Articles on: Administering BoardSpot

Configuring Permissions

Note: Role-based permissions is available on the Standard Plan and Enterprise Plan. On the Essentials Plan, all members are able to access every committee, meeting and document uploaded into the organization's portal.

On the Standard and Enterprise Plans, access permissions are configured through a combination of user roles and committee permissions. When a user has access to a committee, they have access to all resources related to that committee, including meetings, committee documents, agendas, minutes, attendances, and votes. If someone does not have access to a committee, they will not be able to access any resource related to that committee. In fact, they will not even see that the committee exists.

When a committee is first created, it is considered to be an "Open Committee". All board and staff have access to open committees. If access needs to be limited to a committee, it can be designated as a "Private Committee". Private committees are only accessible to administrators and members of that committee.

It can be helpful to take a look at the permission system from two different perspectives. First, from the perspective of the committee, and later from the perspective of the user.

Board & Committee Permissions


Looking at permissions from the perspective of a committee, we see the following:

Open Committees can be accessed by the following people:


Administrators
All "Board Members" and "Staff Members"
"Guests" and "Committee Members" who are members of the committee

Open Committees cannot be accessed by the following people:


"Guests" and "Committee members" who are not members of the committee

**Private** Committees can be accessed by the following people:


Administrators
Anyone who is a member of the committee

**Private** Committees cannot be accessed by the following people:


Anyone who is not a member of the committee (and not an administrator)

Role-Based Permissions


Another way to look at these permissions is from the perspective of an individual person. Here's how that breaks down:

Administrators can access the following:


All committees

Administrators cannot access the following:


none (Administrators have full access)

Committee Admins can access the following:


All committees they are committee admins of
Any committees that their role would otherwise give them access to (see below)

Committee Admins cannot access the following:


No changes to access (Designating someone as a committee admin only give them access to that committee, and does not otherwise affect access)

Board and Staff members can access the following:


All open committees
All private committees they are members of

Board and Staff members cannot access the following:


Any private committees they are not members of

Guest and Committee Members can access the following:


All committees they are members of

Guest and Committee Members cannot access the following:


Any committee they are not members of

Governing Documents Permissions


The default configuration for access to the organization's Governing Documents is the following:

Governing Documents are accessible by the following people:


Administrators
All "Board Members"
All "Staff Members"

Governing Documents are not accessible by the following people:


All "Guests"
All "Committee Members"

These default permissions can be updated on the organization's settings page to suit your organization's specific needs.

Updated on: 08/01/2023

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