Roles and permissions
Every person in Sensible Surveys has exactly one role, and the role determines what they can see and do. Understanding roles matters most before you invite team members, add survey takers, or release results.
Full access. Owners can manage team members, launch surveys, publish results, and edit account settings.
Owners are the only account role that can:
- Invite, edit, or remove team members and change their roles.
- Edit Branding.
Owners also do everything managers can do. Accounts can have more than one owner.
Manager
Section titled “Manager”Managers run surveys day to day. A manager can launch surveys, invite takers, answer on behalf of a taker, and publish results. Managers cannot add or remove team members, and the Branding page is read-only for them.
Use the manager role for the people operating surveys who should not control team membership.
Viewer
Section titled “Viewer”Viewers have read-only access to published results. They cannot launch or edit surveys, and they do not see the survey setup, people, or configuration areas.
Two things must both be true before a viewer sees a survey’s results:
- Results have been released to viewers for that survey.
- The viewer’s individual access is enabled on that survey (this is on by default when you add them).
See Manage who can see results.
Survey taker
Section titled “Survey taker”A taker is a business contact invited to answer a survey. Takers sign in and land on their own portal, which lists their active and past surveys. They answer questions, get automatic saving, and submit once.
Takers never see account settings or other companies’ individual answers. If results are released to takers, they see the aggregated results page, protected by safe harbor. A taker must have submitted a response to view released results.
Subscriber
Section titled “Subscriber”A subscriber is an external results viewer, typically someone who purchases access to survey results. Subscribers only see results for surveys where they hold an active grant and the subscriber audience has been released. A grant applies to one survey; a new year’s survey needs a new grant.
Subscribers do not belong to your account workspace. They sign in to their own subscriber portal listing the results available to them.
Platform administrator
Section titled “Platform administrator”Sensible Surveys staff have an internal administrator role for supporting accounts. This role is not available to customer teams.
Preview vs. real access
Section titled “Preview vs. real access”Owners and managers can preview what released audiences will see using the Released audience toggle on the results page (or Preview results as viewer on the Results Release tab). The preview applies the same hiding rules real viewers get: safe harbor suppression, hidden columns, and excluded questions. Always preview before releasing.
Common role mistakes
Section titled “Common role mistakes”- Giving someone the viewer role when they need to operate surveys; viewers cannot manage anything. Use manager.
- Expecting takers to see results as soon as a survey closes. Results require an explicit release.
- Adding a subscriber and forgetting the grant, or granting one year and expecting the next year to carry over.
- Assuming the admin results view matches what viewers see. Sub-threshold data is hidden for released audiences; use the preview.