Sometimes you don't want your entire team to have access to everything within Intercom— that's why we've made it easy to give certain members of your team access to certain data and features in Intercom.
You can edit the permissions of each teammate in the Settings > Workspace > Teammates section of your workspace.
Use this article to understand what each permission controls, edit permissions for individual teammates or in bulk, and manage workspace security. To make changes to a teammate's permissions, you'll need the "Can manage teammates, seats, and permissions" setting enabled on your own account.
What do the permission settings control?
For each teammate you can choose different permissions depending on their needs in the workspace. The table below lists every available Intercom permission, grouped by section, with a description of what each one controls.
Section | Permission | Description |
Copilot | Usage | Copilot included usage allows each teammate to use Copilot in up to 10 conversations or tickets per month. |
Conversation access | Conversation access | Restrict teammate’s access to conversations according to assignment. Learn more
Note: Conversations a teammate does not have access to will show as redacted, but a teammate will always be able to access conversations assigned directly to them. |
Settings | Can manage general and security settings | Without this, teammates cannot access some of the General settings, create Custom Objects and all of the Security settings.
This includes the following settings:
General settings
Security settings
|
| Can manage teammates, seats and permissions | Without this, teammates cannot access the Teammates section in Workspace settings, including Roles and Activity logs.
This includes the following settings:
|
| Can edit own profile | Controls who can edit their own public profile and avatar. |
| Can edit other teammates' profiles | Controls who can edit other teammate’s public profile and avatar. |
| Can manage teams | Without this, teammates cannot access the Teams section in Inbox settings. |
| Can change status | Without this, teammates cannot edit other teammate's away status |
| Can access Messenger settings | Without this, teammates cannot access the Messenger section in the Channels settings.
This includes the following settings:
|
| Can manage Billing settings | Without this, teammates cannot access the Billing section of a workspace and cannot delete a workspace.
This includes the following settings:
|
| Can manage usage alerts | Without this, teammates cannot modify the usage reminder section of a workspace.
This includes the following settings:
|
| Can manage hard limits | Without this, teammates cannot modify the usage limit section of a workspace.
This includes the following settings:
|
| Can access Proactive Support settings | Without this, teammates cannot access Proactive Support settings.
This includes the following settings:
Note: This permission is independent of the Proactive Support Plus add-on. It can be enabled or disabled regardless of which add-ons are active on the workspace. |
| Can edit Default sender address | Without this, teammates cannot edit the default sender address within Email settings. |
Data and security | Can access workspace data | Without this, teammates cannot access Data settings, including:
|
| Can access people, companies, and account lists | Without this, teammates cannot access workspace Contacts, restricting access to users, leads, companies, accounts, and conversations.
|
| Can access lead and user profiles | Without this, teammates cannot access individual lead, user, or company profiles. They will either be blocked from moving off their current screen (Inbox or Contacts) or redirected to their inbox if they arrive from a URL link. |
| Can export lead, user, company data | Without this, teammates cannot export people or company data from the Contacts List, they also cannot export most Reporting comma-separated values (CSV) files. |
| Can import contacts, companies and tickets | Without this, teammates cannot import new data via CSV from Contacts, or via Mixpanel or Mailchimp apps, or from Zendesk. |
| Can manage tags | Without this, teammates cannot create new tags via the Inbox, or from Tags settings.
Note: They can still tag conversations. |
| Can view all teammate and team details | Without this, teammates cannot see the personally identifiable information (PII) of teams they are not part of, or of teammates they do not share a team with. Those teams and teammates will be shown as “Redacted”.
Note: The ability to tag lite users also requires this permission. This permission is also required to reassign conversations to team inboxes you're not a member of. Without it, the option to select other team inboxes will be limited, even if other permissions are enabled. |
Apps and integrations | Can access developer hub | Without this, teammates cannot access Developer Hub in the workspace. |
| Can install, configure and delete apps | Without this, teammates can visit the app store but must request an app be installed from an admin in a dropdown list. |
| Can trigger data connector actions | Controls the ability to run data connectors manually within the Inbox. |
Knowledge | Can create and manage content in Knowledge | Without this, teammates can view content in Knowledge, but cannot create, import, or update content. |
| Can create and update draft Help Center articles | Without this, teammates can view public articles in Knowledge, but cannot create or or save changes to any public articles. |
| Can manage and publish Help Center articles | Without this, teammates cannot publish or unpublish Help Center articles, set the Help Center live, or manage Help Center settings and collections. |
Automation | Can manage Automation settings and inbound Workflows | Without this, teammates cannot create, edit, delete, duplicate, set live, or pause inbound workflows, nor can they change automation settings. They also cannot make changes to Fin Guidance. However, they can still tag existing workflows. |
| Can manage outbound Workflows | Without this, teammates cannot create, edit, delete, duplicate, set live, or pause outbound workflows. However, they can still tag existing workflows. |
| Can view Fin and Automation settings | Without this, teammates cannot access the Fin AI Agent tab, which includes:
Note: This still gives teammates permission to create/update resources like Batch Test questions and Simulations. |
Proactive Support | Can bulk message visitors, leads and users | Without this, teammates cannot set any content-type live from Proactive Support, but they can still reach out individually from Contacts.
