Setting Admin, User, and Account Owner Roles

Sometimes, you don't want everyone who has a Drift login to be able to access billing, change your widget settings, and more. That's why we have distinct roles with different permissions. There are three types of roles (available in all paid plans): Account Owner, Admins, and Users. 

Help Doc Overview

1. What is an Admin?
2. What is a User? 
3. Finding and Setting User vs. Admin Roles
4. What Admins vs. Users have access to
5. Controlling Conversation Access of Users
6. What is an Account Owner?

1. What is an Admin?

An admin has access to everything in Drift. There is nothing they can't access and their navigation bar on the left side of the screen looks like this. The Account Owner is by default an Admin. 

• Dashboard (metrics and reporting) 
• Conversations View (all inboxes and conversations)
• Contacts View (to see all contacts in your system and create segments)
• Playbooks View (can see sales sequence playbooks that they created)
• Live View (can see all customers on your site)
• Help Center (can edit the knowledgebase) 
• All Settings (chat widget, team, and integration app settings)

2. What is a User?

A user is generally somebody who is mainly using Drift to answer leads or customers that message you through Drift. Their navigation bar looks like this. 

• Inbox View (to see conversations that an admin has granted them access to)
• Playbooks View (can see sales sequence playbooks that they created)
• Contacts View (to see all contacts in your system and create segments)
• Live View (can see all customers on your site)
• Meetings View (view their calendar and settings, manage meeting types, etc)

3. Setting User versus Admin Roles

There's only a few steps. Firstly, navigate to your Team Settings.

Click on the name of the teammate or Edit to change the role/permissions. 

Select the radio button for User or Admin in the modal that appears. If you're setting a teammate's role to User, make sure that you're conscious of what Conversation permissions you're giving them. We'll go over what each of these options are in Section 5 of this article. 

4. User vs. Admin permissions

Users still do have access to the following features:

• Their profile settings
• Their calendar settings
• Their notification settings
• The ability to change their status
• The ability to view the Drift conversation stats report
• The ability to search conversations

Unlike admins, Users cannot access the following features:

• The ability to view or edit billing information
• The ability to change any of the settings related to the Chat Widget (styling, customization, hours, etc)
• The ability to edit, add, or remove other users in Drift
• The ability to edit your Drift team directory
• The ability to export contacts in the contacts view
• Configuring any Integrations settings
• Configuring any settings for tags, installation, routing, saved replies
• The ability to edit any playbooks besides sales sequences they created

5. Controlling Conversation Access of Users

Administrators can control which conversations users will have access to. Why? Click here to learn about the benefits of controlling conversation access.

When the User role is selected, a drop down menu labeled Conversation Access with appear. There are three types of access a user can have...

• All Conversations - the User has access to all conversations, regardless of participant.
• Their Conversations and Ones with No Participation - the User only has access to conversations they are participants of or have no current participants.
• Only Their Conversations - the User only has access to conversations they are already participants of.

6. Account Ownership

The Account Owner is, by default, whoever set up the Account. They are also the Drift team's point of contact for Billing concerns. The billing information in your settings, however, is static and will not change just because the Account Owner changes. 

Still stuck? Email us at support@drift.com. Not using Drift yet? Get your free account here.