Guide: Managing Users, Roles, and Profiles

Overview

Access in PeakCommerce is controlled by two settings that work together: a role (the broad kind of access a person has) and a profile (the detailed permissions within that role). Getting them right up front keeps the platform secure and tidy — and saves you from over- or under-granting access later.

This guide explains roles vs. profiles, how to create a profile with the right permissions, how to add users and link them to the correct account, and how to audit who has access.

All of this lives under Settings, which you reach from your user menu in the bottom-left corner → Settings.

Roles vs. profiles

• A role sets the broad experience and which portal a person lands in:

  • Admin — builds and runs the tenant (catalog, journeys, integrations, users).

  • CSR — customer-service reps who act on customers' behalf.

  • Partner — resellers who transact for the customers they manage.

  • Customer — end customers managing their own subscription in the customer portal.

• A profile carries the detailed permissions within a role — what the person can actually open and change. Profiles let you run several tiers per role (for example CSR Junior, Senior, and Supervisor) without any code.

A user always has exactly one role and one profile.

1. Create a profile

1. Open your user menu (bottom-left) → Settings → Profiles.

2. Create a profile and choose the role it applies to. The permissions you can set are scoped to that role.

3. Set the detailed permissions — what this tier can view and change.

4. Save it. (Set it active so it's selectable when you add users.)

Build one profile per access tier you need within a role, rather than granting everyone the broadest profile.

2. Add a user

1. Open your user menu (bottom-left) → Settings → Users and click Add User.

2. Enter the user's Email — this is both their identity and their sign-in name, so make sure it's correct (it's how the platform and Auth0 recognize them).

3. Choose a Role — Admin, CSR, Partner, or Customer.

4. Choose a Profile. The list is filtered to active profiles for the role you picked, so you only ever see relevant options.

5. For a Customer or Partner, enter the External Account ID that links the user to their billing/identity account (and an External Contact ID if applicable). This connects the person to the right account data in your billing system.

6. Click Create.

PeakCommerce uses Auth0 for sign-in, so you don't set a password — the new user receives an email to establish their own credentials and verify their address. They can sign in as soon as they've set their password.

3. Audit who has access

• By profile — open a profile under Settings → Profiles to see its full permission set at a glance and the list of every user assigned to it, so you can confirm access without guesswork.

• By user — open a user under Settings → Users to review and adjust their role and profile; their Activity, Logins, and Impersonations tabs show their history.

• Tenant-wide — the audit log (user menu → Settings → Audit Logs) records every change to users and permissions, with the actor, the change, and the before/after values.

4. Suspend instead of delete

When someone leaves or a contract ends, deactivate the user (open them under Settings → Users and choose Deactivate) rather than deleting. Their role, profile, and history are preserved, and reactivating later restores them exactly as they were. Deleting is permanent and removes the account from PeakCommerce and Auth0.

Tips

• Pick the role first. The Profile dropdown only populates with profiles built for the role you selected.

• Scope tightly. Keep the Admin group small, and give each person the narrowest profile that still lets them do their job.

• Link customers and partners to the right account. The External Account ID is what ties a customer/partner user to their data — getting it wrong shows them the wrong account.

FAQ

What's the difference between a role and a profile?

The role sets the broad kind of access and which portal the person uses; the profile carries the detailed, fine-grained permissions within that role. You can have many profiles per role to model different access tiers.

How do I give one person access to several customer accounts?

Link the additional accounts to that user's record so each resolves to the same identity — see Multiple account access for a single user in the Users documentation.

Do I set the user's password?

No — sign-in is handled by Auth0. New users receive an email to set their own password; PeakCommerce never handles their credentials directly.