Why can't I assign a user to a brief?

To assign a user to a brief, you have to make sure that they meet the following:

1. The user is assigned to the project containing the brief that you want to assign to them.
2. The user has the appropriate role.
3. The user's role is assigned to an appropriate workflow status.

One of the most common reasons why you can't assign a user to a brief or a particular workflow status, or why a user can't claim a brief from the Briefs page is that your user has a custom role.

By default, a custom role is not assigned to any workflow status. Make sure that your custom role is assigned to an appropriate workflow status after creating it. Also, keep in mind that every project has its own workflow setting so the changes you made in one project will not affect others.

Assigning a Custom Role to a Workflow Status

All custom roles are not assigned to any workflow status upon creation. You need to manually assign them to one.

To assign a role to a workflow status, select the project (#1) that you want to work on from the project selection dropdown, then under Configuration (#2) go to Workflow settings (#3).

From there, select the workflow status you want to assign to your custom role. More info can be found here.

How to Allow Users to Claim Tasks?

Assigning a role to the Writing workflow status (or whatever the first status's name is) allows a user with that role to claim briefs from the tasks page provided that they also have the View briefs permission.

Remember that every project in your account has its own workflow settings so you will have to repeat these changes on a new or different project.

And that's it!

If you want more in-depth knowledge about this topic, read on.

Custom Roles: Permissions and Workflow

A proper combination of permissions and workflow status assignments is important to ensure that your custom role works exactly as intended.

Even if a role is assigned to a correct workflow status, if it doesn't have the correct permissions, it will still limit the capabilities of that role.

Let's take our example earlier. Let's say our custom role is now assigned to the writing workflow status. If the role doesn't have the View Briefs permission, this role won't be able to see the briefs page, which leads to them not being able to claim any tasks at all.

However, you can still manually assign that user to a brief (or someone with the right permissions can do so as well). This is a good setup if you intend to manage who gets assigned to what.

The combination of permissions and workflow assignments for a custom role can be a powerful tool to fine-tune how your team works together. The possibilities are endless. If you need help setting up custom roles, don't hesitate to contact us!

Next, why don't you...

Learn more about the workflow page.

Have a detailed look at the explanation of every permission to help you decide which ones should be activated for your custom role.

Check out the overview of user roles and permissions.