Roles and permissions

Roles and permissions control which Pendo features internal users can access. The role given to a user provides granular permissions, including access to guide creation, editing, and publishing, Page and Feature tagging, analytics tools, sharing capabilities, and settings. In a multi-app subscription, users can have different roles for each application.

This article summarizes the current user types and roles available.

• For information about how to invite users, and how to add or edit user roles, see Manage internal users.
• For information about roles and permissions in Pendo Feedback, see Manage Team: Roles and Permissions in Feedback.

Prerequisites

You must be a Pendo admin user to:

• Change another user's role.
• Create custom roles.

User access types

There are two user access types in Pendo: 

• Subscription Admin Permissions. This is a subscription-level user access type. Admins have full access to the Pendo subscription, including its features, users, settings, metadata, and integrations. Subscription admin permissions include any configuration visible to the entire subscription, such as guide themes, Core Events, PES, and Product Areas. Admins can also invite new users, change the role of a user, remove users, and create custom roles.

• Custom user permissions. A subscription admin decides which applications a user can access. For each application, the admin assigns one or more roles. Users can use roles only in the applications they’re granted access to. You can control the visibility of the reports and segments at the subscription level (subscription-level permissions) and additional app-level roles.

Subscription-level permissions

Admins are granted access to the entire subscription. Any other user can be granted subscription-level permissions for Analytics, Guide themes, and Listen.

Analytics

• Manage Product Areas. This permission grants the ability to create, edit, and delete Product Areas.
• Share and edit segments. This permission grants the ability to set segment visibility to Everyone in the subscription. If this isn't turned on, segments created by the user are only visible to themselves.
• Verify segments. This permission grants the ability to communicate whether a segment has been checked (verified or unverified). This permission is only available if the previous permission, Share and edit segments, is also turned on. 
• Share and edit reports. This permission grants the ability to set report visibility to Everyone in the subscription. If this isn't turned on, reports created by the user are only visible to themselves.

Guides

In the Guides section, you can assign the Manage guide themes permission. Users with the manage guide themes permission can create, edit, duplicate, and delete guide themes for any application they have Viewer access to.

Listen

In the Listen section, you can choose a Listen role and a Roadmap role for the user. Contributor and Roadmap Creator are selected by default. If you unselect them, Viewer access will be assigned.

The default Listen roles control permissions for creating and managing feedback, ideas, and idea tests in Listen. These roles are:

• Contributor (default)
• Manager

The roadmap roles control permissions for viewing, creating, editing, and sharing roadmaps in Listen. These roles are:

• Roadmap Creator (default)
• Roadmap Publisher

For more information about these roles, see Listen permissions in this article.

App-level roles

If you choose the Custom user permissions access type, you're also prompted to choose app-level roles (for example: Tagging Editor, Guide Content Editor), which define specific sets of permissions for that role. Admin users are granted all permissions. Because admins are in a subscription-level role, you can't select app-level roles for admins.

App-level roles manage a Pendo user's access to guides, emails, journeys, and analytics features for each of your applications in Pendo. You can assign multiple roles to a user to give them the right combination of permissions. For example, a user could be assigned the Guide Publisher and Tagging Editor roles to manage guide content and analytics tags without being able to create new guides. If you give the same user two roles, one of which has permission to create a guide and the other doesn't, the user is still granted the ability to create guides.

If you have a multi-app subscription, users can have different roles for each application. For example, a user who only needs to create guides in one app can be a Guide Creator for that app and a Viewer for all others.

The Replay User role can only be assigned to applications where Session Replay is turned on. If you select multiple apps and some don’t have Session Replay turned on, the role is unavailable. 

For instructions on assigning app-level roles, see Manage internal users.

App-level permissions

The following table lists the app-level permissions for different user roles. The top headings are User roles and the possible permissions. 

Admins have all of the permissions mentioned in the table, plus the following:

• Delete the Resource Center
• Manage core events and PES
• Manage Product Areas
• Manage guide themes
• Delete guide layouts
• Manage settings or users

If your subscription includes Orchestrate, you can also assign app-level roles for journeys and emails. Admins have all permissions listed in the tables. 

Email roles

Journey roles

How app access affects visibility in Pendo

In a multi-app subscription, the apps you have access to determine what you can view and interact with in Pendo. To view or interact with content in an application, you must have an assigned role for that application. If you don’t have a role assigned, certain items are either hidden or only partially visible.

Hidden or blocked access

You can’t access an item if it’s linked to an app you don’t have access to. In these cases, the item is restricted view or you’re unable to access it.

Restricted access applies to the following items:

• Pages
• Features
• Guides
• Segments
• Orchestrate journeys
• Orchestrate emails
• Reports
• Dashboard widgets
• Roadmaps
• Replay playlists (Replay User role)
• Replays (Replay User role)
• Surveys
• AI topics
• Replay saved views (Replay User role)

Restrictions also apply when items rely on other items. If you can’t access a required item, anything that uses it is also restricted. For example, if a guide uses a segment you can’t access, the guide is restricted.

