Standard roles reference
Atender ships with 5 standard roles. Use them as-is for most teams; use them as starting points for custom roles when your needs diverge.
Owner
Full unrestricted access to everything in the workspace.
- Editable — No — this role’s permissions can’t be modified
- Deletable — No
- Sole-owner protection — The last user with the Owner role can’t be removed or deactivated; the system prevents accidentally locking out the workspace
- Best for — Founders, primary workspace administrators
There’s typically one or two Owners per workspace. More creates ambiguity about who owns what.
Team Lead
Supervisor-level access — covers everything an Agent can do, plus team management, the Monitor module, and analytics.
- Editable — No — standard roles can’t be modified
- Best for — Team leads, shift supervisors, anyone who manages other agents
- Typical capabilities — Conversation handling, view all team conversations, flag conversations for coaching, view Monitor and Analytics, add/remove team members
The default permissions cover supervision but not full settings access — that’s the Admin/Owner territory.
Agent
Frontline conversation handling. The role most users will have.
- Editable — No
- Best for — Customer-facing agents who handle conversations day-to-day
- Typical capabilities — View and reply to conversations, assign / close / reopen, tag, add internal notes, use snippets, see customer context
Agents can’t change settings, manage users, or see the full analytics suite by default. They also don’t receive broad Analytics or Dashboard access by default unless their role — or an additional role assigned to them — grants the relevant analytics permission. The Agent role holds View agent status, so agents see a Dashboard with only Live phone activity and Agent Status. A custom role gets the same Dashboard when you turn on View agent status. Grant broader analytics access through a custom role or an additional analytics-focused role when needed.
Reader
View conversations and add internal notes (cannot reply to customers).
- Editable — No
- Best for — Auditors, observers, occasional reviewers who need to see conversations and leave internal notes, but not reply
- Typical capabilities — View conversations, view contacts, add internal notes, view analytics
Useful for compliance, legal, or anyone who needs visibility and internal notes, but should not reply to customers or change settings.
Analytics
Analytics-focused — the data role.
- Editable — No
- Best for — BI analysts, leadership reviewing performance, data-team members
- Typical capabilities — View all analytics dashboards, export data, view audit logs, view conversation metadata; cannot edit conversations or settings
Pairs well with the Data Warehouse integration for tenants that pipe data into external BI tools.
Picking which role as a starting point
- Full unrestricted access — Owner
- Supervisory / coaching responsibility — Team Lead
- Day-to-day conversation handling — Agent
- Visibility plus internal notes, no replies — Reader
- Reporting and analytics — Analytics
- Anything else — Create a custom role modelled on the closest match, or build one from scratch
Custom-role naming patterns
When you create a custom role based on one of the standards, name it descriptively so future admins understand the deviation:
Agent — Billing Specialist(Agent baseline + billing-specific access)Reader — Compliance(Reader baseline + audit log access)Team Lead — without User Management(Team Lead minus user-edit permissions)
Avoid generic names like “Custom 1” or “Special” — six months later, you’ll wonder what that role was for.