As an admin, you can manage users, groups, and permissions or you can let users create their own accounts through signup with an SSO authentication provider.

To manage users head to Settings → Members. From this screen you can invite new members, search through existing members, and manage individual users roles.

Users

Roles

Admin

The admin role has permission to manage the entire Outline workspace including billing and integrations. By default the first user that signs up becomes an admin, as does the user that first enters billing details in a cloud workspace. Admins also have all the permissions of an editor.

Editor

This is the default role in Outline, editors have permission to view, create, edit, and comment on documents in any collection that is shared with them. They can also see other workspace members, user groups, and document history.

Viewer

In this limited role users have view and commenting permissions for documents in any collection that is shared with them. Viewers can have their permission upgraded to an editor through additional permissions given on individual collections or documents.

Guest

In this most limited role, users have access to no collections or documents unless explicitly shared. They also do not see document history, who’s viewing documents, or any settings screens beyond their own account preferences. Like viewers, guests can have their permission upgraded to an editor on individual collections or documents.

Management

If a user leaves your company or team you will likely want to restrict their access to Outline. We recommend suspending these users which will prevent login and immediately logout any existing sessions – however all data will be retained.

It is also possible to delete users, however this will clear all PII resulting in documents and comments attributed to “Unknown”, it will also prevent you reinstating their account at a future time.

Groups

Users can optionally be organized into groups under Settings → Groups, for example you could create a group for Engineers, Designers, Founders etc.

Groups can be given access to read or edit collections and documents. Adding a group to a collection or document gives all the users within the group simultaneous access with the chosen permission.