# Members & roles

> Add teammates to your Bookbag workspace and control what they can do with built-in roles — Owner, Admin, Editor, Viewer, and the Help-Desk-only Support Associate — plus Enterprise custom roles. Learn what each role can access and how to change them.

A **workspace** is the shared home for your agents, data, channels, and billing. Everyone you work with joins the same workspace, and their **role** decides what they can see and change. Manage your team from the workspace **Members** (Team) page.

## The four roles

Roles are ranked from least to most access: **Viewer → Editor → Admin → Owner**. Higher roles include everything a lower role can do.

| Role | Can do |
| --- | --- |
| Owner | Full control, including billing, deleting the workspace, and managing all members. Every workspace has at least one owner. |
| Admin | Manage members and invitations, change workspace settings and billing, and build agents — everything except owner-only destructive actions. |
| Editor | Build and edit agents, data sources, actions, and widgets, and work the help desk. The day-to-day builder role. |
| Viewer | Read-only access — view agents, conversations, and analytics without making changes. |

> **COMING FROM CHATBASE?:** Chatbase's "Member" maps to Bookbag's **Editor**. Bookbag adds a distinct read-only **Viewer** role for stakeholders who should see but not change anything.

## Support Associate

**Support Associate** is a **Help-Desk-only** role for teammates who live in the inbox and shouldn't touch the rest of the workspace. They can work the [Help Desk](/docs/help-desk/overview) — view, reply to, and create tickets, manage their own [saved views](/docs/help-desk/saved-views), and see the member roster and agent list — but they **cannot** access agents, data sources, settings, or billing.

- **Lands in the Help Desk on login.** A Support Associate is taken straight to the Help Desk; the rest of the dashboard is blocked.
- **Inbox-complete.** Everything they need to work tickets — reply, create, assign within their views, and see who's on the team — is available.
- **Assigned like any role.** Pick it in the invite dialog or the role menu, the same way you set Editor or Admin.

> **WHO IT'S FOR:** Use Support Associate for support agents and contractors who should resolve tickets but never see your agent configuration, sources, or billing.

## Custom roles (Enterprise)

On **Enterprise**, you can define **custom roles** that go beyond the built-in tiers. A custom role has a **base access tier** — Viewer, Editor, or Admin — that governs everything by default, plus **per-area overrides** that raise or lower access for specific parts of the product.

Each of these areas can be set independently:

| Area | Levels |
| --- | --- |
| Agents | No access / View / Edit / Manage / Full |
| Sources | No access / View / Edit / Manage / Full |
| Actions | No access / View / Edit / Manage / Full |
| Help Desk | No access / View / Edit / Manage / Full |
| Members | No access / View / Edit / Manage / Full |

- **Base tier sets the default.** Pick Viewer, Editor, or Admin as the starting point; every area inherits it unless you override.
- **Override per area.** Bump one area up (e.g. Manage Help Desk on an otherwise Viewer role) or lock one down without touching the rest.
- **Listed alongside built-ins.** Custom roles appear next to Owner/Admin/Editor/Viewer and are assignable to members just like them.

> **WHERE TO MANAGE THEM:** Build and edit custom roles under **Settings → Members → Custom roles**. On Enterprise the builder replaces the "Unlock custom roles" upsell.

> **DELETING A ROLE DEMOTES ITS MEMBERS:** If you delete a custom role, every member who had it is demoted to **Viewer** — reassign them a role afterward if they need more access.

## Adding a member

You add teammates by [inviting them](/docs/workspace/invitations). If the email already belongs to a Bookbag user, they're added to your workspace immediately; otherwise they receive a pending invitation to accept. You assign the role at invite time, and can change it later.

## Changing a role

Admins and owners can change any member's role from the Members page. A few guardrails protect the workspace:

- An **owner cannot be downgraded** by an invitation or role change — the workspace must always keep an owner.
- Only valid roles are accepted; an invalid role is rejected rather than silently coerced to a lower one.
- Removing a member revokes their access to the workspace immediately.

> **WARNING:** Seat limits depend on your plan. If you're at your plan's seat cap, you'll need to upgrade before adding more members — see [Plans & billing](/docs/workspace/billing).

## What's next

- [Invitations](/docs/workspace/invitations) — Invite teammates, resend, revoke, and accept invites.
- [Workspace settings](/docs/workspace/settings) — Rename your workspace and manage its details.
- [Plans & billing](/docs/workspace/billing) — Seats, plans, and the credits model.