Members, roles, and permissions

Open: Settings > Organization. Open the Members area for sign-in membership. Purpose: maintain the organizational chart, functional responsibilities, and access to the shop.

Members and people

A member has an account allowed to sign in to the organization. A person is someone represented in the organization and competence records. A person can exist without an email or login. The organization workflow can invite an existing person to sign in; check the roster rather than creating a second person for the same employee.

The older Members form may offer broad invitation tiers. The current working roster displays Admin and functional roles. Use Organization to review the resulting roles and unit assignments after adding a member.

Functional roles

Role	Main working responsibilities
Quality Manager	All non-administrative quality capabilities, including scope, document effectivity, NC disposition and closure, CAPA effectiveness closure, and product authorization
Document Controller	Create, revise, attach, select approvers, and route documents for review; no approval or effectivity authority from this role alone
Internal Auditor	Plan and conduct audits, record findings, run assessments, raise NCs, CAPAs, and actions; no document approval or CAPA closure authority from this role alone
Department Manager	Department document work and approval, training assignment and recording, production records, infrastructure, investigations, and permitted exceptions
Engineer	Engineering documents and approval, design, change proposals, configuration, inspection planning, contract review, NC documentation, and CAPA investigation
Quality Inspector / Technician	Inspection and production evidence, calibration, traceability, training records, NC documentation, and CAPA investigation
Purchasing	Supplier management and evaluations, flow-downs, contract review, NC documentation, CAPA opening, and actions
Operator	Read effective documents, complete own reading and actions, raise a nonconformance, and view accessible record chains
Executive / Top Management	Policy-level document approval, planning, metrics, context, management review, and management-review packs

Roles combine. Holding two roles gives the capabilities of both, subject to record scope and module access. Being a document owner, action assignee, or named reviewer can also matter for a particular task. A named approver signs only their own approval line. The procedure's on-screen controls and server checks still govern the action.

Creating and editing records needs a functional role. Any role will do, Operator included, and holding a role for this adds nothing to the sidebar. A member with no functional role can read what their access covers, raise a nonconformance, and complete their own reading and action items, but cannot create or edit anything else: complaints, feedback, product integrity events, quality events, release drafts, changes, contracts, design, production and traceability records, configuration, device records, infrastructure, inspection planning, context, management review, metrics and the rest are refused. If someone who should be recording work cannot, give them the role that matches what they do. A consultant working under an Advise key is held to the same limit, apart from the nonconformance work its key allows (chapter 38).

Administrator powers

Administrator is a separate setting. It allows membership management, organizational structure, billing, sandbox management, consultant access management, ownership and archive administration, and Quality Passport publication. A quality manager who lacks Admin should ask an administrator to perform those tasks. Consultants do not receive these powers through a Build key.

Maintain the organization

1. Add a unit with a name, unique code, type, and parent. Use Rename or Move to correct its position later.
2. Add a person with name, optional email, job title, home unit, and first role.
3. Use Place to change a person's home unit. Select the person's role checkboxes and choose Save roles. Review Admin separately.
4. If someone works across departments, use Add membership for an extra unit, with effective-from date and rationale where useful. End that extra membership when it no longer applies.
5. Use Invite to sign in for a person who needs an account. Verify that their email is correct before submitting.
6. For departures, deactivate the competence record or remove the person from the chart through the offered controls. Review sign-in membership, assignments, and external grants separately; chart removal should not be treated as proof that every access route is revoked.

You cannot retire a unit while a pending or effective scope baseline includes it. Revise the scope boundary first. Structural moves should reflect a real organization change, not be used to conceal overdue work.

Why two employees may see different records

Department-scoped users see organization-wide records and records in their assigned units, including the applicable descendants. Organization-wide roles, administrators, and consultant keys have broader visibility. New records normally take the creator's home unit; records raised from another record inherit the source unit. Changing where someone sits changes what they can see, but does not rewrite historical attribution.

The same wall applies to changes. A member whose roles are department-scoped (Department Manager, Engineer, Quality Inspector / Technician, Operator) can change only records in their own units, plus organization-wide records that carry no unit; a new record is checked against the unit it will carry. On another unit's record the change is refused with You cannot do that on this record. Administrators, people holding the action through an organization-wide role (Quality Manager, Document Controller, Internal Auditor, Purchasing, Executive / Top Management), and consultant keys are not limited this way. Actions open to every member, such as raising a nonconformance or completing your own reading and action items, are unaffected.

If a record is missing, check organization, filters, unit membership, role, module access, and external-grant scope before recreating it. A copied link does not grant access.

In the user guide

This article is chapter 4, "Organization people and permissions", of the NormaQMS User Guide (NORMA-UG-001), which is under Help > User guide. Chapter numbers in the text refer to that guide.