People and roles

Round Robin has three levels of access: member, admin, and owner. You manage them in the dashboard at app.roundrobinbot.eu, under Settings → People & roles.

A free workspace has no roles at all: no members, no admins, no owners. Everybody can do everything: create a rotation, edit or delete any rotation including one they are not in, rotate it, change the workspace settings. There is nothing on this page to set up on Free. The Free plan’s two rotations and eight people are size limits, not permissions, and apply to everybody equally.

Roles arrive with Pro. If the workspace goes back to Free, the roles you granted are kept: they do nothing while the workspace is free, and come back exactly as they were when you upgrade again.

Roles also work during a free trial of Pro, and whoever starts the trial becomes an owner. If the trial ends without a subscription, the roles granted during it are removed. Roles granted before the trial, while the workspace was paid, are kept.

What each role can do

Each level adds to the one before it.

A member can:

• Use the rotations they belong to: write the rotation notes, request cover, propose a swap, set their own availability.
• Create rotations, and manage the ones they own.
• Connect their own Google Calendar, under Settings → Calendar.

An admin adds:

• See and manage every rotation in the workspace, private ones included.
• Workspace settings, integrations (PagerDuty, Jira Service Management, GitHub), and the usage history.
• Grant and remove the admin role.
• See what the workspace is charged, and download invoices.

An owner adds:

• Change the plan and the payment method, or cancel the subscription.
• Grant and remove the owner role.
• Switch Admin access for Slack admins on or off: whether Slack admins are admins in Round Robin.

A workspace can have as many admins and as many owners as you like.

Where the admin role comes from

On a Pro workspace, there are two ways to be an admin:

• From Slack. Anyone who is an admin or an owner of your Slack workspace, or of its Enterprise Grid organization, is an admin in Round Robin. This is read live from Slack. Round Robin shows these people with a from Slack note next to their badge.
• Granted in Round Robin. Any admin can give the admin role to somebody, and take it back later.

Admin access for Slack admins is on by default. An owner can switch it off, and then only the admin and owner roles granted in Round Robin count: see Stop Slack admins being admins.

Roles are attached to the Slack account, not to a dashboard login. Somebody can be given a role before they have ever signed in to the dashboard; the access is waiting for them when they do.

Give somebody a role

1. Open Settings → People & roles.
2. In the Admins & owners card, select Add admin (or Add owner, if you are an owner) and search for anybody in your workspace. The picker searches everyone in Slack, not only the people already listed here.

You can also change somebody’s role from their own page: open them from All people and select Change role.

Every change asks for a confirmation that spells out what the person gains or loses.

Change or take away a role

The menu next to the person (in the Admins & owners card, or under Change role on their own page) lists the three levels, with their current one ticked. Pick the one you want them on:

Pick	What it does
Member	Takes their access away. They keep only the rotations they belong to.
Admin	Manage the workspace, its rotations and its people, but not the subscription. Picking this for an owner leaves them a full admin without the subscription.
Owner	Everything an admin can do, plus the subscription.

Making somebody a member again needs whoever can manage the role they hold: an owner to demote an owner, an admin to demote an admin.

You cannot:

• Remove your own role. Ask another admin or owner.
• Remove the last owner. Make somebody else an owner first. A workspace with no owner has nobody who can pay for it.

While Admin access for Slack admins is on, Member is not offered for an admin of your Slack workspace, because Slack keeps them an admin whatever their role here. Change it in Slack, or ask an owner to switch off Admin access for Slack admins.

Stop Slack admins being admins

Some people need to be admins in Slack without administering Round Robin. An owner can switch off Admin access for Slack admins for the whole workspace. From then on, being a Slack admin (of the workspace or of its Enterprise Grid organization) gives no access in Round Robin. Only the admin and owner roles granted on People & roles do.

You need: the owner role in Round Robin.

First, grant the admin role to every Slack admin who should keep it. Then:

1. Open Settings → Team settings.
2. In the Admins from Slack card, switch off Admin access for Slack admins.
3. Switch off admin access for Slack admins? tells you how many people lose admin: the Slack admins with no role granted here. Select Switch off.

Admins and members who are not owners see the switch locked, with Only an owner can change this.

With Admin access for Slack admins off:

• A Slack admin with no role granted here is a member. They leave the Admins & owners card, and the Admins filter on All people no longer lists them.
• You can make a Slack admin an admin in Round Robin, and pick Member later to take it away again.
• The admin messages about disabled API keys and stopped webhook endpoints go only to people with a role granted here.
• Any Slack admin can take ownership of a workspace that has no owner left.

Switching Admin access for Slack admins back on needs no confirmation, and every Slack admin is an admin again straight away. Each change is recorded in Settings → Workspace activity as turned off admin access for Slack admins or turned on admin access for Slack admins, with the owner who made it.

On the Free plan the setting does nothing, because everybody can already do everything. The switch is locked, with Switching this off is part of the Pro plan. An owner’s choice made on Pro is kept, and applies again when the workspace is back on a paid plan.

When somebody leaves the workspace

A role stays where it is when its holder leaves your Slack workspace. Round Robin marks them Left the workspace on this page so you can hand the role over and remove it.

If every owner of a paying workspace has left, nobody can manage the subscription. Any admin of your Slack workspace can then open Settings → People & roles and select Take ownership to recover it, whether or not Admin access for Slack admins is on. This works only when no reachable owner is left, so it cannot take a workspace from an active owner. On the Free plan there is nothing to recover, so the option does not appear.

The people list

Under the roles card, All people lists everybody Round Robin knows about in the workspace: everyone in a rotation, plus everyone holding a role. You can search by name, email, or Slack ID, and filter by role. Select somebody to see their details and the rotations they belong to.

This is not your whole Slack workspace

Somebody who has never been in a rotation and holds no role does not appear until they do.

Next steps

• Plans and billing: who can change the plan, and what Pro adds.
• Create a rotation: owners, members, and private rotations.
• How Round Robin works: role is one of the three things a rotation row tells you.