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Team and Roles

Everyone in Align belongs to one or more workspaces. In each workspace a person holds one role, and that role decides which projects they see and what they can change. Align checks the role you hold in the workspace you are working in.

Inviting people, changing roles, and suspending or removing members happen in Settings → Users, which only a workspace Admin can open.

Inviting people​

Invite several people at once​

  1. In the sidebar, open Settings and choose Users.
  2. In the Invitations panel, under Enter email addresses, paste the addresses. Plain addresses and Name <email> both work. Separate them with commas, semicolons or new lines. You can send up to 50 in one batch.
  3. Click Next.
  4. Under Assign workspace & project, choose the Workspace (required). Optionally choose a Project: people who create their Align account from the invitation are also added to that project as members.
  5. Click Next.
  6. Under Assign roles, pick a role for each person. Every row starts as User. Remove anyone you added by mistake.
  7. Click Send N invites.

The results list shows each invitation that was saved, and warns you if the email for one of them could not be delivered. The invitation still exists in that case.

The Pending & Recent table below the wizard lists your workspace's invitations with their role, status and expiry date. Click Revoke to withdraw a pending one.

Invite one person, resend or cancel​

The Team Settings page invites one person at a time and is the place to resend an invitation. It is not in the Settings menu: open https://app.alignsoft.us/settings/team, or ask Max to take you to Team Settings.

  1. Enter the email address and choose a role.
  2. Click Send invitation.

Under Pending invitations, each row has a Resend invitation button, which sends a new link and restarts the expiry, and a Cancel invitation button. Past invitations shows accepted, cancelled and expired ones.

What the invited person does​

An invitation is valid for 72 hours. The link opens a page headed Join followed by the workspace name.

  • New to Align: enter Your name and a Password (at least 8 characters), then click Join workspace.
  • Already has an Align account for that address: click Sign in to accept. Once they sign in, the workspace is added to their account.

The invitation must be accepted by the address it was sent to. Signed in as someone else, the person sees Wrong account and can sign out and switch.

Align refuses a second invitation to an address that already has a pending one in the same workspace; resend the existing one instead. An invitation can also be refused if the workspace has reached its plan's seat limit.

Roles​

These are the roles a workspace can grant.

RoleProjects they seeWhat they can do
AdminEvery project in the workspaceSettings, including users and invitations, projects, integrations, the client portal, single sign-on, billing and the audit log. The Management menu, Time Approvals and Marketplace.
ManagerProjects they own, projects belonging to clients assigned to them, and projects they are a member ofThe Management menu (Insights, Reports, Agreements, Cost, Profitability, Capacity) and Time Approvals. In Settings, only Data Import/Export. Cannot invite people.
Tech Lead, Product Owner, Developer, DevOps Engineer, TesterProjects they are a member ofWork on entries in those projects. The Tools menu and, when time tracking is on, My Time.
ClientProjects where they are the Project Owner, and projects they have been given access toReports and Cost under Management, the Roadmap, and My Users, where they add people who can submit feedback on their projects. A client can also be sent a link to the client portal.
UserOnly projects they have been given access toSubmit feedback on those projects. Clients create User accounts from My Users.

Notes:

  • A project's Project Owner is set in Settings → Projects → the project → Details. The list offers clients, managers and admins.
  • Project membership is set on the project's Project Access tab in the same place.
  • Platform admin is the role of Align's own operators. No workspace can grant it. See the Platform Admin Guide.

Changing someone's role​

  1. Open Settings → Users and click the pencil next to the person.
  2. On the Details tab, choose a new Role.
  3. Click Save Changes.

Align also limits what a manager can do with roles. A manager can never:

  • grant the Admin role;
  • change the role of someone who is an admin, including a suspended admin;
  • change their own role.

Belonging to several workspaces​

You can belong to more than one workspace, with a different role in each. For example, you can be a Developer in your own company's workspace and a Client in an agency's.

  • When you sign in, if you belong to two or more workspaces, Align shows Choose a workspace. Each card shows the workspace name and your role there. Your default workspace is marked Default.
  • To switch, click the workspace name at the top of the sidebar. Your workspaces lists each one with your role under its name. Pick one and Align opens its dashboard.
  • To see them all, click your name at the bottom of the sidebar and open the Organizations tab. It lists every workspace you belong to, your role in each, and marks the Active and Default ones.

If you open a link to something that lives in another of your workspaces, Align shows a banner with a Switch to button for that workspace.

Single sign-on (SAML)​

Admins can let their team sign in through their own identity provider with SAML 2.0. Open Settings → Single Sign-On.

  1. Under Give these to your identity provider, copy the Entity ID (Audience), ACS URL (Reply URL) and Metadata URL into your identity provider's SAML application. Most identity providers can import the metadata URL directly.
  2. Under Your identity provider, enter the IdP Entity ID (Issuer), the Sign-in URL and the Signing certificate from your identity provider.
  3. Under People and attributes, decide whether to Create accounts on first sign-in. With it off, only people who already have an Align account in the workspace can sign in. If it is on, choose the Role for new accounts: User or Client. Admin rights are always granted in Align by a person, never by an identity provider attribute.
  4. Under Availability, set the Status: Draft (not usable for sign-in), Active (sign-in enabled) or Disabled (kept, sign-in refused).
  5. Click Save. Once the status is Active, click Test sign-in to try it in a new tab.

Until a connection has completed one real sign-in, the page warns you that it has never been used. Test it before telling your team.

Two-factor authentication​

Each person turns on two-factor authentication for their own account.

  1. Click your name at the bottom of the sidebar and open the Security tab.
  2. In the Two-factor authentication card, click Set up two-factor authentication.
  3. Add the Setup key to your authenticator app, or use the add to authenticator link on the device that has the app.
  4. Enter the 6-digit Code from your app and click Turn on.
  5. Align shows your recovery codes once. Copy them, store them somewhere safe, and click I've saved them. Each recovery code signs you in once. Align keeps only a scrambled copy, so it cannot show them to you again.

From then on, Align asks for a code from your app after your password. You can use a recovery code instead.

To turn it off, enter a current code and click Turn off. If your organisation requires two-factor authentication, the card is marked Required by your organization and you cannot turn it off.

Suspending and removing members​

Suspend or archive an account​

  1. Open Settings → Users and click the pencil next to the person.
  2. On the Details tab, set Status to Suspended or Archived.
  3. Click Save Changes.

Status belongs to the person's Align account, not to one workspace. A suspended or archived person cannot sign in to any workspace, and the sessions and MCP connections they already have stop working. Set the status back to Active to restore access.

Remove someone from your workspace​

  1. Open Settings → Users and click the pencil next to the person.
  2. Open the Organizations tab.
  3. Click the delete icon next to your workspace.

They lose access to this workspace and keep their Align account and any other workspaces.

Reset a password​

On the Details tab, click Reset Password, enter a temporary password and click Reset. The person must choose a new password the next time they sign in, and their existing sessions end.