Note: Setting any Outbound Workflows live also requires the "Can manage Outbound Workflows" permission. |
| Can publish News | Without this, teammates can create and edit News Items but they cannot set any items live. |
| Can send outbound emails from custom email addresses | Without this, teammates can neither create an email template in Proactive Support with a custom address sender, nor start a conversation via the Inbox composer (Inbox > New conversation) from a custom address. |
| Can export Proactive Support data | Without this, teammates cannot export audiences or content performance in Proactive Support. |
| Has to use default rules in new messages (only available in Custom Roles) | Without this, teammates can set any audience filters for any content type.
|
| Can set Product Tours, Tooltips, and Checklists live | Without this, teammates cannot set a product tour live for end users.
They can still create and save product tours as drafts, and edit existing product tours. |
| Can set Surveys live | Without this, teammates cannot set a survey live.
They can still create and save surveys as drafts, and edit existing product tours. |
| Can manage Surveys data | Without this, teammates cannot view the Survey Responded stats, or the Survey Responses report, or export Survey data as a CSV. |
Inbox | Can access real-time dashboard | Without this, teammates cannot access the Inbox dashboard. |
| Can reassign conversations and edit lead or user ownership | Without this, teammates cannot reassign conversations from another teammates' inbox, or edit lead ownership via the sidebar or profile. |
| Can reassign conversations when going away | Control who can set their status to "Away and reassign". This only applies when reassigning someone else’s conversation. |
| Can assign conversations to themselves | Without this, teammates cannot assign a conversation to themselves (including via the Inbox assignee picker, Command-K, as a side effect of replying, bulk assignment, macros, or the REST API). Automated routing, workflows, and round-robin or load-balanced assignment are unaffected. |
| Can remove themselves as the assignee of a conversation | Without this, teammates cannot unassign themselves from a conversation. Automated routing and assignment are unaffected. |
| Can create conversations | Controls the creation of new conversations, tickets, and phone calls. Without this, teammates cannot use the "Create new" menu to start any new items in the Inbox. |
| Can manage conversation participants | Controls who can add or remove participants on conversations. Without this permission, teammates cannot add new people to a conversation or remove existing participants. |
| Can merge conversations | Controls the ability to merge conversations. Without this, the option to merge conversations will not be available to the teammate. |
| Can delete replies from a conversation | Without this, teammates cannot delete replies from any conversation they can access. |
| Can delete notes from a conversation | Without this, teammates cannot delete internal notes from any conversation they can access. |
| Can change ticket type | Without this, teammates cannot change the ticket type of an existing ticket using the ticket type dropdown in the ticket sidebar. |
| Can export conversation transcripts | Without this, teammates cannot export the conversation transcript from the Inbox as a .txt file. |
| Can edit notes | Without this, teammates cannot edit notes on conversations or tickets they can access. |
| Can manage views | Without this, teammates can view existing Inbox views but not create new views or edit existing ones. |
| Can enable undo send delay | Controls whether the undo send delay option appears in the Inbox composer. Without this permission, teammates won't see the undo send delay option when sending messages. When enabled, teammates can choose a delay of 5s, 10s, 20s, or 30s — a visual Undo option shows on screen. Works in direct messages, channels, and threads. |
Workload Management | Can manage rules | Without this, teammates cannot access the Settings > Inbox > Rules |
| Can manage Balanced assignment and Workload management | Without this, teammates cannot access Workload management in Inbox Assignments settings, nor select the Balanced assignment method when editing Teams settings.
This permission also controls editing the team reply time setting and managing office hours for individual team inboxes. Without it, the option will be greyed out. |
| Can manage Round Robin assignment | Without this, teammates cannot select the Round Robin assignment method when editing Teams in settings. |
| Can manage auto away mode | Without this, teammates cannot access the Automatic away mode configuration in Inbox settings. More info |
| Can manage teammate presence | Without this, teammates cannot access the Teammate presence configuration in Inbox settings that controls whether the Inbox displays any additional teammates are viewing a conversation at a given moment. |
Phone | Can listen on calls | Without this, teammates cannot monitor live calls, coach teammates privately (Whisper), or join calls as an active participant (Barge). |
| Can delete call recordings | Without this, teammates cannot delete call recordings. |
Macros | Can manage shared macros | Without this, teammates can only create macros for their own personal use in Settings > Inbox > Macros (they will not be available to other teammates). |
| Can create macros | Controls who can create shared macros that are available for other teammates to use. |
| Can edit macros | Controls who can edit shared macros. |
| Can delete macros | Controls who can delete shared macros. |
| Can use personal macros | Controls the ability to create and use personal macros within the Inbox. |
Reports | Can access Reports | Without this, teammates cannot access workspace Reports including outbound reporting. |
| Can share Reports | Without this, teammates cannot export conversation or ticket data from the Data export section in Reports.
|
| Can export CSV | Without this, teammates cannot export conversation data from the Data export section in Reports.
Note: "Can access Reports" permission is required to access this feature. |
| Can access Chart drill-in | Without this, teammates cannot access drill-in data from Custom reports. |
| Can manage Workspace folders | Without this, teammates cannot control which folders and reports are visible in other teammates' individual workspaces. |
| Can view/edit/delete Custom reports | Without one of these, teammates have gradually increasing access to custom reports, ranging from; no access at all, view only access, view and edit existing reports and charts, or all of the above plus deletion permission. |
Note:
Teammates without any Proactive Support permissions will still be able to access Proactive Support in the workspace but won't be able to set content live.
In order to add apps to Messenger Home teammates need "Can manage workspace data and workload management" as well as "Can access Messenger settings".
Test workspaces inherit teammates and permissions from the main workspace. To add new teammates or update permissions, switch to the main workspace.
How to edit permissions
Can I edit my own permissions?
You cannot manage your own permissions or edit your own permissions access. This is a security measure to ensure every workspace has at least one teammate with admin permissions.
If you need your own permissions changed, ask a teammate who has the "Can manage teammates, seats, and permissions" permission to update them for you.
We recommend keeping at least two teammates with full permissions to ensure continuity and security.
How do I edit another teammate's permissions?
From Settings > Workspace > Teammates, simply click on the teammate's name you want to update, then select their individual permissions and click Save changes.
Navigate to Settings > Workspace > Teammates in Intercom.
Locate the teammate's account and hover over their name.
Click Edit and toggle the specific permissions on or off as needed.
Review and confirm changes.
Changes will be logged and visible in the workspace in the Teammate Activity Logs.
Permission changes take effect immediately after saving — the teammate does not need to log out and back in. The change is recorded in Teammate Activity Logs.
When assigning admin-level permissions, ensure the following permissions are enabled:
"Can manage general and security settings"
"Can manage teammates, seats, and permissions"
How do I edit permissions for multiple teammates at once?
To edit the permissions for multiple teammates, hover over their profile picture and check the box that appears. Then click Edit permissions.
Choose the permissions for the selected teammates — the same options available when editing an individual teammate — then click Save changes.
Permission changes take effect immediately for all selected teammates — no log out required. All changes are recorded in Teammate Activity Logs.
The teammates selected will be listed at the top of the page throughout this process, as shown in the screenshot.
Tip: If you're setting custom permissions, review the Teammate Activity Logs to detect unexpected behavior like configuration changes or data exports. See Review actions taken in your workspace with Teammate activity logs.
Every workspace also includes a system operator account (e.g. operator+{workspace-code}@intercom.io) used for automated actions like deprovisioning teammates. To audit its activity, go to Settings > Teammate Activity Logs and filter by the operator account.
What to do if admin access is lost
If no admin exists in the workspace: Add a new teammate in Settings > Workspace > Teammates, assign them the "Can manage teammates, seats, and permissions" permission, and have them restore your access.
If no one has complete access: A teammate with permission to manage teammates must go to Settings > Workspace > Teammates, select a teammate to edit, enable all permissions, and save the changes to grant full access.
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