Roles & permissions

Leveraging user roles and permissions in your email workflow

BEE Pro helps you improve your email creation workflow by letting you add multiple users - colleagues, clients, consultants, etc. - and configure what they can and cannot do.

For example, how can you prevent a junior editor from modifying the dynamic links and legal language in an email footer? And what if you didn't want a new employee to have access to important projects or clients? That's exactly the kind of thing that roles & permissions help you accomplish in BEE Pro.

• Setting different access levels for your users
• Assigning roles to existing users
• Assigning roles to new users
• Understanding user roles
• Locking email content, template layout, or both

Setting different access levels for your users

Roles determine what users can or cannot do in BEE Pro.

To assign roles to your users, simply visit the "Manage users" section by selecting that link in the top-right account menu.

The ROLE column indicates the role that has been assigned to that user. You can do so when you create a new user, or by editing an existing user. 

If you don't see the "Role" column, refresh your browser or clear your browser's cache.

Assigning roles to existing users

If you already invited colleagues or clients to collaborate with you in BEE Pro, before this feature was introduced or while using the Freelance plan, their role will be Admin by default. To change their role just hover the mouse over their current role and click on the edit icon that will be displayed.

A drop-down menu will appear and allow you to select a different role:

Assigning roles to new users 

When you invite new collaborators, you can now assign the desired role before they access your BEE Pro account:

Understanding the different ROLES

Each role has a default set of permissions that define what they can or cannot do in BEE Pro.

Summary of roles

Owner
A special Admin user that can manage the BEE Pro subscription. It's the only user that can purchase items (upgrade plan, add users, activate a connector, etc.).

Admin
Has access to all the features and can create and manage brands in an Agency plan.
Usually, this is a person that is in charge of overall team management.

Manager
Cannot create a brand or decide who has access to it, but has all the capabilities to manage the message creation workflow inside a brand, including template management and content locking.

Editor
Typically someone that creates, edits, and export messages. 

Contributor
Someone that will sporadically contribute to content editing (e.g., text optimization).

Permissions details

Permission	Owner	Admin	Manager	Editor	Contributor
View/edit billing information
Cancel the subscription
Add/edit/remove users
Add/remove brands
Edit brand assignments
Add/copy/remove templates
Manage brand settings
Create/edit/remove projects
Lock contents / edit locked contents
Add/copy/move/remove messages
Export/download messages
Edit message content
Edit message settings (name, description, tags, etc.)

Important: review existing users' role

All users that were created in your BEE Pro account before this feature went live were assigned the Admin role in order not to disrupt their ability to work (i.e., they can do the same things that they were able to do before this feature went live). Remember to change their role to one of the other available roles if needed.

Locking email content, template layout, or both

One of the most powerful features associated with user roles is the ability for some users to lock content that other users cannot edit. Users with a Manager role or above can lock entire rows or individual content blocks.

• When a row is locked, all content within that row is also locked by default.
• Individual content blocks can be blocked without blocking the entire row.
• Individual content blocks can be unlocked withing a locked row.

In this third scenario, by unlocking individual content elements within a locked row, users with a Manager role or above can lock the layout of that section of the email (e.g. a header or footer), while still allowing for the editing of text, images. etc. in the same section.

Locking a row is very easy to do. Users that have permissions to do so will see a new feature at the top of the Row Properties panel that allows them to set the selected row to Locked or Unlocked.

Editors and Contributors - who cannot lock or unlock content - will not be able to edit a locked row or a locked content block. When they click on any locked content, a friendly alert message will be shown to them, letting them know that the row or content item cannot be edited.

Likewise, they are not able to drag & drop any other content on the locked row. When they attempt to do so, the editor overlays a diagonal pattern on the row, indicating that the action cannot be completed.

Individual content blocks can be locked, instead of an entire row. When Editors and Contributors try to edit a locked content block, a similar message is displayed.

To lock the layout of an email by still allowing content editing, a content block can be unlocked within a locked row. This allows Admins and Managers to lock the message layout - or sections of it - while still giving Editors and Contributors the ability to modify select content.

For example, in the screenshot below the user can edit the social icons, but not the rest of the information in the footer, which contains merge tags and other important information, nor the layout of the row.