With most of the world changing the way they work, i.e., switching to remote work, keeping up with daily tasks can become a challenge. In order to maintain a high level of collaboration across various teams, projects, and day-to-day tasks, teams are increasingly turning to platform tools that allow customized approaches to team management. 

With that being said, the platform needs to have a detailed permission function to ensure that the administrators can supervise Enterprise content. Furthermore, managing permissions across your team will enable you to pinpoint exactly which team members should have access to which boards and tasks. It’s also worth mentioning that permissions will prevent your team members from accidentally or purposefully deleting content from your work boards. 

Helping your team focus on the tasks that are relevant to their work position will streamline your work process and make your team members more efficient. 

Moreover, if your company works with vendors whose employees are taking tasks from your enterprise management tool, having set permissions in place can protect your data from unauthorized viewing. 

A cloud-based platform, such as monday.com, offers permission settings across the workspace, boards, columns, and even items. Let’s take a look at how easy permission configuration is on monday.com.

Workspace permission  

If you’re an owner of a workspace on monday.com, you will want to control and tailor the actions team members can perform in the workspace. You can set up permissions tailored to the needs of the workspace itself or individual teams. Keep in mind that you will need the Enterprise plan in order to tweak workspace permissions. 

How does it work?

Permissions set on the account level will always be the primary permissions, with the ones set for workspace, for example, secondary. As a quick example, if you allow only admins to create private boards, changing that on the workspace level will not allow all users to create private boards. Such changes have to be made on the account level. 

However, you will be able to set permissions according to workspace roles (workspace owner, member, or non-member).

Setting up workspace permissions 

To quickly access the permissions for your workspace, click on the name of your workspace from the workspace dropdown menu. Next, click on the “Permissions” tab from the main workspace page.  

From here, you will be able to cycle through workspace roles and turn on or off the permissions to perform certain actions within the workspace (create board types, dashboards, workdocs, etc.). 

You can tailor your workspace and permissions with just a few simple clicks. 

If you want to know the list of available permission types across various platform areas, you can check them out in the table below. 

Workspace roles

Customizing workspace permissions will allow you to specify which role will have access to certain permissions. On monday.com the following roles are differentiated: 

• Workspace owner – creator of the workspace; or christened as an owner by an admin that created the workspace. This user will have a blue crown next to their name
• Workspace member – a user invited to the workspace with a gray crown next to their name
• Workspace non-member – a user invited to a part of the workspace (board or workdock) but not the workspace itself. Their name will not be displayed under the “Members” tab

Types of workspaces

Finally, let’s take a quick look at the types of workspaces offered on monday.com. Users can choose to have an “Open” or “Closed” workspace. But what does that mean?

Open workspace means: 

• Team members can join instantly and have open access to the workspace
• All team members will have access to all boards they have been invited to 

Closed workspace means:

• Such workspaces are marked by a lock symbol
• Only invited team members can join
• Once joined access to all private and shared boards is given if the users are invited to them
• Team members subscribed to a board in a closed workspace will have access only to the board and nothing else from the workspace

Board permission

The person that creates a board is the owner per default; however, more owners can be added through the “Invite” icon, on the upper right of your board. Clicking on the gray crown next to a user’s name will turn the crown blue, indicating that the user is now an owner of the board. 

To access board permission details, click on the three dots in the upper right corner of your board. Next, click “Board permissions” to enter the permissions center from which you can choose the type of permissions you would like to apply to your board. 

To quickly review your board permissions, click on the lock icon at the top of your board and next click on “View permissions settings.”    

Board permission types

The all-encompassing permission is the “Edit everything on the board” permission that allows all board members to change the content and the structure of the board. Next is the ”Edit the board’s content without changing its structure,” allowing non-board owners to add, delete and change statutes across the board. It is ideal if you’re looking to collaborate with an external guest. 

“Only edit items, or subitems that users are assigned to ” permission is available from the Pro plan onwards and will allow anyone who isn’t the board’s owner to edit items assigned to them. And finally, “Write updates on items only” will lock down the board so that changes can only be made by the owners of the board. 

Item viewing permissions

If you’re looking to restrict the view function to items either because of the sensitivity of information or to focus users on items assigned to them, you can do so with the help of item viewing permissions. 

To access this function, click on the three dots on the top right of your board and select “Board Permissions.” Under “View Permissions,” you will be able to set viewing permissions. 

The default option is “View everything,” which allows anyone with access to the board to see everything. “View items assigned to them in any column” will ensure that users are assigned an item under the people columns to be able to view it. Note, creators of items and board owners will be able to view all items on the board. 

Column Permissions

If you have sensitive information you don’t want users to see or change, then column permissions can help you out. To edit column restrictions, press the down-facing arrow next to the column name, click on “Column Permissions,” and choose “Restrict Column Edit.”

The names you enter after restricting column edit will give those users column edit capabilities.

Similarly, if you want to restrict view access for columns, press the down-facing arrow next to the column title and choose “Column Permissions” and “Restrict Column View.” 

The names you enter after restricting the column view will allow those users to see the column. 

Conclusion

There you have a quick overview of the permissions on monday.com. If you’re looking to pull your team together into a common workspace, allow them to focus on tasks that are assigned to them, or collaborate with external employees, you will need to understand how permissions work on monday.com.

With everything above, you will be able to set permissions for the workspace, individual teams, for boards, for columns and even items, to make your team and your organization work to the best of their abilities.