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Organization Member Roles

Understand what each organization role can do.

Organization member roles determine what a user can do across their entire organization. Every org member is assigned one of three roles: Admin, Lead, or Member. These roles control access to organization-wide settings, billing, and group management.

Role Capabilities

The table below shows what each organization role can do.

CapabilityAdminLeadMember
Manage billing & subscription
Manage organization settings
Invite & remove org members
Create internal groups
Create external groups
Create departments
Manage departments (edit, delete, reorder)
Change group department
View & manage all groups (settings & delete) *
Withdraw org members from external groups

Admin Powers on Groups

Organization Admins have special oversight over all groups within their organization. This applies to both internal groups and external groups owned by the organization, ensuring the org always retains control.

* Internal groups = all groups in the org. External groups = only those owned by the org.

What org admins can do without being a group member

  • View the group and its content, including hidden groups
  • Edit group settings (name, avatar, URL, privacy)
  • Delete the group

What requires group membership

  • Inviting, removing, or changing roles of group members
  • Posting content and participating in discussions
  • Using the group's arkboard

Protected org representative

In external groups owned by an organization, the owning org must always have at least one member with the group Admin role. This prevents the organization from losing control of its own group. The last org-member Admin cannot be demoted, removed, or leave the group until another org member is promoted to Admin.

Withdrawing org members

Organization Admins can withdraw all of their organization's members from an external group that their org does not own. This is a bulk action that removes every org member at once. For groups the org owns, the Admin should delete the group instead.

Group members also have roles within each group. See Group Member Roles →