Project roles and permissions

The three roles

Role	What it does
Admin	Sets up the project: its members and their roles, its statuses, its automations, its archiving and the import from Jira. An Admin can also do everything a Member can.
Member	Works in the project: creates and edits tickets (other people’s too, unless the Admin withdraws that right), comments, moves cards. Plans, manages sprints, deletes tickets or imports a CSV only if the Admin granted that right.
Viewer	Views the tickets, the board and the reports, without changing anything, and the backlog if the Admin opens it to them.

The same person can be Admin of one project and Viewer of another.

As in a company-managed Jira project, the Admin grants rights member by member, in Project settings › Members: view the Backlog, plan (add a ticket to a sprint or remove it), manage sprints (create, start, close them), delete tickets, import a CSV, and edit other people’s tickets. The first five are closed by default; the last one is open by default, like “Edit Issues” in Jira, and the Admin can withdraw it. An Admin always has them. A Viewer can only receive the Backlog view. Tickets stay visible to everyone in the project’s ticket list: only the Backlog view is closed.

What each role allows

Action	Admin	Member	Viewer
View tickets, the board and the reports	Yes	Yes	Yes
View the backlog	Yes	If the Admin opened it	If the Admin opened it
Grant or withdraw a right to a member	Yes	No	No
Search for tickets and save filters	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create a ticket	Yes	Yes	No
Edit a ticket and change its status	Yes	Yes for their own; other people’s, unless the Admin withdrew that right	No
Link a ticket to another	Yes	Yes	No
Delete a ticket	Yes	If the Admin granted it	No
Comment on a ticket	Yes	Yes	No
Edit or delete a comment	All	Their own	No
Attach a file to a ticket	Yes	Yes	No
Remove an attachment	All	Their own	No
Create, start and close a sprint	Yes	If the Admin granted it	No
Add a ticket to a sprint, or remove it	Yes	If the Admin granted it	No
Add or remove members, change their role	Yes	No	No
Set up the workflow statuses and the automations	Yes	No	No
Archive or unarchive the project	Yes	No	No
Import a Jira CSV export	Yes	If the Admin granted it	No

When an action is not allowed, the button that starts it does not appear, or it stays greyed out and its tooltip gives the reason. If a Viewer still reaches the action, for example through a link, the product refuses and says so: “Your role, Viewer, lets you view this project, not change it.”

Someone else’s ticket, without the right to edit it

When the Admin withdraws Edit other people’s tickets from you, a ticket you neither reported nor are assigned to opens read-only:

• At the top of the ticket, a banner says why: “Editing a ticket you neither reported nor are assigned to: reserved for project administrators, and for whoever they grant the right.” It names the project’s Admins in brackets, so you know whom to ask.
• The summary, the description, the status and the fields on the right (assignee, priority, points, type, team, labels, parent, due date) can be read but not opened. So you cannot assign the ticket to yourself either.
• On the board, the ticket’s card stays in its column. You can still move it up or down, by mouse, keyboard or its menu, but no longer change its status: its menu no longer offers Move to, and its initials badge no longer changes the assignee.
• You can still comment on the ticket, link it to another, attach a file and add a subtask to it.

Your own tickets, the ones you created or that are assigned to you, stay editable. In the backlog, you can still order the ticket, but no longer change its epic; adding it to a sprint or removing it belongs to the right to plan, not to this one.

Where to see and change roles

Roles are set in Project settings, Members & roles tab. Only the project’s Admins and Super Admins see Project settings in the sidebar. For the details, see Change a member’s role or remove them.

The projects list also gives your role in each project, in the My role column.

Good to know

• A new role applies straight away, without the person having to sign in again.
• A project always keeps at least one Admin. The last one can neither be removed nor change their own role.
• The person who creates a project becomes its Admin. Anyone who is signed in can create a project.
• An invitation proposes a role, Member by default. The person gets it by accepting the invitation.
• An archived project is read-only for everyone, Admins and Super Admins included, until an Admin or a Super Admin unarchives it.

And the Super Admin?

Super Admin is the organisation’s role, above the project roles. A Super Admin manages accounts and sees every project, even those they are not a member of. In any project, they can also manage the members, the workflow statuses, the automations and the archiving. See the Administration guide.

A site also has its own roles, Administrator and Member. They decide who manages the site’s members, not what you can do in a project. See the Sites and teams guide.