Roles · Help

A role decides what a person can do in a portfolio. It is the one thing you choose when you invite a colleague, and afterwards that person works with the same role in every account they can reach. This article goes through the five roles one by one, down to the level of which button they can press.

💡 The role says what they can do; what they can see is a separate setting. To narrow sections and conversation scope, see Access and visibility policy.

The five roles at a glance

Owner — The person who created the portfolio. Does everything; only they can delete the portfolio and only they can remove a member.
Administrator — Runs the portfolio on the owner's behalf: connects accounts, invites the team, changes settings.
Editor — Builds and publishes flows. Does not touch settings or the team.
Agent — Answers conversations. Can only view automations, never change them.
Viewer — Reads only; cannot change anything.

The roles you can hand out by invitation are administrator, editor, agent and viewer. Ownership is neither invited nor transferred.

Who does what

Task	Can	Cannot
Rename the portfolio	Owner	Administrator, editor, agent, viewer
Schedule the portfolio for deletion	Owner	Everyone else
Remove a team member	Owner	Everyone else
Open portfolio settings	Owner, administrator	Editor, agent, viewer
Invite people, change roles and access	Owner, administrator	Everyone else
Connect and disconnect accounts	Owner, administrator	Everyone else
Move an account to another portfolio, delete an account	Owner	Everyone else
Change account settings	Owner, administrator	Editor, agent, viewer
Build and publish automations	Owner, administrator, editor	Agent, viewer
View automations	Owner, administrator, editor, agent, viewer	—
Reply in conversations	Owner, administrator, editor, agent	Viewer
Assign conversations	Owner, administrator	Editor, agent, viewer
Edit contact details	Owner, administrator, editor, agent	Viewer
Export contacts as CSV, delete contacts	Owner, administrator	Everyone else
Upload media	Owner, administrator, editor, agent	Viewer
Delete media	Owner, administrator, editor	Agent, viewer
See reports	Owner, administrator, editor, viewer	Agent
See audit logs	Owner, administrator	Everyone else

The roles in detail

Owner

The person who created the portfolio; there is exactly one per portfolio. Their permissions are unlimited, and three things belong to them alone: renaming the portfolio, scheduling it for deletion (and cancelling that), and removing a team member. Moving an account to another portfolio and deleting an account are also owner-only.

The plan is theirs too: the portfolio's account limit, team seats and enabled features follow their plan.

Administrator

The role that runs the portfolio day to day. An administrator:

Opens Portfolio settings and works in the team, assignment rules, access policy, keys and connections screens.
Sends invitations and changes members' roles and account access — but cannot remove a member.
Connects accounts and disconnects them; creates accounts and changes account settings.
Builds and publishes automations; replies to conversations and assigns them.
Edits, exports and deletes contacts; reads the audit log.

An administrator cannot rename the portfolio and cannot delete it.

Editor

The flow-building role. An editor:

Builds, edits and publishes automations; manages general rules and sequences.
Sees and answers conversations — but cannot assign them.
Sees and edits contacts; cannot export or delete them.
Sees, uploads and deletes media.
Sees reports.
Only views account settings and cannot change them. Portfolio settings never open for them.

In the default access policy, Insights is switched off for the editor: Meta's account-wide measurements are treated as management information. The portfolio owner can switch it on.

Agent

The inbox role. An agent:

Sees and answers conversations; cannot assign them.
Sees and edits contacts.
Only views automations; cannot change or publish them.
Sees and uploads media; cannot delete it.
Cannot see reports.

In the default policy an agent sees only the conversations assigned to them and the contacts from their own conversations; the automations, publishing, insights and reports sections are switched off. That default matches what the role can actually do: showing a screen nobody can touch was only confusing.

Viewer

The read-only role. A viewer sees conversations, contacts, automations, media and reports, and can change none of them, write no messages and publish no flow. Account settings are visible but not editable.

How a role is chosen and changed

Open Portfolio settings › Team.
For a new person, type the address in the Invite member section and pick the role from the Role list.
For Account access, choose All accounts or Selected accounts. The choice does not appear for owners and administrators; they always reach every account.
Press Send invitation.
To change an existing member's role, use Change role on their row.

⚠️ Note: when you remove someone from the team, the conversations assigned to them become unassigned. The confirmation text says so; you may want to hand over their open work first.

What happens when a role changes

When you change a member's role the change takes effect immediately; they do not have to sign in again and work with their new permissions from the next page they open.

When permissions widen, new sections appear in the menu. The role-based access policy is applied according to the new role's settings; the old role's restrictions do not carry over.
When permissions narrow, the person stops seeing work they can no longer do. The flows they wrote, the tags they added and the assignments they made stay in place; history is untouched.
Account access is separate from the role. When you take someone from administrator down to agent, the access choice becomes meaningful again: an administrator reached every account, and for an agent you now have to say whether it is All accounts or Selected accounts.

A concrete example

Picture a beauty salon with five people:

Owner: the business owner. She pays for the plan and created the portfolio.
Administrator: the salon manager. He connects the new branch's Instagram account, invites the team and distributes conversations to the agents.
Editor: the digital marketer. She builds campaign flows and publishes them, and never touches customer data.
Agent: two receptionists. They answer only the conversations assigned to them.
Viewer: the external bookkeeper. He reads the reports screen and can touch nothing.

Common mistakes

Asking an agent to build a flow. An agent can only view automations. Give the person who builds flows the Editor role.
Expecting an editor to manage the team. An editor cannot open portfolio settings at all. Whoever manages the team must be an Administrator.
Lowering someone's role to hide a section. If you want someone not to see a section, switch that section off in the access policy instead of demoting them.
Trying to transfer ownership. Ownership is not transferable. If someone else must run the portfolio, make them an Administrator.

The right role gives a person enough to do their job, and nothing more.