User Types and Roles
Workspace Collaborators & Guests
To start, know that there are fundamentally two types of users:
Workspace Collaborators: Licensed members of your workspace — typically your own organization, or partners who work with you across multiple projects.
Guests: Free users from outside your organization. Guests are invited to a single project and aren't intended for cross-project collaboration.
Types of Workspace Collaborators
Your workspace has three default roles — Owner, Admin, and Member. On the Business plan and above, you can also create custom roles with permissions you define.
Owners are workspace superadmins. They manage workspace settings and, by default, billing.
Admins create and manage Portfolios and have access to workspace reporting tools.
Members are the default collaborative role, focused on project-level work.
Custom Roles have whatever permission scope the workspace Owner defines.
Note: A full permissions comparison for all four types is at the bottom of this article.
Inviting Workspace Collaborators
You can invite collaborators one at a time by email, or in bulk with an invite link. Both methods are covered below. (Guest invites are project-specific and covered in Project Invitations)
Helpful to know before you invite:
You can invite them into the workspace generally, or by specifically selecting the portfolio or project that you'd like them to join.
If enabled, collaborators within the workspace will have access to the workspace Chat, even if they've not yet been added to any portfolios or projects.
Inviting a collaborator into a portfolio will have them join all of the non-Private projects within that portfolio.
Workspace Invites
Open Workspace Settings from your dropdown menu.
Go to the Invite People tab under Members & Permissions. You'll find two options:
1. Sending Email Invitation
Enter the email address and (optionally) the name of the person you wish to invite.
Select the appropriate role for this member (Admin, Member, or Custom Role).
Click the Invite button to send the invitation to your Workspace.
Note: Once someone is a workspace member, their name and email will auto-populate when you invite them to portfolios or projects.
2. Generate an Invite Link
An invite link lets you send many invitations at once through your own channels — Slack, email, wherever your team already talks.
Choose the default role anyone joining via the link will receive.
Create the link and share it.
Everyone who joins through that link gets the role you selected.
Portfolio Invitations
Inviting someone to a Portfolio grants them access to every Public Project inside it — the fastest way to get someone into a set of related projects at once.
Look for the invite option next to the avatars below the Portfolio name. If you don't see it, you likely don't have permission to invite members at the portfolio level.
The Portfolio popup lists your workspace members. From here you can:
Select members who should have access.
Search for members by name.
Invite new people by typing their email address directly into the search field.
Project Invitations
Projects have two kinds of invitations: Member Invites and Guest Invites.
Member Invites
Inviting a workspace member to a project does not add them to the portfolio that contains it. Their access stays scoped to that one project — they won't see the other projects in the portfolio.
Guest Invites
Guests are free collaborators invited directly to a single project. Because they aren't part of your workspace, they don't see Portfolios and don't have access to team tools like Workloads, All Tasks, or Direct Messaging. Within their project, though, Guests can contribute meaningfully — completing tasks, commenting, joining discussions, and uploading files.
For a full breakdown of what Guests can and can't do, see How to Work with Guests in Nifty.
To add either, open the dropdown next to the Project title and choose Manage Members or Invite Guests.
In Project Settings, you'll find the same two options as at the workspace level: Email Invite and Link Invite.
You can also send a Guest invite directly from the Project screen.
Permissions at a Glance
Here's how permissions compare across Owners, Admins, Members, and Guests:
