Municipal Portal User Permissions

Understanding User Permissions

Civify uses a role-based permission system to control what each team member can see and do within the platform. When you invite someone to your organization, you assign them a user type — and that user type determines their default access across every area of Civify, from projects and road restrictions to resident communication and org settings. User type can be changed at any point.

User Types

There are four user types:

• Org Admin — One per organization. The Org Admin has full platform access and is the only user who can manage billing, integrations, and advanced org settings. This is typically the primary account holder or platform owner.
• Admin — Full day-to-day access across the platform. Use this for department heads or anyone who needs broad management access.
• Team Member — Standard access for staff working in Civify regularly. 
• External User — Controlled access for outside parties who need temporary or limited access. Their access can be granted limited time periods. Org admins have the ability to restrict users by email domain under organization settings. 

Custom Permissions & Presets

Every user except the Org Admin can have their permissions customized individually. Rather than being locked into their user type defaults, you can adjust specific capabilities on a per-user basis to match exactly what that person needs.

To make this easier, Civify includes four built-in permission presets:

• Team Member — A starting point for internal users that includes basic access for working on projects of which they are involved.
  

• Contractor — A starting point for external construction or service contractors. Scoped to assigned content with limited editing rights.
• Consultant — A starting point for engineering firms or advisors. Broader editing access than Contractor, including collaboration, design review, and routings.
• Inspector — A starting point for third-party inspectors or oversight staff. Primarily read-focused with limited editing.

Presets can be applied to any Admin, Team Member, or External User and are fully customizable after the fact. They're a convenience, not a constraint.

Content Visibility

In addition to permissions, each user has a content visibility scope that controls how broadly they can see projects, posts, feedback, and communication history:

• Own only — Only content they created within a project (only see notifications they sent, etc.)
• Assigned — Visibility to see anything on projects they're assigned to (can see notifications sent by anyone on a project)
• Department — Everything within their assigned department (users can be assigned to multiple department)
• Org-wide — All content across the organization

Admins default to Department scope. Most other user types default to Assigned or Own only. These scopes can be adjusted per user from the Users settings page.