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.
- For information about the legacy version of roles and permissions, see the Legacy user roles and permissions article.
Prerequisites
You must be a Pendo admin user to:
- Change another user's role.
- Create custom roles.
Only Pro and Enterprise-tier subscriptions have access to custom role creation.
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 also 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.
- User Permissions. Users have Viewer role access to the Pendo subscription. 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 the following subscription-level permissions:
- Share and Edit Segments for Everyone. This permission grants the ability to set segment visibility to Everyone in the subscription. If this isn't enabled, segments created by the user are only visible to themselves.
- Share and Edit Reports for Everyone. This permission grants the ability to set report visibility to Everyone in the subscription. If this isn't enabled, reports created by the user are only visible to themselves.
App-level roles
If you choose the User Permissions access type, you're also prompted to choose app-level roles (Tagging Editor, Guide Content Creator, and so on), 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 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.
For instructions on assigning app-level roles, see Manage internal users.
Default app-level roles
The following table lists the default app-level permissions for different user roles. If you're a Listen customer, you're additionally given Listen-specific roles to choose from. For information about these specific roles, see Listen permissions in this article.
Admins have all of the listed permissions and are included in the final column of the following table for comparison. The top headings are User roles, and the possible app-level permissions associated with each role are listed on the left. None of these roles can manage guide themes or invite new users, which are activities reserved for admins.
| Viewer (Default) | Guide Creator | Guide Publisher | Guide Content Editor | Tagging Editor | Resource Center Author | Resource Center Publisher | Admin* | |
| Create and edit guides from scratch | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Create and edit guides from layouts/templates | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Edit an existing guide that's not public | Yes | |||||||
| Delete draft, staged, and disabled guides | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Publish and schedule guides | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Create, edit, and delete Pages, Features, and Track Events | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| View metrics and create reports | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Create and edit the Resource Center | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Promote the Resource Center to staging | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Promote the Resource Center to production | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Disable the Resource Center or demote to draft | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Delete the Resource Center (Admin-only) | Yes | |||||||
| Manage core events and PES (Admin-only) | Yes | |||||||
| Manage product areas (Admin-only) | Yes | |||||||
| Manage guide themes (Admin-only) | Yes | |||||||
|
Delete guide layouts (Admin-only) |
Yes | |||||||
| Manage settings, including inviting users (Admin-only) | Yes |
Users can have different roles for each application in your multi-app subscription. A user that only needs to create guides in one app can be a Guide Creator in that app and a Viewer in all other apps. For more information, see Manage internal users.
Viewer is the default role that's automatically assigned for all apps that you grant user access to and can't be unassigned.
Roles and permissions can't limit data visibility. All users can see all data in the subscription.
Custom app-level roles
Customers in the Pro and Enterprise subscription tiers also have access to Custom Roles. Custom roles allow admins in the subscription to save new sets of permissions as app-level user roles in addition to the default roles provided by Pendo. There are additional granular permissions that control the level of access to various Pendo features.
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.
Permissions are available for Guides, NPS, Resource Center, Tagging, and Product Setup. All users have Viewer access to Dashboard, 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. Custom roles are only available to admin users in Pro and Enterprise subscriptions.
To create a custom role:
- Select + Create Custom Role.
- Under Custom Role Details, add a Name and Description.
- Select permissions for each product area. For a list of available permissions, see Custom roles permissions list in this article.
- 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 the following 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.
Listen permissions
Edit User Permissions by navigating to Settings > Users, 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.
Default Listen roles
You have the following default roles to choose: Viewer, Contributor, and Manager. By default, new users are given the Contributor role. Admin users are given all default permissions.
Viewer
- View feedback.
- View ideas.
- View idea tests.
Contributor
Viewer permissions, plus the ability to:
- Create feedback items.
- Edit feedback items they created.
- Link feedback items to ideas.
- Add visitor votes.
- Remove votes they've added.
Manager
Contributor permissions, plus the ability to:
- Create, edit, and delete feedback items and ideas.
- Change statuses on feedback items and ideas.
- Add and remove votes from ideas.
- Add effort and impact ratings to ideas.
- With Guide Publisher permissions, create and publish idea tests.
- Create and edit ideas portals.
- Share ideas portals:
- To share an ideas portal through a Resource Center, the Listen Manager must also have Resource Center Author permissions to add the ideas portal as a module to a Resource Center, and Resource Center Publisher permissions to then publish the Resource Center.
- To share an ideas portal through a guide, the Listen Manager must also have Guide Publisher permissions. This allows the user to add the portal to a guide and then publish that guide.
With either Roadmap Creator or Roadmap Publisher permissions, a Listen Manager can also:
- Add ideas to roadmaps.
- Promote ideas to roadmap features.
Roadmap roles
You have the following default roles to choose: Roadmap Viewer, Roadmap Creator, and Roadmap Publisher. By default, new users are given the Roadmap Creator role. Admin users are given all roadmap permissions.
Roadmap Viewer
View roadmaps shared with them.
Roadmap Creator
Roadmap Viewer permissions, plus the ability to:
- Create roadmaps.
- Delete roadmaps that they've created.
- Edit roadmaps that they've been given edit access to.
- Change statuses on roadmap features and initiatives that they've been given edit access to.
- Share roadmaps with other Pendo users.
Roadmap Publisher
Roadmap Creator permissions, plus the ability to:
- Share roadmaps externally using a public URL.
- Publish updates to externally shared roadmaps.
- Unpublish externally shared roadmaps.