Understanding User Roles and Permissions in Atarim

Atarim organises access around one core distinction: are you on the agency side or the client side of a relationship? Five roles cover both sides.

On top of the roles sit two further layers — a workspace-wide capability grid, and per-project access controls. Understanding which layer is responsible for what is the difference between fixing an access problem in thirty seconds and hunting through the wrong screen.

In this guide you'll learn what each role can do, where to change someone's role, how the two permission layers work, and what a Website Owner account can and can't reach.

The Five Roles

Everyone with an Atarim account holds exactly one of these. Guests sit outside them: a guest has no account and comments on a project through its link, giving a name and email address.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Knowing Which Layer Controls What

Three separate layers decide what someone can do. Most access confusion comes from checking the wrong one, so it’s worth learning the split before anything else.

What the Workspace Permissions screen can’t change

The grid covers in-task capabilities. It does not cover which sidebar items a role can see — those are set at account level and don’t appear on that screen at all.

Setting up boards is decided by role in the same way. Only Owners and Administrators can create, rename and delete boards and their columns. Team Members can open the boards and move cards on them.

Roles are also resolved per site

There’s a fourth layer that only surfaces occasionally. Your effective role is worked out per website rather than once for the whole workspace: if you own a site you’re treated as an Administrator on it, otherwise Atarim uses the role you were given on that specific site. Where no role exists for you on a site, it falls back to Collaborator — the most restricted option.

Step 2: Viewing and Changing Someone’s Role

Roles are managed from the People screen, which lists everyone in the workspace with their role beneath their name.

Instructions:

1. Select People in the sidebar to open Team Management.
2. Select a person’s name to open their profile. Four tabs appear: User Settings, Activity Feed, Assigned Projects, and Pending Invites.
3. Use the User Settings tab to change their role, adjust notification preferences, or revoke access.
4. To bring someone new in, select Add Team Member.
5. Choose their role as you invite them: Administrator or Team Member.

Only these two roles can be assigned from this invite. Collaborators are invited to a single project from its Share panel instead, as described in Step 4.

Step 3: Setting Workspace-Wide Capabilities

Beyond the broad role definitions, the Workspace Permissions screen lets you override specific capabilities per role. The grid runs capabilities down the left and all five roles across the top.

Instructions:

1. From the main dashboard, select Settings.
2. Under Workspace, select Workspace Permissions.
3. Find the capability you want to change. Where one has an information icon, hover it to read exactly what it controls.
4. Select or clear the checkbox under the role you want to change.
5. Confirm it saved — an Updating… badge appears beside the heading, followed briefly by a Saved! badge.

What a Clarity Test actually is

One capability on that grid is worth explaining, because the name is easy to misread. A Clarity Test is an AI check that scores how clear a task is and suggests how to make it easier to action — it works on the wording of the task, not on the website.

Step 4: Controlling Access to a Single Project

Every project has its own access controls, separate from the workspace-wide defaults. They live in the project’s Share panel, which has three tabs.

Instructions:

1. Open the project and select the share option.
2. Use Team Members to add internal staff to this project.
3. Use Guests and Clients to invite someone by email address. Add an optional note explaining why you’re inviting them, then send.
4. Use Manage Access to set who can view the project.
5. Under General Access, choose between Anyone with the link and Only people with access.
6. Review the People with Access list, and remove anyone who no longer needs it.

Step 5: Understanding Website Owner Accounts

Website Owners are the clients you manage. Each one gets their own Atarim login and their own client workspace (Beta), rather than being a guest on your projects. While you fund a client, their AI work draws on your credit pool, up to the monthly budget you set. If a client later pays for themselves, they move to the Website Owner plan.

Clients are added with Add a Client on the Projects screen, which opens Add new on the Add a client option. You set their monthly budget in the same step.

Before you start

The client’s email address, and a monthly budget for them of at least 1,000 credits. If the budget is more than your pool covers right now, Atarim still adds the client and asks about a top-up afterwards.

Sending the invite

Only the email address is required. The brand name is optional, and you can assign projects later.

Instructions:

1. From the Projects screen, select Add a Client.
2. Add new opens on the Add a client option.
3. In Client email, enter the client’s address. It takes one address.
4. In Brand name, enter the business name their work runs under, such as the company on the invoice.
5. Leave Notify the client ticked to email them an invite under your brand, or clear it to invite them later.
6. Set the Client budget, from 1,000 to 10,000 credits a month.
7. Optionally, select projects under Assign projects to this client.
8. Select Add client. A Client invited. message confirms it, and the client appears on Projects as a pending folder.
9. To send the invite link yourself, open the folder’s ⋮ menu and select Copy Link. To change the budget later, use Set Budget in the same menu once the client has accepted.

What’s included

They keep the collaboration essentials: AI chat with Claro, AI reviews and approvals, the Chrome extension, the WordPress plugin, image and URL-based collaboration, image annotations, responsive mode, design versions, page approvals, attachments, and the ability to edit and delete their own comments. While you fund a client, their AI work stops when they reach the budget you set, and a client with no budget can’t use AI chat.

What’s not included

Agency-side features are outside the plan. A Website Owner account has no access to white labeling, analytics and reporting, workflows and automations, forms, multiple workspaces, Kanban boards, the shared email inbox, canned responses, time tracking, task tags, project stages, integrations, activity logs, or the Atarim API.

Some task-level features are also excluded, and these are the ones a client will notice first. Website Owners cannot set task status or priority, and don’t have the task inbox, internal tasks, notes, starred tasks, list view, task filters, or the Clarity Test.

FAQs

Conclusion

Knowing which role someone holds tells you most of what they can see and do. The five roles cover both sides of the agency-client relationship, and the capability grid on top lets you adjust specific abilities without changing anyone's role.

The one thing worth carrying away is the three-layer split. Role decides which screens exist for someone, workspace capabilities decide which controls appear inside them, and project access decides which projects they apply to at all. Almost every "why can't they do this?" question resolves once you know which of the three you're looking at.