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Permission Groups
How to create permission groups in Agora and an explanation of which parts of the app are available to a user based on permissions granted
Maryjane Bates avatar
Written by Maryjane Bates
Updated over a week ago

Agora makes it simple to give granular access to different pages and company information within the app, depending on a user’s role within your company. You can start by setting up your permission groups in the settings hub here: Permissions Settings

What is a Permission Group?

Permission groups allow you to control access to different areas of your company's Agora account. Only an Owner has the ability to modify existing permission groups or add new groups.

When you add a new user to Agora, you’ll need to first assign them to a permission group. This is the configuration that controls what a user can access in the app. A best practice is to create your permission groups before assigning new users.

Creating Permission Groups

You can create as many permissions groups as you want with different configurations of access. By default, you’ll start off with three different groups: Owner, Recruiter, and Manager.

  • The Owner permission group cannot be modified — think of this as a super-admin. An owner can do and see everything in the application. Only an Owner will be able to create new permission groups or add new users.

  • The Recruiter permission group is the default permission group most companies assign to their recruiters. By default, a Recruiter will be able to create new offers and view/edit only their own offers. They will also be able to edit offer settings. Read more about Offer Settings below.

  • The Manager permission group is used to grant people managers access to limited information about their direct reports in the app based on HRIS and org chart information. Read more about Manager Permissions here.

💡 To create a new Permission Group, go to the Permission Settings page in Agora and click the purple icon that says “New permission group”

🔍 Click "View as" next to a permission group to confirm which parts of the app that group has access to. We also explain this below!

What is controlled by a permission group?

Name & Description

Give the permission group a unique, descriptive name. When you are assigning an admin to a permission group, you will select the permission group by the names you have used.

An optional description column allows to add more context for who belongs in that group, or what it does. This is only there to make it easier to remember how the permission group is configured without diving into each setting.

Offers

This controls access to create, view, and modify offers. There are three levels of access:

  • None: A user with this level of permission will not see the Offers tab, and will not be able to create, view, or modify any offers at your company.

  • Manage Offers: This level of permission will allow users to create, view, and modify only their own offers.

  • Manage Offers and Reports: This level of permission will allow users to create, view, and modify their own offers as well as approve offers letters where the Assignee (offer creator) is one of their direct reports. Read more about Direct Report Permissions.

  • Manage All Offers: These users can create, view, and modify all offers at your company with no restrictions.

Offer Settings

This controls access to settings related to the configuration of offer letters including:

  • Equity Communication page - where you determine how equity is expressed in your offers, which types of equity are available in offer creation, as well as the default vesting schedule for offers.

  • Email Settings page - where you customize the email template you would use to email candidates their offer letter from Agora (optional). This is also where you add custom email senders.

  • Legal Documents page (DocuSign must be enabled first) - This is where you view the variable text fields available for your legal documents and can upload DocuSign templates. Read more about the Docusign integration.

  • Offer Preferences page - Where you control security, compensation projections, and offer approvals

Market Data

This controls access to some compensation data including:

  • Company Data - The user will be able to view all company ladders that have been created, with no access to compensation bands.

  • Market Data - If your company has already imported your employees to Agora (through HRIS sync or CSV upload) and completed the employee mapping exercise, you may request access to Agora’s market benchmark data as well as our partner data through Payscale.

Employee data

After importing your employee data (via spreadsheet, HRIS, or Cap Table integration), there will be a lot of highly sensitive data in Agora which you will need to keep privileged. 🚧 Please proceed with caution in granting this access. 🚧

What do we mean by “employee data”?

  • Employees’ names, emails, roles, locations, and payzones

  • Employees’ base salaries, equity shares granted, the % left to vest, and their fully vested date

  • Employees’ salary histories, bonuses, and commissions

  • Reports/analytics including total headcount, yearly salary spend, equity vesting data, and compa ratios

  • Full access to settings for your Employee Portal and the ability to invite employees to the portal.

  • Access to employee mapping and data management (i.e. changing which roles employees are mapped to and how some compensation information is displayed.)

There are three levels of Employee Data access:

  • None: Users will not be able to see any employee data.

  • View and Edit Reports: Users who are also people managers will be able to view and edit all data for everyone in their reporting tree - both their direct and indirect reports. This information will be visible to the employee in their Employee Portal.

  • View and Edit All Employees: Users in this group will be able to see and manage all employee data in Agora. Please review the full list above.

Company Settings

This controls the access to modify all settings relating to the company information within the settings hub, including:

  • Company billing and address information

  • Company equity program information (General settings, FMV, Preferred, Projections, and FAQs). Read about Configuring Equity Settings.

  • Access to create and edit Benefits and Benefits Packages

  • Edit your company’s Offer Letter branding and About sections

  • Access to company compensation management settings, including setting up pay zones and the ability to import/export your comp bands.

Organization Structure

This permission controls a user’s ability to access career ladder information within Agora. This includes Ladders and Competencies. Organization Structure permissions does not include the ability to see compensation band information.

There are three levels of access:

  • None: Cannot access any career ladder information, and will not see the Company Data tab.

  • View: Will be able to view ladder and competency information, but not modify it.

  • Edit: Will be able to create new ladders, edit existing ladders, and edit competencies.

Offer Approval

This permission controls in a user will have the ability to send offers without approval and approve other offers besides their own. This will only be applicable if approvals are turned on in your offer preferences. When an offer needs approval all users who have this permission enabled, including Owners, will receive an email notification with a link to approve the offer. However only one of the approvers will need to approve the offer.

There are three levels of Offer Approval permissions:

  • None: cannot approve offers

  • Approve reports' offers: can approve offers of an Assignee (offer creator) that is one of their direct or indirect reports. Note that it is not possible to allow for a hiring manager that is not the direct manager of the offer creator to approve offers.

  • Approve All Offers: Will be receiving approval notifications for all offers.

Compensation Bands

This setting dictates the generic permissions needed to access compensation band information within the Jobs section of the app. This controls the user’s ability to view and edit compensation band information within Agora.

However, we also allow for explicit permissions to be set at the user level. For each individual you grant access to compensation band information, you are able to define exactly which individual ladders and levels they will have visibility into. Learn more about user level permissions.

  • Note: The compensation band permission requires that the user also have Organization Structure permissions.

There are four levels of access:

  • None: Cannot see any compensation band information by default.

    • Note: Select this when you plan to use user level permissions to grant an individual access only to specific bands.

  • View All: Can see all compensation bands but cannot make changes.

  • View reports' bands: Allows a user to view the compensation bands only at the exact level and ladder one of their direct reports has been mapped to.

  • Edit all: Full access to create, edit, and view all compensation band information

Please read more about how user level permissions work and see examples.

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