Overview: Roles

A role is a group of users associated with a set of user privileges. Roles are an efficient way to manage permissions for groups of users as they classify users with similar characteristics and responsibilities. Roles also determine which parts of Sitefinity a user can view.

Sitefinity has built-in roles created by default, which have certain permissions assigned to them. For example, Authors, Editors, or Designers. You can delete these roles, if you do not need them. To view the permissions assigned to each default role, in the main menu, click Administration » Roles. To view the permissions of a default role, click its Permissions link. If a role has permission for a certain action, the system displays a green checkbox in column Allow.

You can define the set of privileges for each role and assign users to roles. All users assigned to a given role inherit the permissions defined for this role. A user can be assigned zero, one, or many roles.

Following is a list of special roles:

• Administrators role
  The Administrators role is automatically created with each new Sitefinity project. It is granted full global, content modules, and sitemap permissions.You cannot:
  • Restrict the permissions granted to the Administrators role.
  • Delete the Administrators role.
  • Delete the last user in the Administrators role.
• BackendUsers role
  The BackendUsers is a role for users who have access to the backend. It is possible to have registered users, who can authenticate, but do not have access to the backend, such as registered forum users. These users do not belong to the BackendUsers role. All other users that can access the backend belong to this role.
  You cannot:
  • Restrict the permissions granted to the BackendUsers role.
  • Delete the BackendUsers role.
  • Delete the last user in the BackendUsers role.
• Authenticated
  These are registered users that have supplied their credentials. These users can belong to any role. Authenticated can be users that do not have access to the backend.
• Anonymous
  These are users that are not registered and have not supplied credentials. For example, unregistered users that are browsing the frontend.
• Everyone
  Everyone is a role that includes all users, including the Anonymous users.
• Users role
  This is a built-in role that serves as a placeholder. The role has no granted permissions. You can change the permissions of the role, or you can use it to filter the grid for users who have no permissions.

Roles page

• To open the Roles page, in the main menu in the upper part of the screen, click Administration » Roles.
• To change the view of the list of roles, in the toolbar of Roles page, click one of the following:
  • Click Grid.
  • Click Boxes.