About permissions profiles and how they work

In a Forecast account, there are several permission profiles that you can choose from to assign yourself and your team members specific access permissions. In this article, we cover default permission profiles and how to grant the necessary access to your team.  If you are looking to create custom permission profiles, see Creating and Managing Custom Permission Profiles (add-on). If you are looking to permission user access to Advanced Analytics, see Assigning and updating Advanced Analytics permissions. 

This article covers:

• Overview of seat types
• Overview of default permission profiles
• Overview of Permission Options
• Overview of Access Rights by Permission Level
• Assigning & Updating a Team Member's Permission Profile
• Advanced Analytics Permission Profiles

Overview of seat types

Forecast offers four seat types: Core, Contributor, Virtual user and Client user. Core seats enable feature access and may consist of Admin, Controller, Manager and Coordinator and Collaborator permission profiles. Collaborator, Virtual user and Client user seats have limited access as defined by their permission profile. The permissions for each seat type are outlined in the chart below:

Overview of default permission profiles

By default, several standard permission profiles control the level of access your users have within Forecast.

• Admin: Has unrestricted access to the entire platform, with the ability to configure the platform to fit the needs of the company/team from the Admin Panel. Users with this permission level are the only ones with access to the Admin panel.
• Controller: Second highest permission level after the Admin, has unrestricted access to project-related actions such as managing team members, reports, etc. And, they can see financial information. 
• Manager: Can view and edit their team's work, time registrations, schedule, and reports. Can also view revenue but no costs in financials.
• Coordinator: Can view and edit their team's work, time registrations, schedule, and reports.
• Collaborator: Can create, view, and edit tasks on projects they are assigned to, and can also register time.

Note: The above permissions may only view projects that they are assigned to except for Admins that can view and access all projects.

• Client: Can view and edit tasks they are assigned to, and create new tasks on projects they are granted access to if configured in your admin settings. This type of user does not incur a cost/seat to your subscription.
• Virtual Resource: This is a "mock" or "ghost" team member, one that is primarily used for planning, testing, integrations, or as a placeholder for future team members. These resources can not log in to Forecast.

Overview of Permission Options

Overview of Access Rights by Permission Level

Assigning & Updating a Team Member's Permission Profile

Administrators can set or adjust the permission level of team members at any time. If you are upgrading a member's profile to administrator, you will have to enter your Forecast password, or the password you use to log into Forecast through Google or any SSO you might have enabled.

To update a team member's permission profile 

1. Click on Admin on the top bar.
2. Select Resources from the dropdown.
3. In the People tab, click on the dropdown button under the Permission Profile column to change or set the permissions for each team member.

Advanced Analytics Permission Profiles

If a Forecast account has the Advanced Analytics add-on enabled then, it will receive two extra permission profiles that are exclusive to Advanced Analytics. Those permission profiles are: 

Granting Advanced Analytics permissions to team members

To grant the above permissions to team members, it is necessary to grant them as an additional permission level, next to the already existing Forecast permission profile. Only admins may do this from the Admin Panel. The process is as follows:

1. Click on the logo in the upper right-hand corner from anywhere on the platform.
2. Click on Admin.
3. From the admin panel click on Resources.
4. Once on the resources tab click on People.
5. From the people tab click on the Permission Profile dropdown at a team members line.
6. Select either Designer or Viewer.

The selected team member will now have the corresponding access to Advanced Analytics.

Additional detail on managing user access and permission to Advanced Analytics can be found in Assigning and updating Advanced Analytics permissions.