Overview of sharing permissions on objects

Last update: December 10, 2024

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When sharing an object with someone in the system, you can grant the recipient any of the following permissions: view, contribute, and manage.

You do not have to be an Adobe Workfront administrator to share permissions on objects that you have access to, but your permissions on objects work within the access levels set by the Workfront administrator.

You can share or remove permissions to an object you created or an object that was shared with you. When you are not the creator of the object, you must have Share access on the object that you want to share in your access level in addition to Share permissions on the object. For information about access levels, see New access levels overview or Access levels overview.

NOTE

A Workfront administrator can add or remove permissions to any items in the system, for all users, without being the owner of those items.

You can share the following objects in Workfront with other users:

Projects: For more information, see Share a project in Adobe Workfront.
Templates: For more information, see Share project templates.
Portfolios: For more information, see Share a portfolio.
Programs: For information, see Share a program .
Tasks: For information, see Share a task.
Issues: For information, see Share an issue.
Documents: For information, see Share a document.
Document Folders: For information, see Share a document folder.
Proofs: For information, see Share a Proof within Workfront.
Reports, dashboards, and calendars: For information, see Share reports, dashboards, and calendars. Additionally, see the following articles:
Filters, views, and groupings: For information, see Share a filter, view, or grouping.
Plans: For information, see Share a plan in the Scenario Planner.

This requires an additional license.
Goals: For information, see Share a goal in Workfront Goals.

This requires an additional license.

You can share only the same level or a lower level of permissions you have on the object.

For example, if you have Contribute permissions on the object, you cannot grant another user Manage permissions on that object.
You cannot share an object with a permission level higher than the access level of a user.

For example, if a user has View access to Projects in their access level, you cannot give them Manage permissions on a project.
A user with permissions to at least View an object can share that object with someone else.
You can share objects with active users, job roles, teams, groups, or companies.
NOTE
You can share a plan or a goal only with other active users. This requires additional licenses.
For more information see:
Share a plan in the Scenario Planner

Share a goal in Workfront Goals
Workfront sends notifications to users when you share an object with them. Notifications go out when both these settings are enabled:
- The Object Share to User and the Object Share to Team email notifications are enabled in the Setup area by a system or group administrator. For information, see Configure event notifications for everyone in the system.
- The Someone shares an object with me and Someone shares an object with my team notifications are enabled in the user’s profile page. For information, see Modify your own email notifications.
The system- or group-level settings must be enabled first, before you can enable the notification settings for the user.

You can share an object with up to 100 entities (users, teams, groups, job roles, companies). We recommend that you share objects with groups, teams, or companies rather than with individual users to avoid this limitation.

The following table illustrates the level of permissions that you can select when sharing an object. Not all objects have all these settings available. You can grant another entity permissions to View or Manage an object. If you are sharing a project, task, or issue, you can also grant permissions to Contribute to it.

View

You can perform the following actions on the object:

View the object
Add documents to the object
Add issues to the object (if it is a task or a project)
View Finance information about the object
Share the object

When you share the object, you can grant other users the same permission level you have only on the object, not a higher level.

Contribute

You can perform the following actions on the object:

All the actions included with the View permission.
Add Expenses to it
Add tasks to it (if it is a project)
Edit Custom Forms on it
Log Hours on the object
Make assignments in it

Manage

You can perform the following actions on the object:

All the actions included with the View and Contribute permissions
Delete it
Manage Finance information in it

Make this public to external users

Anyone without a Workfront account can view the object by clicking a link to it. This is not available for all objects.

Make this visible system-wide

The object can be found in searches and viewed by users with a Workfront account.

Note: Users with Contributor or Requestor licenses cannot see projects, even if this setting is enabled.

Understand inherited permissions and the hierarchy of objects

Permissions inherited from parent objects

Permissions in Workfront are inherited hierarchically. This means that if you are granting permissions to a user on a parent object, they gain the same permissions on the children objects associated with it by default.

For example, if you give a user Contribute permissions to a project, the user has Contribute permissions to all tasks and issues (child objects) associated with that project.

Continuing with the example above, you cannot restrict permissions to child objects. If you do not want the user to have Contribute permissions to child objects associated with the project, you must manually remove the Inherited Permissions from the objects and then adjust the permissions for the individual user, including any Advanced Settings.

For more information about the hierarchy and interdependency of objects in Workfront, see the section Interdependency and hierarchy of objects in the article Adobe Workfront objects overview.

NOTE

Your Workfront administrator can disable inherited permissions for documents in your access level. For more information about disabling inherited permissions for documents in the access level, see Create or modify custom access levels.

Permissions acquired through organizational memberships

If you grant Manage permissions to a Group of users on an object, and you grant View permissions to an individual user in that Group on the same object, the user has the highest level of permissions (Manage) granted through the Group membership on the object.

If you want to grant lower permissions to a user who is already part of an organizational unit (Group, Team, Job Role, or Company) with a higher permission level, you must remove the permissions from the organizational unit, and add users individually with a lower level of permissions.

For information about how to share objects, see Share an object.

Remove permissions from objects

For information about how to remove permissions from objects, see Remove permissions from objects.

Request permissions to objects

When someone sends you a link to an object which you do not have permissions to View, or when you have lower permissions on an object and you want to request a higher level of permissions, you can request permissions on the object.

You can request access to an object from anyone who has Share permission to the object.

For more information about requesting permissions to objects, see Request access to objects.

recommendation-more-help

Overview of sharing permissions on objects

Objects that you can share in Workfront

Considerations about sharing objects

Share limitations

Share permissions for objects

Understand inherited permissions and the hierarchy of objects

Permissions inherited from parent objects

Permissions acquired through organizational memberships

Share an object

Remove permissions from objects

Request permissions to objects