When you decide "these two people should handle this Instagram account and someone else WhatsApp", you go looking for a team section in account settings and do not find one. The reason is simple: the team always belongs to the portfolio, and an account has no team of its own. This article explains that distinction, the reasoning behind it, and the two routes to take when you really do want separate teams.
Why the team lives at portfolio level
A person's role is portfolio-wide: the role you pick when inviting them is the same in every account they can reach. Being an editor in one account and an agent in another is not possible.
Instead, there is a second setting: account access. A person reaches either all of the portfolio's accounts or the ones you choose. So there is no such record as an "account team"; in practice, an account's team is every portfolio member who can reach that account.
The distinction keeps things simple: you see who is what in one list, and you never have to chase someone's permissions account by account.
What belongs to the portfolio and what to the account
| Belongs to the portfolio | Belongs to the account |
|---|
| The team list and invitations | The channel connection (Instagram / WhatsApp) |
| Roles and account access | Business hours and out-of-hours behaviour |
| The access and visibility policy | Messaging behaviour, saved replies |
| Chat assignment rules | Conversations, contacts, automations |
| AI keys and connections | The account's insights and reports |
| Plan limits (team, account count) | The account's name and display details |
| Portfolio logs | — |
Everything in the left column is identical across all of the portfolio's accounts. You cannot, for example, change the assignment rule for one account; you change it for the whole portfolio.
The two ways to really separate teams
If you run two brands and want their teams to know nothing of each other, you have two options.
Route 1: One portfolio, restricted account access
All accounts stay in one portfolio, and you give each member only the accounts they handle. An account they cannot reach does not exist for them: it is absent from the account switcher, they cannot see its conversations, and typing its address does not open the page.
When it fits: The teams work separately but management stays with you, and there is no problem with them sharing the same rules and the same plan.
What to know:
- The assignment rule, the access policy and the AI keys are shared; changing one affects both brands together.
- Seats come out of a shared pool; the two teams share one team limit.
- An admin who can open portfolio settings sees all accounts; you cannot confine an admin to one brand.
The steps: Limiting access per account.
Route 2: Two separate portfolios
Each brand sits in its own portfolio, and every portfolio has its own team and its own rules.
When it fits: The two businesses really are separate, and someone who is an admin in one has no business in the other.
What to know:
- The team limit is counted per portfolio. The same person present in both portfolios holds two seats.
- Assignment rules, the access policy, keys and logs are separate; a change in one does not carry to the other.
- The same person can hold different roles in the two portfolios — the one piece of flexibility a single portfolio cannot give you.
- You move between portfolios from the account switcher.
💡 A simple question decides it: does anyone need a different role in the two brands? If yes, take the second route. If no, one portfolio with restricted access means less administration.
What happens to the team when an account moves
When you move an account to another portfolio, all of the account's data (conversations, contacts, automations, media) travels with it — but the team does not. Who can reach the account in its new home comes from the destination portfolio's team:
- The owner, the admins and members with "all accounts" access in the destination see the account immediately.
- Members in the destination limited to "selected accounts" do not see it; you have to grant it by hand.
- The account selections from the source portfolio are deleted.
- Conversations assigned to people who will not reach the account lose their assignee, and the open ones are re-planned according to the destination's assignment rules.
So the first thing to do after moving an account is to review the destination portfolio's Team screen.
⚠️ Note: Only someone who owns both portfolios can move an account. An admin cannot, and an account cannot be moved between two portfolios with different owners.
Where you can see an account's team
Even though there is no separate "account team" record, the list of people who reach an account shows up in three places in the panel. All three use the same rule: the portfolio members who can reach that account.
- The assignee list in the inbox. The list of people that opens when you assign a conversation shows only the members who reach that account. Looking there for a colleague without access is futile; you have to grant the access first.
- The person picker in the flow editor. When you build an action such as "assign the conversation to this person", the selectable people are the same list. If someone stayed selected in a flow after their access was taken away, that step cannot assign to anyone.
- The "team" recipient of the Send email step. When a flow emails the team, that email goes only to the members who reach that account; the portfolio's other members hear nothing.
A fourth place can be added: the Accounts column on the Portfolio settings › Team screen. There you look at it the other way round — per person, which accounts they reach. To see an account's team all at once, reviewing that column is the quickest route.
⚠️ Note: Automatic assignment relies on the same list. If conversations in an account are never assigned to anyone, the first thing to check is whether anyone reaches that account at all. See Chat assignment rules.
A concrete example
An entrepreneur runs two businesses: a café and an estate agency. Two students handle the café's Instagram; a secretary handles the agency's WhatsApp.
Built as one portfolio: there is a single four-person team list, the students get only the café account and the secretary only the agency account. But the assignment rule is the same for both, and any admin they add sees both businesses at once.
Built as two portfolios: each business gets its own team, its own assignment rule and its own logs. In exchange, the entrepreneur holds a seat in both portfolios, so the total seat need goes up.
Points people mix up
- Looking for the team in account settings. The team section exists only under Portfolio settings › Team. If an old link sends you to the account address, the panel forwards you there.
- Saying "let's make someone admin of this account". An admin manages the portfolio, not an account. For a lead confined to one account, the role must be editor.
- Mistaking access limits for roles. Access decides "where", the role decides "what". They are read together.
- Not reviewing the team after a move. When an account moves, the team does not.
Once this distinction settles in, both the permission tangles and the "why can't I see this" questions largely disappear.