Invite team members and manage who has access

An organisation is where your servers, sites and settings live, and the Members page is where you decide who can work in it. You invite a person by email address, give them a role that says what they may do, and optionally put them in teams that say which servers and sites they see. They accept with one click and appear in the list.

This article covers sending an invitation, what happens on the other side, and the everyday jobs afterwards: changing a role, banning someone temporarily, removing them for good, and the Manage page of a member. Roles are explained in Roles and permissions and teams in Limit members to certain servers and sites.

Before you begin#

• Permission to manage members. The Invite member button, the role menus and the Manage links only appear for members whose role includes members:manage. Owners and admins have it. Everybody else sees the list but cannot change it.
• The person's email address. The invitation works only for the account that uses exactly that address. Ask which one they sign in with.
• A role in mind. An admin cannot hand out the Owner role. If you are unsure, start with Viewer or Developer and change it later.
• Room on your plan. Plans list how many team members an organisation can have. If your plan caps the total number of members across all your organisations, SrvYard refuses the invitation with a plan limit message. See Plans and limits compared.
• Optional: teams. If you want the new person to see only some servers and sites, create the teams first. Teams and custom roles are part of the Business plan.

1. Open the Members page#

Choose Settings in the sidebar, then Members in the settings list. The page is titled Team members.

1. Invite member. Opens the invitation panel (step 2).
2. Pending invites. A table of invitations that have not been accepted yet: the Email, the Role, when the invitation Expires and a Revoke link that cancels it. The table only appears when there are open invitations.
3. Role. The role of each member as a menu. The owner's role is shown as plain text because it cannot be changed here.
4. Manage. Opens the page of that member (step 5). The three-dot menu next to it is described in step 4.

The table shows each member's Auth method (how they sign in, for example Password), their Status (Active or Suspended) and the date they Joined. Use the search box to find a person by name or email, and the Status filter to show only suspended members.

2. Send the invitation#

Press Invite member. A panel titled Invite team member slides in. "They'll get an email with a link to join."

1. Email. The address of the person.
2. Role. The menu lists the built-in roles and your own custom ones. The line below it describes the role you have selected, for example "Full access to servers and sites, but can't create new servers." for Developer. The panel starts with Developer.
3. Teams. Tick the teams the person should join. "Teams decide which servers and sites they see." The block only appears when the organisation has teams. Leave every box empty and the person joins no team, which means they see only what they create themselves, unless their role is allowed to see everything.
4. Send invite. Sends the email and adds the person to Pending invites.

What to expect:

• The invitation is valid for seven days. The Expires column shows the exact date.
• Inviting an address that already has an open invitation does not create a second one. It replaces the first and starts the seven days again, so it is also the way to resend an invitation or change its role.
• Inviting someone who is already a member fails with "That person is already a member."
• You can cancel an invitation any time with Revoke. The link in the email stops working.

3. What the other person sees#

The email contains a link to a page titled Team invitation, which says which organisation has invited them and as which role.

• Signed in with the invited address. They see Accept invitation. One click adds them to the organisation with the role you chose and to the teams you ticked, and opens it.
• Not signed in, or signed in with another address. The page says "Sign in as" followed by the invited address and offers a Sign in button. After signing in they return to the invitation. Someone who has no SrvYard account yet creates one with that same address first.
• Expired or revoked. The link no longer works. Send a new invitation.

If the organisation requires two-factor authentication, the new member has to turn it on before doing anything else. See Create, rename and switch organisations.

4. Change a role, ban or remove a member#

Everything in this step happens on the Members page.

The Role column is a menu. Pick another role from the list and the change applies immediately; only roles you are allowed to hand out are offered, and every change is recorded for the organisation's audit trail.

The three-dot menu at the end of the row holds the two ways of taking access away.

1. Ban. "They immediately lose access to this organisation. They can be unbanned at any time." The member stays in the list with the status Suspended, and the menu offers Unban. Use it while you investigate something, or for someone on leave.
2. Remove. "They lose access to this organisation immediately." The person is taken out of the organisation. To bring them back you invite them again.

You cannot ban or remove the owner, and you cannot ban or remove yourself.

5. The Manage page#

Manage opens a page named after the member, with the organisation and their email address underneath.

1. Send password reset email. Sends the person a link to choose a new password.
2. Impersonate. Lets an owner open the application as that member, for example to see exactly what they see. It needs the members:impersonate permission, which only the owner role has.
3. Ban member. The same as Ban in the row menu.
4. Save details. The Identity card shows the Name and Email. You can change them here only for a person who belongs to no other organisation. Someone who also belongs to another organisation owns their account: you will not see the reset and impersonate options for them, and the details are theirs to change.

Troubleshooting#

• I do not see Invite member. Your role does not include members:manage. Ask an owner or admin, or have the role changed.
• "That person is already a member." Look in the table, including the Suspended status. Unban the member instead of inviting again.
• The role I want is not in the menu. Admins cannot assign Owner. Custom roles only exist when you create them under Roles.
• The invitation link says it is no longer valid. It expired after seven days, was revoked, or was already used. Send a new invitation to the same address.
• They cannot accept because they signed up with another email. The invitation belongs to the address you typed. Revoke it and invite the address they use.
• A plan limit message appears when I invite. Your plan caps the number of team members. Remove someone, or change the plan: see Change your plan.

Related#

• Roles and permissions: choose the right role for each person.
• Limit members to certain servers and sites: teams decide what a member sees.
• Create, rename and switch organisations: require two-factor authentication for everyone.
• Least privilege and auditing: give people only what they need.