Changing User Roles in Shelf
Change a team member's role directly from Workspace Settings. Covers the Change role dialog, what happens to their assets and bookings when you lower a role, and who is allowed to make the change.
You can change a team member's role in place from your workspace settings. The change takes effect immediately, and the user keeps their account, their history, and their place in the workspace.
Changing a Role
- Go to Workspace settings → Team → Users
- Find the user and click the Actions menu on their row
- Choose Change role
- Pick the new role: Administrator, Self service, or Base
- Click Change role
That's it. The user's permissions update straight away, and they don't need to accept anything or sign in again.
Lowering a Role
Moving someone down a level, for example from Administrator to Self service, is treated as a demotion. Because the lower roles can't own workspace-wide records, the dialog asks where those records should go before it lets you continue.
Shelf shows you exactly what will move:
- Assets, kits, categories, tags, locations, custom fields, asset reminders, and images the user created
- Bookings created for others, meaning bookings this user set up with someone else as the custodian
Pick a Transfer entities to recipient from the dropdown. The workspace owner is preselected, and any other member of the workspace can be chosen instead. If the user owns nothing, the dialog says there is nothing to transfer and you can go ahead.
The user keeps their own bookings. Only bookings they created for a different custodian move to the recipient. Their own reservations and their own drafts stay with them and remain visible to them after the change.
Raising a role, for example from Base to Administrator, transfers nothing. Nothing needs to move, so there is no extra step.
Who Can Change a Role
- Administrators and the workspace owner can change roles.
- You cannot change your own role. Ask another administrator or the owner.
- Only the workspace owner can change an Administrator's role. One administrator cannot demote another.
- Making someone the workspace owner is a separate action. The roles above do not include owner. To hand ownership to another administrator, see Transferring Workspace Ownership.
- Users managed through SSO cannot be changed here. Their role comes from the group mapping in your identity provider, so make the change there instead. See SSO with Google Workspace.
Revoking Access Instead
Revoke access, in the same Actions menu, is a different action: it removes the person from the workspace rather than adjusting what they can do. They become a Non-Registered Member (NRM), which keeps all their assets, custody records, and history intact, and you can invite them back later from the Non-Registered Members section.
Use Change role when someone stays on the team with different permissions, and Revoke access when they are leaving.
Related Articles
- Transferring Workspace Ownership: make another administrator the workspace owner, a separate and permanent action
- User Types / Roles and Their Permissions: what each role can and cannot do
- Configure What Self Service and Base Users Can See: fine-tune visibility for the lower roles
- Onboarding Your Team Members: inviting people and picking a starting role
For any questions about changing user roles, reach out to our support team at support@shelf.nu.
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