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Configure roles

As an Administrator of your organization, you can configure custom roles to add control and flexibility to the existing User, Publisher, and Administrator roles in an organization. For example, you might have some members who need access to your maps and apps but do not need to create groups and you might have other members who need to publish hosted feature layers but not hosted tile layers. You can use predefined templates to get started and further refine the privileges based on the specific workflows in your organization. Some privileges are reserved for the Administrator.

You can also assign roles in bulk to existing members.

  1. Verify that you are signed in as an Administrator of your organization.
  2. Click My Organization at the top of the site and click Edit Settings.
  3. Click Roles on the left side of the page.
  4. Create, update, or assign roles:
    • To create a new custom role, click Create Role and enter a name and description for the role. The name must be unique within your organization and can contain up to 128 characters. They are case insensitive. Administrator, Publisher, and User cannot be used as names for custom roles. The description can have up to 250 characters. Choose an existing role or template on which to base the new role. Select the privileges for the custom role and click Save Role.
      Caution:

      Some workflows require a combination of privileges. For example, to publish hosted tile layers or publish hosted feature layers, you also need privileges to create items. To publish apps from the map viewer or group pages, you need privileges to share items and create items.

    • To view information about a role, click the information button Information in the row of the role. A pop-up appears with a description and a list of privileges. The row also contains the number of members assigned to each role.
    • To edit one of your existing custom roles, click the edit button Edit in the row of the role. Change the name, description, or privileges and click Save Role. You cannot edit an Esri-defined core role (Administrator, Publisher, or User).
    • To delete one of your custom roles, click the delete button Delete in the row of the role. You cannot delete a role that is currently assigned to a member or an Esri-defined core role (Administrator, Publisher, or User).
    • To assign a role to existing members, click Assign roles. Click the name or names from the member list or click Add All to add all members in the organization. You can also search for specific members by name, group, or role. Click Next, select the new role to assign the members, and click Assign.

Templates

Templates contain a set of predefined privileges for common workflows such as consuming content and curating data. Use them as they have been configured or further customize them by adding and removing the privileges that fit the needs of your organization. The following templates are currently available.

  • Viewer—Content consumers who interact with maps and view content shared to them in groups.
  • Analyst—Map-centric staff who create maps, share across the organization or with groups, publish hosted feature layers, and edit features.
  • Author—Content creators, in addition to the privileges of the analyst, create groups and publish hosted tile layers.
  • Student—Members of a school organization who have general privileges to create content, join groups, share with groups and the organization, and edit features.
  • Publisher—Esri-defined Publisher role who, in addition to the author, can share content with the public, and make groups visible inside and outside the organization (depending on the security settings of the organization).
  • User—Esri-defined User role who can create content and groups and share them inside and outside the organization (depending on the security settings of the organization).

Recommended workflow

Before you assign custom roles to members, you may want to test that the set of privileges in the role work as you intend. A recommended workflow is to define your custom role and assign it to a account where you can verify your desired privileges. You can edit the role, if necessary, and assign it to members of your organization.

Recommended workflow for configuring roles

Assign a default role

If you create a custom role that applies to most of the members of your organization, you can set it as the default role by choosing the role from the Default role for new members drop-down list. All members added to the organization after you set the default role will be initially assigned to that role.