Freshsales allows Admins to control permissions given to a user on the roles provided and create new roles based on the roles present in the organization.

How does this work?

Let us consider an example. 

As a company grows and onboards more users, there is always a need to regulate access for the team members. While a regional sales manager may need to view and edit records such as leads, contacts, accounts, and deals or reports, but may not need access to delete the records.
Similarly, a Sales Development Representatives (SDR) may need access to view and edit leads, but may not need access to delete a lead or export a lead report.  In such cases, Admins can create roles that give the right permissions to users in the CRM.  

Freshsales provides 5 roles - Restricted user, User, Manager, Admin and Account Admin. Admins can use these 5 roles as a basis to modify permissions and create customized roles that suit the nature of their organizational hierarchy. 

How to create customized roles in Freshsales?

Here’s how:

1. Go to Admin Settings > Roles .
   
   

2. Click . This opens an overlay that allows you to create a new role.
   
   

3. Give a name to the role, choose the role whose permissions you want to be cloned, and click . You will be taken to a page where you can modify all permissions.
   
   For example, let us create a Sales Development Representative (SDR). You can create an SDR by cloning the permissions from a User.
   

4. Click  to proceed.

5. Choose the relevant permissions for the role. There are currently 7 categories of permissions which users can be provided:
   

• Modules Permissions: Allows admins to configure module-level permissions for users. Admins can modify scope to one of the 4 actions:
  
  1. View - View records based on the scope
  2. Create - Create a record
  3. Edit - Edit a record
  4. Delete - Delete a record
  
  This covers Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Deals, Tasks, and Appointments. Additionally, it will also contain module permissions for any custom modules that may be created.
  
   
  In the case of our example, for a Sales Development Representative, you can choose to allow access to View, Create, and Edit a record while disabling access to delete the record.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Actions Permissions: All record-related actions such as Import, Assign, Share fall under this category.
  In the case of our example, for a Sales Development Representative, you can choose to allow access to all actions except importing and merging deal records.
  

• Sales Goals: All permissions related to Sales Goals fall under this category. Admins can modify the scope to sales goals-related features by checking/unchecking the options.
  In the case of our example, for a Sales Development Representative, you can grant the user access to view all team goals but enable access to create goals only for himself. Similarly, you can also disable access to 'Recalculate a goal'.

• Reports Permissions: All permissions related to reports fall under this category. Admins can modify the scope to reports-related features by checking/unchecking the options.
  In the case of our example, for a Sales Development Representative, you can grant access to all reports-related permission except that of Export Deal Reports. This will allow the user to create reports but will not allow them to export a deal report.
  
  

  Note: All permissions under reports are dependent on the ‘View reports’ permission. Unchecking view reports would disable reports completely for the user and hide the reports and dashboards  buttons from the user’s Freshsales application.

  
  

• Email Permissions: All permissions related to email functionality such as access to Sharing Email Templates, Setting limits for Individual emails and bulk emails fall under this category.
  All shared templates are read-only for all users other than the creator of the template. Admin can restrict the sharing scope. The following options are available under sharing scope.
  • Private - User cannot share his templates.
  • Everyone - Public templates are shared to all users/teams/territories in the account.
  • My teams - User can select specific Team names to share with all users in that team. 
  • My Territory - User can select specific territory names to share with users under those territories.

• Individual emails or the transactional emails sent out per day
• Bulk emails sent per day
  

In the case of our example, for a Sales Development Representative, you can choose to allow access to all actions except sharing email templates. This setting will hide the share option on the email template for the user. You can also set bulk and individual email limits for the user. This places a cap on the number of emails that the user can send from Freshsales.

Note: Admin can also restrain the user from sending Emails from Freshsales by unchecking the checkbox under Email custom roles.

• Sales Sequence permissions: All permissions related to Sales sequences such as access to Sales sequence page, ability to create and share sequences, and setting limits for the maximum number of emails sent via sales sequences falls under this category.
  
  In the case of our example, we can allow the Sales Development Representative to view all Sales sequences while still restricting permission to create sales sequences only for leads. Similarly, we can also choose to set the limit as 4000 emails per day as part of the Sales sequences.
  
  

  Note: A user needs ‘View’ access to be able to access the Sales sequences page. Users who do not have Sales sequences ‘View’ access will still be able to add leads/contacts to existing sequences by choosing the ‘Add to sequence’ option from the list view and the landing page of the record.

  
  
  

• SMS Permissions: All permissions related to SMS settings falls under this category. Admins can configure the permissions to send Individual and Bulk SMS by checking/unchecking the options. They can also configure the number of SMSes that can be sent per day.
  
  In the case of our example, we can allow the Sales Development Representative to send a maximum of Individual SMSes and 300 Bulk SMSes per day.
  

• User Settings Permissions: All permissions related to User Settings falls under this category. Admins can configure access to a user's access to various user-specific features such as requesting a demo, creating a support ticket, downloading the mobile app, accessing the knowledge base, etc. by checking/unchecking the options.
  

• Admin Settings Permissions: All permissions related to Admin settings falls under this category. Admins can configure access to Admin settings by checking/unchecking the options.
  
  In the case of our example, for a Sales Development Representative, you can disable access to manage users or export data and restrict their role to access only workflows and territories.
  
  

  Note: All permissions under reports are dependent on the ‘Access Admin Settings’ permission. Unchecking this option would disable Admin Settings functionality for the user and hide the buttons from the user’s Freshsales application.

  
  
• Phone Permissions: Permissions to access the phone widget. Under the phone permissions, the following are offered:

  • Access to Phone: This permission governs access to the phone module. When disabled, the user will not be able to find the phone module on the left navbar. Their access to make or receive phone calls
 will also be disabled. Similarly, they will not be able to access past phone conversations or any phone conversations from the details pages. 
    
    

  • Allow users to receive and make phone calls: When disabled this permission revokes user access to make or receive phone calls through the phone widget. However, they can still view phone conversations in the activity timeline and from the phone section. Similarly, they can view and access phone conversations made by other users but will not be able to make phone calls on their own. 
    
    

    Was under user settings. Has been moved to roles and permissions. Toggle will be a read-only moving forward. Enabling/Disabling will be at the role level moving forward.
    
    
    
    

• To modify permissions for individual fields, refer to this article.

6. Click  button to save the role.

How to add users to a customized role?

1. Go to Admin Settings > Roles > Manage Roles.
   

2. Click on . You will be presented with a Assign users overlay.
   

3. Select a user by clicking on the check box next to the user.
   

4. Click . The user will be assigned to the role.

What are the plan limits for this feature?

What happens when I downgrade from my existing plan?

When you opt to downgrade from an existing plan, here’s what will happen:

- For a Forest user downgrading to Estate:

• All your existing roles will remain. 

• You will not be able to add/edit any role unless the number of roles falls within the respective plan’s limit i.e 10 new roles for Estate. This means if you have 30 custom roles, you will not be able to add any new roles or edit the existing roles until you delete the roles to be within plan limits.

- For a Forest user downgrading to Garden or below:

• All custom roles will be disabled and the scope of the users that do not belong to admin or account admin roles will be reassigned to ‘Restricted role’ 

• All default roles will be restored to original settings.