Roles and sections
Two settings decide what someone can do in ProjectSmith:
- Their seat decides which sections of the product they can use: the everyday work sections, or the planning and management sections too.
- Their role decides what they can administer: users, billing and the workspace itself.
Both are set on Settings > Users by an Owner or Admin. Neither comes from Microsoft or your sign-in directory; they live in ProjectSmith, so changing someone’s job title elsewhere doesn’t change their access here.
Seats and sections
Section titled “Seats and sections”| Section | Member seat | Planner seat |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard and inbox | Yes | Yes |
| Projects: boards, tasks, timeline | Yes | Yes |
| My time | Yes | Yes |
| Leave: request | Yes | Yes |
| Approvals: raise a request | Yes | Yes |
| Own capacity and utilisation | Yes | Yes |
| Create projects and board templates | Yes | |
| Portfolio | Yes | |
| Capacity planning and allocations for other people | Yes | |
| Approve time, decide leave and approval requests | Yes | |
| Budgets and billing plans | Yes | |
| Reports (all people) | Yes | |
| Settings: board templates, and the Autotask write-back status | Yes |
Administration (users, billing, workspace settings, the Autotask connection, regions and jobs) comes from the Owner or Admin role, on any seat. See Roles below.
A Member seat can’t be given Planner sections. To give someone planning access, give them a Planner seat. A person without a seat can’t use projects or time; Owners and Admins can still administer users, billing and settings. People without a seat still appear in capacity planning if they’re in Autotask.
The menu shows only the sections a person can use. Under Reports, someone on a Member seat sees only their own Utilisation.
| Role | What it adds |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything an Admin can do, plus single sign-on, cancelling the subscription and requesting deletion of the workspace. The person who signed up is the Owner |
| Admin | Manage users (invite, change seat or role, deactivate), billing (seat counts, card, invoices) and settings (workspace, Autotask connection, regions, jobs), whatever their seat |
| Manager | For team leads. Combine with a Planner seat to approve their team’s time, leave and requests |
| Member | The standard role. What they can use is set by their seat |
| Read only | Can look but not change anything: no time entry, no edits to tasks, no requests |
Roles and seats combine. An Admin with a Member seat can manage users and billing but can’t plan capacity; a Member with a Planner seat can plan capacity and approve time but can’t manage users.
Change someone’s role or seat
Section titled “Change someone’s role or seat”- Go to Settings > Users and select the person.
- Choose a new role or seat.
- Save. The change applies the next time they load a page.
You can’t remove the last Owner, and you can’t assign more seats than the workspace has. See Plans and billing.
Common questions
Section titled “Common questions”Why can’t someone see a page their colleague can? Compare their seats first, then their roles. The menu only lists what each person can use.
Do roles sync from Autotask or Microsoft? No. Autotask security levels and Microsoft groups have no effect in ProjectSmith.