Role
A named set of Permissions you assign to colleagues to control what they can see and do in Kinabase; every organisation also has a built-in Everyone role.

s and Permission
Permission
The level of access — No Access, View Only, View & Edit or Not Enabled — granted through a Role for a specific area of Kinabase, such as records, tasks or configuration.
s control that, so users only have the access they need.

Why use roles & permissions?

Data security

Only the right people can edit or view certain collections, fields and records.

Efficiency

Team members spend less time navigating irrelevant data, and more time on what matters for their job.

Compliance

Meeting data protection standards, such as ISO 9001 or GDPR, is easier when access is tailored deliberately.

1. Roles

A role groups users with similar access needs - for example, 'Sales', 'Engineering' or 'Manager'. Roles don't override a user's type: they define day-to-day permissions, not system-level access such as System admin or Billing admin. See Understand User Types for that distinction.

Kinabase groups roles into:

System Roles - built-in roles, including Everyone, which applies to every user and can't be deleted or renamed.
Your Roles - the custom roles your organisation creates.

You can assign a user more than one role - useful for people who work across teams.

1. Add a role

Go to Settings → Organisation → Roles, click Add Role, give it a name and description, and optionally assign existing users.

2. Manage an existing role

Use the options menu (⋯) next to a role to rename it, add or remove users, or duplicate or delete it.

2. Permission levels

Permissions define what each role can do. For example, your 'Sales' role might have View & Edit on 'Leads' and 'Clients', but No Access to 'Financial Records'.

Kinabase has four permission levels: No Access, View Only, View & Edit, and Not Enabled (for features that are switched off for that role entirely).

Permissions are set per column:

Column	What it controls
Records	Viewing and editing records.
Activities	Logging and viewing activities.
Tasks	Creating and viewing tasks.
Files	Uploading and viewing files.
Configure	Changing the collection's setup - independent of whether the role can view records.
Import	Bringing data into the collection.
Export	Downloading data out of the collection.
Bulk Delete	Deleting multiple records at once.
Email	Sending emails from records.

1. Open the role

Under Settings → Organisation → Roles, select the ⋯ menu next to the role, then select Edit Permissions.

2. Set access levels

For each collection, set the level for each column that applies.

3. Save

Click Save Changes to confirm.

Fine-tuning at the collection level

For more granularity - right down to individual fields, or different rules per workflow stage - open a collection's Configure panel via the ⋯ menu in its toolbar or sidebar entry, then go to Permissions.

3. Balancing Everyone against specific roles

Kinabase includes an Everyone role by default, applied to every user in your organisation. We recommend keeping this minimal - View Only or No Access - and granting more specific access through roles like 'Engineering' or 'Sales'. This keeps a secure baseline while avoiding accidental overexposure of sensitive data.

An individual role's permissions can never be set lower than what Everyone already grants - to restrict access for a specific role, lower the Everyone baseline first.

Need more help? Ask your System admin, or contact our support team via Help & Support.

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