Custom roles and permissions

Beta customers only Desks Professional and above

Custom Roles let Global Admins create lightweight, add-on roles that grant specific permissions (such as managing visits or exporting analytics) without changing a user’s core system role. This makes it easy to give users exactly the access they need, scoped to specific or all offices, while keeping system roles clear and consistent.

Learn more about system roles here: System roles and permissions

1. Overview
2. System roles vs. custom roles
3. Manage custom roles
4. Available permissions for custom roles
5. Current limitations
6. FAQ

1. Overview

The Roles & permissions page allows Global Admins to control who can do what in deskbird.

This page is available under:

Admin > User management: Roles & permissions

It brings together:

• System roles predefined by deskbird
• Custom roles created and managed by your organization

Who is it for?
This feature is available to Global Admins. It's available in Desks Professional and above.

Important concept:
Custom roles are always assigned in addition to a user’s core role. They can add permissions, but they cannot remove permissions granted by a system role.

2. System roles vs. custom roles

Roles in deskbird are split into two categories.

• System roles
  • Predefined by deskbird
  • Cannot be deleted
  • Each user has exactly one core role (for example: Global administrator, Office administrator, Manager, Group manager, User)
  • Some predefined roles can exist as additional roles (for example: Service request manager, Visitor receptionist), depending on if you subscribed to the specific modules such as Rooms or Visitor Management
• Custom roles
  • Defined and maintained by your organization
  • Can be edited or deleted
  • Users can have multiple custom roles
  • Always additive: they extend permissions, never restrict them

This separation helps keep core responsibilities stable while allowing flexible permission management.

3. Manage custom roles

All role management happens on the Roles & permissions page.

Create a custom role

1. Go to Admin > User management: Roles & permissions.
2. In the Custom Roles section, click Add custom role.
3. Enter a Name and optional Description.
4. Select the permissions you want to grant using the toggles.
5. Click Save.

Tip: Use clear, purpose-based names such as “Data analyst” or “Reception” to make role assignment easier later on.

Assign users to a custom role

You can assign custom roles in two different ways.

Option A: From the role itself

1. Open Admin > User management: Roles & permissions.
2. In the Custom Roles table, click the person icon for the role.
3. Click Add assignee.
4. Select one or more users.
5. Choose whether the role applies to:
   • Select office(s), or
   • All offices
6. Click Confirm.

Note: If All offices is selected, any newly created offices will automatically be included in the user’s role scope.

Option B: From the user profile

1. Go to Admin > User management: Users.
2. Open the user profile.
3. Open the Role tab.
4. Add the relevant role(s) under Additional role(s).
5. Save your changes.

Both methods result in the same permissions; choose the one that best fits your workflow.

💡 Tip: You can filter the user table by custom roles to quickly see which users have which role(s) assigned.

4. Available permissions for custom roles

Custom roles can include permissions from the following areas.

5. Current limitations

• Granting Workforce Analytics permissions currently allows users to see all workforce data, regardless of the offices assigned to the role. Office-based scoping for Workforce Analytics via custom roles will be introduced in a future release.
• For Group managers, workforce analytics visibility remains limited to the groups they manage.

6. FAQ