Content Manager User Permissions and Roles Explained

Content Manager’s flexible user permissions allows you to share your media and media management responsibilities with more people, while still retaining control.  

Depending on your organizational structure, you may have a large number of people who need access to Content Manager. When creating a user in Content Manager, you assign them permissions which define what they have access to and what is restricted.  

While you have the option to manually check off every user’s individual permissions, there are six basic “roles,” with predetermined sets of permissions – which you can also further customize as needed.  

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Important: Property vs. Brand Permissions 

To create user accounts, see the How to manage users in Content Manager article. When creating a new user, they are always created at the “tree level,” which is to say the corporate or brand level, which covers all properties. After that, you have two options for giving them access:

  • Set their user permissions at the tree level, which gives that user the same access to all properties
  • Click into each property on the left-hand panel to set that user's permissions for the properties they need to access to 

Note that we are currently working on the permission workflow in order to streamline creating users and setting permissions across properties.  

Roles Overview 

See below for an overview of each of the default roles in Content Manager. When you select the role type in the user creation process, a number of check boxes are automatically selected that fit that role description.  

You can always add or remove individual tasks from an existing role to create a custom one. Think of these roles as a template to work from, not concrete rules. 

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Basic User

Just as the name implies, this is the most basic role. In effect, it’s a read-only user. They can see and download a property’s information, folders, and the media but can’t make any changes to them. They also cannot see property reporting.  

Who it’s good for: people in your organization who only need to download and view media, such as your sales, marketing, or PR departments.  

Basic Reporting

The Basic Reporting role has access to everything a basic user has – they can see all your media and property information – as well as Content Manager’s in-app reports. Read more about what information is contained in Reports 

Who it’s good for: this role is helpful if someone at your organization needs to be able to see property media and also needs insight into overall performance and media healthsuch as a manager or executive who need to see reporting and basic functionality.  

Media Producer

This role is intended for anyone who needs to upload media to Content Manager, but should not have access to the full set of features. They can upload and edit media, but they cannot change previously uploaded media, or manage distribution. 

Who it’s good for: provide access to Content Manager directly to your third-party photographer or property staff so they can directly upload and securely upload property media, eliminating the need for a file transfer or similar. Content Manager can be set up with an approval workflow, so that you can monitor and approve media prior to distribution. To learn more, contact your Account Manager. 

Media Manager

Similar to a media producer, the media manager role can upload new media to property, and they can also edit previously uploaded media 

Who it’s good for: internal staff who need to upload and edit media for proper optimization, by adding categorization, copyright information, and so on.  

Property Manager

This role allows you to set up a user as the manager of almost every feature of a specific property, without giving them full administrative accessThey can set up property-specific information, edit distributed media, as well as uploading and adding media.  

Who it’s good for: if you want to set up a decentralized process where staff at your properties upload and manage media, this role is ideal to designate someone at the property as the point-person for that process. This role lets them edit and change property and media info, without administering distribution itself.  

Administrator

As you can guess by the name: the default for this role gives them access to everything in Content Manager. Administrators have the ability to change (add, edit and delete) property and media information, what media is and is not in distribution, as well as the ability to add and change user permissions. 

Who it’s good for: this role has the highest level of access to Content Manager, so it’s important to only grant it to users who need access to everything. This role not only administers media and users, but your Content Manager set up and settings as a whole.  

Custom Roles & More 

These roles are a template to work from. You can always select the role that is a closest match, and then customize for your brand’s use by adding or removing relevant tasks. As a reminder, users can be created either at the tree level or at the property level. Creating a user at the tree level gives them access to your full “tree.” Alternatively, users can be created at the property level, if you only want them to have access to specific properties or groups of properties.  

See the full comparison chart for an overview of the user templates here.

If you have any questions about setting up users and assigning permissions, contact your Account Manager.  

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