The roles  (also called user types) assigned to a LocationHQ user define what access permission they have on LocationHQ. There are four basic roles: Standard User, Location Admin, Account Admin, and Reseller Admin (only granted by Chatmeter). In this article, learn definitions of the basic roles and how to manage roles to suit your business needs.

In this section, learn:

• Four basic user roles
• Options for role management
• Viewing details of existing roles
• Changing permission settings associated with a role
• Creating a custom role
• Applying a role to a user

Four basic user roles

The four basic roles provide the following access and related capabilities:

When initially adding a user to an account, a User Type, which is the role and associated permission settings, is assigned to the user. Usually this is done by the Chatmeter team when your account is first established, though occasionally your Account Admin may need to do this for your account.

Options for role management

How you manage your users’ roles depends on your business needs. Many Chatmeter accounts use only the basic four roles. In this section we cover options for managing roles and the procedures you’ll use.

Possible approaches are:

• Use the basic roles, editing the permission settings for those roles when necessary to fine-tune them. If you use this approach, keep in mind that when you edit a role’s settings, all users who have that role will inherit the new settings.
• Use the basic roles, and when different permission settings are needed, create custom roles to provide those permissions to users
• A hybrid approach where you usually use/edit the basic roles, but on rare occasions you create a custom role

Before creating a custom role, take a good look at the basic roles to see whether one of them will suit the needs for the users.

Viewing details of existing roles

To see the details of any of the roles on your account, follow these steps:

1. To access the User Roles page, go to Settings (cog icon) > User Roles.
   
2. Find the role you want to examine. Select Edit Role (pencil icon) from Actions to display the Settings pane. In this example, we selected Standard.
   
   

   The Settings pane is a scrollable list of permission settings for each section of LocationHQ.

Changing permission settings associated with a role

To change the permission settings associated with an existing role, a user with an Account Admin role can use the Actions icons on the Settings (cog icon) > User Roles page.

To change the permission settings associated with the role, follow these steps:

1. Login to your Chatmeter account in LocationHQ.
2. Select the Settings (cog) icon from the top navigation bar on the right.
   
3. Select User Roles from the left navigation menu.
   
4. Find the role you want to change in the list and select the Edit Role icon (pencil) from Actions to open the Settings pane.
   
5. In this example, we’ll add the Role Creation permission setting to the Account Admin role. Scroll to the System Management section in Settings.
   
6. Drag Role Creation from the Disabled section to Enabled.
   
7. Scroll to the bottom to select Save.

Creating a custom role

Follow these steps to create a custom role. In this procedure, we’ll create a role for an employee who will approve the Social posts that other employees write. We don’t want all employees with the Standard role to have this permission, so we’ll create a unique role with this capability and assign it to the responsible individual. Note that to create a custom role, you must have Role Creation enabled for your user role.

1. Login to your Chatmeter account in LocationHQ.
2. Select the Settings (cog) icon from the top navigation bar on the right.
   
3. Select User Roles from the left navigation menu.
   
4. Select + Add New Role to display the Add New Role dialog.
5. Type a name for the role. In this case, we want the individual with this role to have all the Standard permission settings, plus to be able to approve the posts and responses of users. We named the role “Social Creator and Approver” in our example.
   
6. Select Save. The role appears on the User Roles page.
   
7. Select the edit (pencil) icon next to SocialCreatorandApprover to access the Settings page so that you can select settings for the user role.
8. In another window, open the Standard role to view. For the new role, enable the settings that exist in your sample Standard role by dragging settings from Disabled to Enabled.
9. Scroll to the Social settings.
   
10. For this role, you’ll give the employee the social settings that provide the ability to both approve social posts and comments. Drag and drop to add the Approve Social Comments and Approve Social Posts settings to the Enabled section.If you wanted this employee to be able to create social posts and comments, but require their approval by the manager, you would enable Submit Social Comment Drafts and Submit Social Post Drafts only.
11. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Save. To assign this role to a user, follow the steps in Applying a role to a user.

Applying a role to a user

To apply a role to a user, granting them the access defined in the role, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Users.
2. Scroll to or search for the user whose permissions you want to edit. In the example, our employee is becoming a social media manager, so we’re changing her role to include the social approval role settings in the Social Creator and Approver role.
3. Select the edit (pencil) icon in Actions to display the Users > Edit pane.
4. On the Users Edit page, select the role from the User Type drop down.
   
   
5. Select Save.