The three standard roles in Cobrief cover most needs. Sometimes they are not quite right: perhaps an external consultant should write bids without touching the knowledge base, or someone should evaluate tenders without writing bids.
With custom roles you build your own roles and decide what each one is allowed to do. The roles apply to the whole workspace, and you can give them to both new and existing users.
Custom roles require Ultra or Enterprise. On other plans you can see the roles that exist, but you cannot create or change them. Read more about roles and permissions.
Find the role overview
Click Settings (the gear icon at the bottom left).
Select "Custom roles". It sits right below "Manage users".
Here you will find the roles you have created yourselves. The Users column shows how many people have the role, including invitations that have not been accepted yet. The standard roles Administrator, Member and Contributor are not in the list, because they cannot be changed.
Create a new role
Click "Create custom role". This opens the "New role" dialog.
Give the role a name, for example "Bid manager". The name has to be unique.
Turn on the permissions the role should have.
Click "Create role".
The role is ready immediately, and shows up in the dropdown when you invite someone or change a coworker's role.
What you can turn on
Every role starts from the same baseline: see and evaluate tenders. That means seeing tenders in the workspace, searching, leaving comments, managing their own alerts, uploading tender documents and using the AI agent with their own attachments. The agent can read the knowledge base. This cannot be turned off.
On top of the baseline you choose what the role can do:
Permission | What it gives |
Manage pipeline | Add tenders to the pipeline, change status and owner, record results and add your own tenders. |
Work on bids | Create and edit bids, tasks and bid documents, and see CVs from Flowcase. |
Change the knowledge base | Add, edit and delete files in the knowledge base and the product register under Library → Price Sheet Filling. |
With "Work on bids" the role can also see, edit and delete bid files and attachments coworkers have added in the chat. Product sheets are shared across the workspace and require "Change the knowledge base".
Turning on "Change the knowledge base" also turns on "Work on bids". Whoever changes the files everyone shares should also see the bids those files are used in.
Administering the workspace, meaning users, subscription, search settings, integrations and AI instructions, still requires the Administrator role. Administrators and members can change the assessment criteria.
Change or delete a role
Click the menu icon to the right of the role.
Edit lets you change the name and turn permissions on and off. The change applies to everyone with the role, and takes effect immediately.
Delete removes the role. If anyone already has it, you must choose which role they get instead. You can pick Administrator, Member or another custom role.
Contributor is not an option when you delete a role. Moving people down to free read-only access should be a deliberate choice you make under Users, not something that happens in passing.
How roles count in your subscription
Everyone with a custom role counts as a user in the subscription, the same way Administrator and Member do. That holds even if the role has few permissions.
If you want to give someone visibility without it costing anything, Contributor is still the right role. Contributors have their own included limits per plan.
Who can start the AI brief?
The AI brief summarises a tender and helps you evaluate it quickly. Anyone who can see the tender can start the brief on documents that are already there, including contributors.
Everyone with a custom role can also upload the tender documents themselves and attach their own files in the chat with the AI agent. Adding files to the knowledge base requires "Change the knowledge base".
Frequently asked questions
Can a custom role do more than an administrator? No. The permissions in the role editor are the same ones the administrator role has, recombined. You cannot give a role something that does not already exist.
What happens to our roles if we move to a lower plan? The roles keep working, and people keep their permissions. You just cannot create new roles or change them until you are back on Ultra or Enterprise.
Can we control access to individual tenders? No. Access applies to the whole workspace. Everyone with access sees the same tenders.