Partial access

If you don’t have access to an app, you may be able to open some items, but you’ll only see data from the apps you have access to. Data tied exclusively to apps you don’t have access to is restricted and automatically filtered out.

Partial access applies to the following items:

• Product Areas. All Product Areas are visible, but usage data is limited to the applications you have access to
• Ideas.
• Feedback items.
• Listen saved views. If a saved view includes restricted logic, it appears as Unavailable.
• Portals. All Listen Portals are visible, but you must have access to all applications the portal includes to edit 
• Dashboards. Whether you can access a dashboard depends on how it's shared. What you see inside it depends on your app access. Widgets only show data for the apps you have Viewer access to.

Note: Applying a global filter can change the data that a widget displays, even if the widget was originally configured with a different segment or application applied. However, global filters don’t grant access to restricted applications. If a widget depends on data from an application that the user can’t access, the widget doesn’t display any data.

Best practices when restricting app access

Restricting a user’s access to an application can affect their ability to view and manage content across Pendo.

Important: Creating an item in Pendo doesn’t guarantee ongoing access to it. If a subscription admin removes a user’s role in an application, for example, removing Guide Creator access for an app, the user can no longer view or manage guides associated with that application, even if they created them.

This can impact reports, dashboards, guides, and other items the user previously created or managed.

As a best practice, notify users before removing their application access. This gives them time to understand upcoming changes and transfer ownership of any reports, guides, or dashboards they own before that content becomes unavailable.

Listen permissions

Edit User Permissions by going to Settings > Users and teams, hovering over the user from the list, and then selecting the Edit icon. Under User Permissions > Listen, you can choose:

• Default Listen roles, which control permissions for creating and managing feedback, ideas, and ideas tests in Listen.
• Roadmap roles, which control permissions for viewing, creating, editing, and sharing roadmaps in Listen.

Listen roles

You have the following roles to choose from: Viewer, Contributor, and Manager. By default, new users are given the Contributor role. Admins are given all permissions listed in the table.

* With Guide Publisher permissions

** With Roadmap Creator or Roadmap Publisher permissions

*** With Resource Center Author and Resource Center Publisher permissions

Roadmap roles

You have the following default roles to choose from: Roadmap Viewer, Roadmap Creator, and Roadmap Publisher. By default, new users are given the Roadmap Creator role. Admins are given all permissions listed in the table. 

Custom app-level roles

If you have custom roles included in your Pendo subscription, admins can save new sets of permissions as app-level user roles in addition to the default roles provided by Pendo to better align access with user responsibilities.

You can choose any combination of permissions. Multiple roles, custom or default, can be assigned simultaneously during user setup. You have the flexibility to provision users in the way that's most convenient for you. For example, you can create a custom role for a team to provision those users or create roles by Pendo product area to provide deliberate access to certain features. When you assign a custom role for an application, the user is automatically granted Viewer access for that application.

Permissions are available for configuration, guides, NPS, Resource Center, tagging and product setup, journeys, and emails. All users granted a custom role for an app have Viewer access on that app to Dashboards, Product, People, Behavior, and Guides, which allows them to create reports and view analytics in the subscription.

Create custom roles

Manage custom roles on the Custom Roles tab in User Settings.

To create a custom role:

1. Select + Create Custom Role.
   
   
    
2. Under Custom Role Details, add a Name and Description.
   
   
    
3. Select permissions for each product area. For a list of available permissions, see Custom roles permissions list in this article.
4. Select Save Custom Role.

This adds the new role to your custom roles, which can now be assigned when applying roles in User Permissions.

Custom roles permissions list

Custom roles can use any combination of permissions. Giving a user multiple roles gives that user any additional permissions assigned to that role. A permission that's assigned in one role but not unassigned in another is assigned to the user if both roles are applied.

Configuration

• View application details
• View raw events
• View installation settings

Guides

• Create and edit guides from scratch
• Create and edit guides from layouts
• Publish guides
• Edit and delete public guides
• Delete guides that aren't public (for example, Draft or Staged)
• Create, edit, and delete guide alert notes

NPS

• Create and edit NPS surveys
• Publish and schedule NPS surveys
• Edit public NPS surveys
• Delete NPS surveys
• Triage NPS themes

Resource Center

• Create and edit Resource Centers
• Promote and demote Resource Centers
• Delete a Resource Center
• Promote and demote Resource Centers to staging

Tagging and product setup

• Manage events
• Manage Product Engagement Score (PES)
• Create, edit, and delete Pages and Features
• Create, edit, and delete Track Events
• Create, edit, and view JWT shared tokens
• Subscribe and unsubscribe to notifications

Journeys

• Create a journey
• Edit a journey
• Publish and schedule a journey
• Edit and delete an active journey
• Delete a journey

Emails

• Create emails
• Edit emails
• Publish and schedule emails
• Delete emails
• Edit and delete public emails
• Create and edit emails from scratch
• Create and edit emails from layouts
• Create emails from layouts