Limiting access per account

Limiting access per account · Help

If you run two brands and handed one brand's social media to an agency, there is no reason for that agency to read the other brand's customer conversations. Account access solves exactly that: you can have team members who sit in the same portfolio yet see only one account. This guide covers setting access at invitation time and later, the rules behind it, and what happens when you narrow it.

⚠️ Note: Only the Owner and Admins change account access. You cannot change your own; owners and admins reach every account because of their role, and that cannot be restricted.

In this article you will find:

What account access decides
The difference between the two options
Choosing access in the invitation
Changing an existing member's access
The account picker
What happens when you narrow access
Accounts that do not appear in the list
A concrete example
Common mistakes

What account access decides

A role says what a person can do; account access says where they can do it. The two are independent: one person can be an agent on a single account while another is an agent on five. The role is the same in every account they reach; you cannot give someone a different role per account.

An account they cannot reach simply does not exist for them:

It is absent from the account switcher and is not counted in My account › My portfolios.
Typing its address by hand does not open the page; it says "not found". They cannot even tell the account exists.
No conversation in it is assigned to them; they are not a candidate for automatic assignment.
They receive none of that account's notifications.

The difference between the two options

The Account access dropdown offers two choices:

All accounts — Every account the portfolio holds today and the ones you connect later. When you connect a new Instagram account, you do not have to grant this person access again.
Selected accounts — Only the accounts you ticked. An account connected later does not open by itself; you have to update access by hand.

That difference causes trouble quietly: in a team set to "Selected accounts", nobody can see a newly connected account, and they come to you saying "the account disappeared".

💡 A practical arrangement is All accounts for permanent staff and Selected accounts for outside contractors, so you do not have to revisit the team list for every new account.

Choosing access in the invitation

The Account access dropdown on the invitation form writes this same setting. The steps are in Inviting a team member; the one rule to remember here is that setting Role to Admin locks the dropdown on All accounts, because admins manage the portfolio.

Changing an existing member's access

Open the account switcher, click the gear icon next to the portfolio name and go to Team.
Find the person's row under Members. The badge in the Accounts column states where they stand today: All accounts or a count.
Click Edit access on the right of the row. The Account access section opens below the list, with the person you are editing named next to the heading.
In the Accounts they can access dropdown, choose All accounts or Selected accounts.
If you chose Selected accounts, tap the accounts' rows in the list below.
Click Save. An "Account access saved." notice appears.

If you change your mind, the Cancel link takes you back to the member list and keeps the page you were on.

The Edit access button is not drawn on three rows: the portfolio owner's, admins', and your own. The first two reach everything because of their role, and the third is deliberate — nobody widens their own field of view.

The account picker

The list works as a selection mode; there is no checkbox per row:

Tapping a row selects or deselects the account. A selected row is highlighted and shows a check on the right.
The strip above states how many accounts you picked and carries two buttons: Select all and, once something is picked, Clear.
Each row shows the account's display name with a channel badge next to it: Instagram or WhatsApp. The names match the account switcher.
When the list is long it scrolls inside itself, so the form does not stretch and the Save button does not slip off screen.

If you choose Selected accounts and tap nothing, the save stops with "Choose at least one account." Someone with no accounts stays in the team but can go nowhere, so an empty selection is refused.

What happens when you narrow access

The moment you save, these are cleared in the accounts the person can no longer see:

Conversation assignments are released. Conversations assigned to them in those accounts become Unassigned; their content and history are untouched.
Notification preferences are removed. They do not keep receiving notifications for an account they can no longer see.
Their landing preference is reset. If the account they opened by default is now out of reach, the preference is cleared and the panel opens the first account they can reach.

Making someone an Admin does the opposite: their selection is deleted and access opens to every account. If you later lower their role, the old selection does not come back — you have to pick again.

⚠️ Note: Narrowing is not an irreversible data deletion, but the assignments do not come back. Before taking an account away from someone, it is wise to hand their open conversations to another agent.

Accounts that do not appear in the list

The picker may not show every account in the portfolio. There are two reasons:

The channel type is switched off, so accounts of that type never appear. If the WhatsApp channel is not enabled in your portfolio, WhatsApp accounts cannot be selected.
The account has never been connected, so it has no display name and is not listed.

A person's earlier access to an account that is not listed is preserved: saving does not wipe that selection. So temporarily switching off a channel does not quietly break your team's access settings. The count in the Accounts column counts only the accounts shown in the list, which is why the number can sometimes be smaller than you expect.

A concrete example

A home-textile brand's portfolio holds three accounts: a wholesale Instagram account, a retail Instagram account and a WhatsApp number. The sales agent who handles wholesale should not see retail customers.

On the Team screen they click Edit access on the agent's row.
They set Accounts they can access to Selected accounts.
In the list they tap only the wholesale Instagram row.
They press Save.

The agent sees a single account the next time they sign in. When a second WhatsApp number is connected at the end of the month, nothing changes in the agent's panel: because their access is "Selected accounts", the new account does not open by itself.

Common mistakes

Connecting a new account and not updating access. Members on "Selected accounts" will not see it. Review the team list after every connection.
Trying to limit an admin to one account. It is not possible; make them an editor, agent or viewer.
Trying to edit your own access. Your own row has no Edit access button.
Narrowing access without checking open conversations. The assignments are released and the chats fall into the pool.
Using access limits instead of roles. An admin limited to one account still opens portfolio settings; the real limit is the role. See Roles and permissions.

If you granted access and the person still cannot see the account, ask them to sign out and back in; if it persists, see When a screen is missing or contact our Support team.