SW05610 - Member Roles: Introduction to Member Roles

Shared Workspace controls access and administration responsibilities by assigning each member with a custom role. Each custom role enables

  • groups of people to have the same permissions and access within a Room
  • members to carry out administration responsibilities specific to that role.

All custom roles are based on three standard roles.

  • Coordinator - this provides the member with full access to all the content in the Room and enables the member to manage Room settings and membership, and to control access to the items it contains.
  • Participant - this allows members to create new items, and read and edit other members’ items as allowed by the access control settings for any particular item SW07410.
  • Observer - this provides members with read-only access to information within a Room.

Mandatory custom roles

All Rooms have the following three mandatory custom roles:

  • HMRC (BAO) - based on the Co-ordinator standard role.
  • HMRC (Participants) - based on the Participant standard role.
  • HMRC (Observers) - based on the Observer standard role.

In addition, Customer Rooms SW06150 have the following mandatory custom roles for each Customer Organisation in the Room:

  • Customer Organisation name (CNC) - based on the participant role.
  • Customer Organisation name (Participants) - based on the participant role.
  • Customer Organisation name (Observers) - based on the observer role.

Before a Customer Organisation is added to a Room the three mandatory custom roles for that Customer Organisation must be created.

If the Organisation is being added -

  • when the Room is requested, the Live Service Support Team will create the roles
  • at a later stage, the HMRC Business Authorising Officer (BAO) responsible for the Room must create the roles.

Optional custom roles

The majority of Room members will be assigned a mandatory custom role. However optional custom roles can be created by a BAO, for instance to further restrict access to certain files or items, or for ease of issuing alerts SW07540.

For example, if a folder is created that only HMRC Managers need access to, a BAO may decide to create a Manager role “HMRC Managers (Participants)”, add all managers to this role and only allow members of this role to access the folder SW07410.

Examples of possible roles are:

  • HMRC Quality Assurance (Participant) - based on the participant role
  • A UK Business Administration (Observer) - based on the observer role
  • A Company Auditors (Observer) - based on the observer role
  • A UK Company Management (Participants) - based on the participant role

There is no limit on the number of custom roles a BAO can create in a Room. The number will depend on the purpose of the Room, the type of information held and the size of the membership.

Notes

  1. All HMRC Roles must be preceded by the letters HMRC.
  2. Optional custom roles must never be created that will include both HMRC and Customer members for example Joint Managers (Participants) SW05620.
  3. Care must be taken when a member requests to change their role SW05630 and SW05640. The new role may give the member access to information that they do not have authority to view.

As an alternative to changing a role the BAO can set additional access rights on specific items to enable a member to gain access to the additional information they need SW07410. 4. When naming a role the BAO must follow the guidance at SW05620.