Roles & permissions
Every member of an ALIGN organization has one of four roles. Roles are fixed — you choose the right one when you invite someone, and an Admin can change it at any time. This page is the reference for what each role allows; inside ALIGN, the same matrix is one click away behind the Roles button on the Members & Teams page.
The four roles
Section titled “The four roles”| Role | In short |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything an Admin can, plus billing and the life of the organization. Exactly one per organization — the role only moves through an ownership transfer. |
| Admin | Manages members and settings, edits all organization content. |
| Editor | Creates, imports and publishes; edits their own content. |
| Viewer | Reads shared content in the Map Viewer profile. Free on per-seat plans — viewers never consume a seat. |
The capability matrix
Section titled “The capability matrix”| Capability | Viewer | Editor | Admin | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Viewing — View shared content (Datastore, shared and published maps, personal OGC keys) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Building — Access the Map Builder and App Builder | —¹ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Building — Use the AI assistants (AI Assistant, AI Builder, including Ask) | —² | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content — Create, import and publish; edit own content | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content — Edit others’ content | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content — Export and download Datastore content | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Members & Teams — Manage members, invitations and teams | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Organization — Organization settings (AI indexing, integrations exposure) | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Organization — Connect personal integrations (GitHub, Supabase) | — | ✓³ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Billing — View billing (plan, invoices, capacity) | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Billing — Purchase and change plans, seats, add-ons and credits | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Organization — Rename or delete the organization, transfer ownership | — | — | — | ✓ |
¹ A viewer’s surface is the read-only Map Viewer profile of the Map Builder: navigation, identify, layers and the attribute table — no editing, no saves.
² An admin can grant the AI Assistant to an individual viewer (off by default, reset when the role changes). The viewer’s AI usage is billed to the organization’s credits.
³ Limited to the providers the organization chooses to expose.
Every rule in this matrix is enforced by the ALIGN servers — hiding a button is a courtesy, the permission check is the guarantee.
Roles and seats
Section titled “Roles and seats”On per-seat plans (Team and Enterprise), only roles that write consume a seat: Owner, Admin and Editor each hold one, Viewers are free and unlimited up to a fair-use cap. This is why the role you pick at invitation time is also a billing decision.
Ownership
Section titled “Ownership”There is exactly one Owner per organization. The role is not assigned through invitations or role changes: it only moves through an ownership transfer, initiated by the current Owner from the organization settings. The recipient must accept — and on a subscribed organization, take over the payment method — before anything changes. The former Owner keeps working with the exit role they chose.
Where to manage roles
Section titled “Where to manage roles”- See the matrix: the Roles button, on the Members & Teams page (every member) and in Settings → Organization → Members & Teams (admins).
- Change a member’s role: the role select in the members table, Admin and Owner only. The member is notified of the change.
- Invite with a role: the role is chosen in the invite dialog and can be changed later.