Managing users & seats
How to invite users, remove users, and manage seats in your eTool organisation.
Before you begin
Only Organisation Admins can manage users and seats.
This article explains how to manage users within your organisation. It doesn't cover project permissions (who can view or edit a specific project), which are managed separately through the Collaborators tab. See User roles & permissions for more information.
Jump to the following sections in this post:
- Adding a user
- Understanding seats
- Inactivating a user
- Reassigning a seat
- Requesting and releasing a Hotseat
- Related articles
Adding a user
From the organisation dashboard, open Manage Users and select + Invite New User.
Enter the person's email address and send the invitation.
The person doesn't need an eTool account yet. If they don't already have one, they'll be prompted to create one using the same email address you invited. Once their account is created, the invitation appears in their eTool Inbox and they'll also receive an email notification.
Important: invitations are linked to the exact email address entered. If the wrong email address is used, the invitation won't fail — it will simply remain unclaimed.
Once accepted, your organisation will appear alongside any other organisations they belong to.
Understanding seats
A seat allows someone to access your organisation.
Having a seat doesn't automatically give someone access to every project. Project access is managed separately through the Collaborators tab.
There are three seat types:
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Specialist — assigned to one person until an Organisation Admin reassigns it.
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Hotseat — shared dynamically between eligible users, allowing more people to share a smaller number of purchased seats.
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Read-only — provides view-only access with no editing capability.
Inactivating a user
To remove someone's access, inactivate them from Manage Users.
This immediately frees any seat assigned to that user so it can be allocated to someone else.
If the person has permanently left your organisation, you should also transfer ownership of any custom templates, custom EPDs, or other organisation assets they created. See Staff turnover: handover procedure for the complete process.
Reassigning a seat
How you reassign a seat depends on the seat type.
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Specialist — assigned to one person at a time. To reassign it, the designated Organisation Admin must remove it from the current user before assigning it to someone else.
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Hotseat — doesn't normally require manual reassignment. Instead, Organisation Admins decide which users are eligible to access the Hotseat pool. You'd typically update these allocations when people join or leave the organisation.
Requesting and releasing a Hotseat
Being allocated a Hotseat doesn't automatically use one.
When an eligible user signs in, they can choose whether to request a seat from the Session Access tab.
- Request Seat Access = Off — they work as a Read-only user without using a Hotseat.
- Request Seat Access = On — if a Hotseat is available, it's assigned immediately.
If no Hotseats are available, eTool asks current users whether they still need theirs. Anyone who doesn't respond within five minutes automatically releases their seat, allowing it to be assigned to the new request.
Remember, a Hotseat only provides access to the organisation. Users must still be added as a Collaborator on a project before they can access or edit it.
Related articles
- User roles & permissions
- Staff turnover: handover procedure