Update to PlaytestCloud User Permission Levels

We changed our user permissions system. If you were a "View & Order Playtests" user in the past, you will retain your admin-level privileges

Alex Flint avatar
Written by Alex Flint
Updated over a week ago

TL;DR:

We are moving from a two-level permissions system to a four-level permissions system. If you were a "View & Order Playtests" user in the past, you will retain your admin-level privileges by being assigned two new roles: “Organization Admin” and “Team Admin” instead.

This is a visual change only, as this does not grant users more permissions than previously. To take advantage of the more granular permission system, please review your team’s permission levels, decide your team hierarchy and make adjustments as necessary.

While the names for the user permissions change, the abilities granted by the “new” permissions are staying the same. You and all members of your team can continue using PlaytestCloud exactly as before. Users are not getting more or less permissions through this change.


New, flexible user permissions

In June of 2021, we introduced a more granular user permission system to give game studios more flexibility in how they manage users permissions on PlaytestCloud. Together with this change to the user permissions we are soon launching a complete update of PlaytestCloud’s team management features that will make it possible to group multiple teams under one organization, centralizing administration, billing and subscriptions.

What changed?

PlaytestCloud had a very minimal permission system before (only two levels: a view-only role, and an admin role called “View & order playtests”) and most users had “View & order playtests” permissions – allowing them to invite new team members, manage billing, subscriptions, and more.

We renamed the old permission levels and are introducing two additional permission levels that fit “in between” the old permissions. As part of the transition, we are moving all teams to the new naming of the permissions as described in this email.

These are the four new permission levels:


Organization Admins
Formerly called “View & order playtests”

Organization Admins have full access to every aspect of PlaytestCloud, from viewing and ordering playtests to creating teams*, inviting new users, editing billing information, purchasing subscriptions and more.

This matches the previous “View & order playtests” permission, as users with this permission had similar access to their studio’s PlaytestCloud account. To reflect that level of access, we will make these users “Organization Admins” to ensure that they still have the same access levels. These users do not gain more access through this change though: We just renamed the permission from “View & order playtests” to “Organization Admin”.


Team Admins
New permission level

Team Admins (there can be multiple Team Admins for a team) can add and remove users from their team, view and order playtests, and access other minor team management settings such as renaming the team.

Users with the former “View & order playtests” permission also get the new Team Admins permission as this matches the permission levels they had before. This is in addition to them also being “Organization Admins”, meaning they can still access company-wide billing settings as well as manage the team they are a part of.


View, Order and Annotate
New permission level

Users with View, Order and Annotate permissions can view all playtests within the team that they belong to, can order new playtests, and can add annotations to them. However, they will not be able to add or remove teammates, make changes to their team’s settings, or access the subscription or billing settings.

Moving forward, this is the recommended role for people in your team that don’t require admin-level permissions.


View and Annotate
Formerly called “View playtests”

Users with View and Annotate permissions can only view playtests within the team that they belong to, add annotations to them, or ask follow-up questions to any video in their team's account.

Users who previously had the “View playtests” permission now have “View and annotate” permissions, as this exactly matches the level of access they had previously.


Next Steps

While the permission levels of yourself and your colleagues have not changed (aside from the naming), we recommend determining your desired team hierarchy moving forward and downgrading the permission levels of the users in your account where appropriate:

  1. Review the list of users with full access to all aspects of your game studio’s account, and remove Organization Admin permissions from users if desired on the organization management page.

  2. Review the permission levels of individual users, only keeping team leads and everybody else who should be able to add/remove users as Team Admins on the team member management page. (Note: If users are still Organization Admins, you will not be able to remove the Team Admin permission from them here.)

  3. Change the role of all other users either “View, order and annotate” (if they should be able to start new playtests and other studies) or “View and annotate” (if they should only be able to review playtest results) on the team member management page.


Questions? We’re here to help

If you have any questions or need assistance in determining the best permission levels for your game studio, feel free to contact us anytime.


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