Project Security & Project Access Levels

Keep reading to learn more about project security or watch our quick video.

On the account level, you can adjust who can perform actions like exporting projects or viewing sensitive data like hourly rates, costs, and budgets. In addition to account security, you can also adjust edit access on a per-project basis.

You can access project security by clicking the person icon (to the left of a filter icon) when viewing a project. Once selected you will see the users who have access to a project and their specific access levels in that project. You can easily add a person or a team by searching for their name. You'll notice that there are three different project roles.

Manage

A user with manage access is given access to everything so that they can fully manage the project. This includes changing team member roles, editing important project information and deleting the project.

Edit

A user with edit access can’t change member roles, edit important project information and delete the project. Edit is the default role and only users with Manage access can change a user role.

Collaborate

A user with collaborate access can only edit task details, including progress, comments, files, tags and log hours. They can edit text formatting, color and format cells on the Gantt and sheet. A user with collaborate access can be assigned to a summary task and mark it complete. They can’t add or delete tasks and subtasks, or update assignees, costs, dates, hours or priority levels.

Guest

If your account allows you to add Guest licenses to your account, users with Guest roles will be given guest project security access to all projects that are visible to them. Guest project security provides read-only access to a project, with no visibility into any custom columns.

What’s a Project Owner and Project Manager?

A project owner is the creator of the project. The project owner is set automatically and this can’t be changed. A project can only have one project owner, and the project owner has a project security level of creator.

You can designate any user to be the project manager of a project. The project manager can be set or changed by navigating to the project settings popup or the portfolio projects page. A user with manage access can change the project manager at any time. If a user has manage access and they are not the project manager, they will retain their manage access when they become the project manager. If another user becomes the project manager, the previous project manager will keep their previous access.

How Do Account and Project Security Work Together?

It is important to note how account security and project security interact with each other when it comes to project settings, timesheets and costs.

Timesheets

• If a user is globally able to edit other users' timesheets, but they have collaborate access to a project, they will be able to edit time entries on any page for all projects.

• If a user is not able to globally edit other users' timesheets, and they have manage or edit access on a project, they will be able to edit team members' time entries on any project they have given manage or edit access for. Please note: The user will not be able to edit time entries from the timesheets page, as the dropdown is disabled; however they will be able to edit from the Gantt, List or Board.

Project Settings

• If a user is able to create and edit project settings across the account, and they have collaborate access, they can edit any important information on any project they're a member of from the Portfolio Projects page and project settings. On the Portfolio Projects page, this includes creating new charge codes, customers, status and priority for the account.

• If a user is not able to create and edit project settings across the account and they have manage access, they can only edit important information on projects where they have been given manage access on the Portfolio Projects page and project settings page.

Hourly Rates, Cost and Budget and Project Settings

The ability to see hourly rates, costs and budgets is an account security option per role. It is important to know how this specific setting works with project security roles. Simply put, if a user doesn't have this global setting turned on they won't be able to see hourly rates, costs and budgets even if they are a project manager or editor on a project.

• If the role security hourly rates, costs and budgets turned on and the user has Collaborate access, they'll see hourly rates, costs and budgets across all projects they have access to.

• If the role security hourly rates, costs and budgets turned off and they have manage or edit access, they won't see hourly rates, costs and budgets across all projects they have access to even though they have manage or edit access for a particular project.

In addition:

• If the role security for hourly rates, costs and budgets is turned on, regardless of your role, you'll see hourly rates, costs and budgets across all projects you have access to.

• If the role security for hourly rates, costs and budgets is turned off, regardless of your role, you won’t see hourly rates, costs and budgets across all projects you have access to.

If you have questions about project security, please email support@projectmanager.com.