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 — Yes — you can adjust permissions
- 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 — Yes
- 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 do get a fixed, restricted Dashboard view with the Agent Status roster and a Live phone activity card; this cut-down view is built into the Agent role and can’t be toggled like a normal analytics permission. Agents can be granted broader access via custom roles if needed.
Reader
Read-only access across the workspace.
- Editable — Yes
- Best for — Auditors, observers, occasional reviewers who shouldn’t change anything
- Typical capabilities — View conversations, view contacts, view settings (read-only), view analytics
Useful for compliance, legal, or anyone who needs visibility but no edit ability.
Analytics
Analytics-focused — the data role.
- Editable — Yes
- 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 (don’t customize)
- Supervisory / coaching responsibility — Team Lead
- Day-to-day conversation handling — Agent
- Read-only visibility — Reader
- Reporting and analytics — Analytics
- Anything else — Pick the closest match and customize, or create a custom role 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.