has access to all the content, including uploaded files, within the workspace and can edit or delete them as needed. A workspace can have multiple owners.

If you create a workspace, you'll automatically be appointed as its owner.

The Editor has the second-highest level of access to a workspace. Editors can create, edit, and delete content within the workspace. However, they cannot add or remove members or make changes to the workspace settings. This role is ideal for team members who need to collaborate and contribute to the workspace but do not need full control over it.

To assign the editor role to a user, the owner can go to the workspace settings and click on the "Members" tab. From there, they can select the user and change their role to "Editor".

It is important to note that the owner can also assign the editor role to multiple users, allowing for a collaborative workspace environment.

The Viewer role is the lowest level of access given to a user within a workspace. This role is typically given to users who need access to view certain information or content but do not require the ability to make changes or edits.

As a viewer, you will have limited permissions within the workspace. This means that you will not be able to create, edit, or delete any content. However, you will still be able to view and access all content within the workspace.

A custom role is an admin-defined role that can be created in addition to the default roles provided by Labstep. This allows for more flexibility in managing user permissions and access levels.

Once the custom role has been created, it can be assigned to users in the "Members" section of the "Workspace Settings" tab. Overall allowing for more granular control over user permissions and access.

Custom roles can also be edited or deleted at any time by Admins by clicking on the vertical ellipsis next to the role in the "Roles & Permissions" tab. For more information on managing roles and permissions, please refer to our article on Custom Roles & Permissions 101.

In conclusion, user permissions are mainly controlled by the workspaces they are part of and their role within each workspace. When it comes to permissions relating to content such as experiments, protocols, inventory, and such, this is always controlled on a per workspace level by the workspace role assigned to the user.

The Organisation Role is purely for managing the overall organisation and its members. The organisation role does not define what permissions a user can have at the workspace level. However, as an Admin, you can always manage and assign workspace roles for individual users when they're added to a workspace.

This lesson is part of the "Labstep 101: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started" course. View all lessons here.