How to Change a Team Member's Role on Slack

Co-authored by wikiHow Staff

Last Updated: October 1, 2021

You can assign roles to your team members, granting them different access privileges to your Slack account and channels. Navigate to the team menu in the desktop app or website and select “Manage Team Members” to make changes to the roles of team members. You can also select “Team Settings” from the same menu to change the channel/messaging access of certain roles. You cannot change roles or team settings from the mobile app. Keep in mind, you must have administrator level access in order to make change to team member roles.

Method 1

Method 1 of 2:

Assigning Roles to Team Members

1
Open Slack. If you do not already have it, you can get the app for mutiple desktop platforms at https://slack.com/downloads.
- You can also go to https://slack.com and sign into chat using a web browser.
2
Sign in to your account. Enter your team domain and press “Continue”. Then, enter your email and password and press “Sign in”.
- The team domain is setup by the team administrator and is formatted like: [teamname].slack.com.
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3
Open the team menu. This is your team name displayed in the upper left. The menu will display a list of account a team options.
- If you are signed in from a previous session, a list of your teams will appear in the upper right when navigating to https://slack.com in a web browser.
4
Select “Manage Team Members”. This will take you to the admin page with a list of all the members of your team.
- This option will only appear if you are a team admin.
- You can also access this page by going to https://[teamname].slack.com/admin in your web browser.
5
Click a team member to expand. The other role options will appear when expanded.
- A team member's current role is displayed to the right of their name.
- By default team members are of the “Member” role, except for the team creator, who is “Primary Owner” by default.
6
Click “Make an Admin”. This will grant the team member administrator access, allowing them to manage members, channels, and access team settings.
7
Click “Make an Owner”. This will grant the team member the highest level of administrative privileges including payment/billing and message retention policies.
- The Primary Owner is the only account holder that is above an Owner. This status can be transferred to other owners.
8
Click “Convert to Guest”. This will limit the team member's chat and direct message access to only designated channels.
- The Guest role is not available to teams using the “free plan”. The paid “standard plan” is required.
- Guests can be further divided into single or multi-channel guests.^{[1]
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9
Click “Disable Account”. This will remove this user's access to the team.
- This action will not delete the account and can be undone to restore access.

Method 2

Method 2 of 2:

Managing Settings and Permissions

1
Open Slack. If you do not already have it, you can get the app for mutiple desktop platforms at https://slack.com/downloads.
- You can also go to https://slack.com and sign into chat using a web browser.
2
Sign in to your account. Enter your team domain and press “Continue”. Then, enter your email and password and press “Sign in”.
- The team domain is setup by the team administrator and is formatted like: [teamname].slack.com.
3
Open the team menu. This is your team name displayed in the upper left. The menu will display a list of account a team options.
4
Select “Team Settings”. This will take you to the “Settings and Permissions” page.
- This option will only appear if you are a team admin.
- You can also access this page by going to https://[teamname].slack.com/admin/settings in your web browser.
5
Click the “Permissions” tab. This is located near the top of the page and will display a list of editable app and user permissions.
- The Member role will have access to most team settings by default. Most of these settings are for removing access to these features.
6
Change messaging permissions. Click “Messaging” to expand. Dropdown menus will appear allowing you to choose which member roles can use the “@everyone” and “@channel” messaging commands as well as who can post in the #general channel.
7
Change invite permissions. Click “Invitations” to expand. Deselect the checkbox to restrict those with the 'Member' role from inviting new members to the team.
- Admin and Owner will retain access.
- Guests never have invite access.
8
Change channel management permissions. Click “Channel Management” to expand. Dropdown menus will appear allowing you to choose which member roles can create and archive public and private channels as well as who has permissions to remove other members from channels.
9
Change message deletion permissions. Click “Message Editing & Deletion” to expand. A dropdown menu will appear allowing you to restrict message deletion to only Admin and Owner roles.
10
Change stat page access permissions. Click “Stats” to expand. A dropdown menu will appear allowing you to restrict access to the https://[teamname].slack.com/admin/stats page to only team Admin and Owner roles.
11
Change emoji permissions. Click “Custom Emoji & Loading Messages” to expand. Dropdown menus will appear allowing you to restrict the upload of custom emoji and loading messages to only Admin and Owner roles.
- This setting only changes upload permissions. Once uploaded any user can utilize the custom emoji or loading message.
12
Change Slackbot permissions. Click “Slackbot Responses” to expand. A dropdown message will appear allowing you to restrict access for adding custom Slackbot responses to team Admin and Owner roles.
- Custom Slackbot responses can be very useful for answering common/frequent questions (For example, storing login information for a team account)
- You can also deselect “Enable Slackbot” to disable the slackbot for your team complete.
- The default set of Slackbot responses will not be removed unless Slackbot is disabled.