Roles and Permissions

The default roles

Every organization starts with six roles. You can't delete them, and you can change the permissions of all of them except the Workspace Owner.

You can also create custom roles with any mix of permissions.

When you pick a role for someone (Edit member → Team Role), each role in the list has a short line under its name saying what it can reach — for example "Everything, including billing" for the Workspace Owner, "Their reports' briefing, rewards and approvals" for a Manager, or the first few areas a custom role opens.

What each default role can do

These are the permissions a role starts with. An Admin can change them for Manager, Location Manager, River Guide and custom roles in Members → Add Member (or Edit) → Role → Manage Roles.

The Workspace Owner has every permission. Members have none.

Managers without Team Emails can still email their own direct reports (My team only) — see Team Emails.

What only an Admin or the Workspace Owner can do

Some things don't depend on permissions. Only an Admin or the Workspace Owner can:

• Create, edit or delete roles. Other roles that can open Our Team see the role list but can't change it.
• Give someone a role above Member, or change or remove the role of anyone above Member. Only the Workspace Owner can make someone the Workspace Owner or change the owner.
• Manage billing: the subscription and the Rewards Account. Ticking a billing permission on a lower role has no effect.
• Set up integrations: Slack, Microsoft Teams and HR systems (Settings → Integrations).
• Manage SMART Goals for the whole organization (Engage → Goals). Managers still approve their own reports' goals in My River → My Goals → Approvals.

Two more rules protect your permissions:

• Nobody can change their own role's permissions. An Admin can't edit the Admin role; only the Workspace Owner can.
• Nobody can change the Workspace Owner role. It always has everything.

What Managers see

Managers and Location Managers see their own people, not the whole company, on these pages:

• the Weekly briefing (Dashboard → Overview) and its Monday email,
• the Reward redemption report (Rewards → Reports) and its downloads,
• the approvals in Action Items and Rewards → Pending Rewards: reward requests, birthday and anniversary rewards, health challenge claims and River Run requests. They approve or reject only their own people's requests, never their own.

Who counts as "their people":

Who reports to whom comes from the Manager field on each member (Members → a member → Edit), or from your HR system when it's connected. A Manager with nobody reporting to them sees a short explanation instead of company data. These pages show a note such as Showing your team (8 people) so it's clear what's included.

Insights pages show the whole company to every role that has the Insights permission. The reward report's monthly email and its recipients are set by an Admin or the Workspace Owner only.

How permissions work

• A role sees an admin area only if it has that area's permission, and Give River checks the same permission again whenever they act, so the app hides what a role can't use.
• If you try something your role doesn't allow, you'll see a message like "You don't have permission to do this in this team." Ask an Admin to change your role or its permissions.
• If you open a page your role can't use (by typing its address, from an old bookmark or from a link someone sent you), you'll see "You don't have access to this page" instead. Use Go to Dashboard (or Go Home) to get back, and ask an Admin if you need access. If you can open the page but not the tab in the link, Give River opens the first tab you can use instead.
• Your organization's plan comes first: a permission does nothing for a feature your plan doesn't include.
• Permission changes take effect within a few minutes. Sign out and back in if you don't see a change.

Checking your role

Admins can see everyone's role in the Role column of the Members list. The admin areas you can open reflect your role's permissions. To change your role, ask an Admin or the Workspace Owner.