Permissions Guide

MiniBC has released Permissions, a new feature that lets you control exactly what each member of your team can see and do inside the Add-Ons dashboard. This guide walks through how permissions are structured, how to build and assign permission groups, and how to review changes over time.

Note: The Permissions area is available to users in the Store Owner group. Store owners always retain full access to every panel and action, regardless of how groups are configured.

Sections

1. How Permissions Work
2. Users & Groups
3. Manage Permission Groups
4. Audit Log

How Permissions Work

Permissions are granted to groups, not to individual users. You build a group, decide what that group can access, and then assign users to it. A user's access is simply the access of the group they belong to, which means you can adjust one group and update everyone in it at once.

Access is broken into 39 individual permissions, organized into 11 panels that mirror the dashboard's own navigation. A panel can be granted in full using the Granted toggle on the right of its header, or expanded so you can pick individual actions. Each panel header shows how many of its actions are currently granted — for example, Customers 8 of 8 or Settings 0 of 10.

The Permissions area itself is split across three tabs - Users & Groups, Manage Permission Groups, and Audit Log - and each is covered below.

Users & Groups

Users & Groups is the landing tab and the place to see, at a glance, who has access to your dashboard. Four summary tiles across the top show your Total users, how many are Active, how many are Disabled, and how many are Unassigned.

You don't need to invite anyone here. BigCommerce users appear in this list automatically the first time they sign in, and are placed into whichever group you've marked as the default. You can change their group at any time afterwards.

The table below the tiles lists every user with their email, name, permission group, when they were last seen, and their current status. Use the search bar to find someone by name or email, or narrow the list using the All groups and All statuses filters.

Click Manage beside any user to change the group they belong to or to disable their access. Disabling a user leaves their record in place - useful when someone is on leave or has left the team - while removing their ability to act in the dashboard.

All six can be used as-is, edited to suit your team, or ignored in favour of your own groups - with one exception. Store Owner is system-managed: it always has full access to every panel and action, and it cannot be edited or deleted. You'll notice it displays 0 of 39 permissions; that's expected, because its access is implicit rather than granted permission-by-permission.

Editing a group

Each group has a Group name and a Description. The description is worth filling in properly - it's the fastest way for whoever picks this up after you to understand the group's purpose without auditing 39 checkboxes.

The Status toggle controls whether a group can be assigned to users. Switching a group to inactive is a good way to retire it gradually: it stays intact and its existing members keep their access, but it stops appearing as an option when assigning new users.

The Set as default group for new users checkbox determines where BigCommerce users land the first time they sign in. Only one group can be the default at a time, and setting it on a new group clears it from the previous one. Store owners always retain full access regardless of the default.

Below the group details, permissions are laid out panel by panel. Use Expand all or Collapse all to move quickly through the list, toggle a whole panel with the Granted switch on its header row, or expand a panel and tick individual actions. The counter beside each panel name updates as you go, and the total at the top of the page - for example 33 of 39 permissions - gives you a running summary of the group.

Make sure to click the save button when charges are completed; they'll be reflected upon refresh for impacted groups. The footer of each group records the number of users, the number of permissions granted, and the date it was last edited.

Creating a new group

Click + Create new group at the bottom of the group list. A new group starts with no permissions granted, so you build it up from zero rather than paring an existing one back. Give it a name and description, grant the panels and actions it needs, then assign users to it from the Users & Groups tab.

Every permission change in your store is recorded in the Audit Log, so you always have an answer to "who changed this, and when." The entry count is shown at the top of the page.

Each row records five things: When the change happened, the Action taken, the Target it applied to, the Details of the change, and who Performed it. All actions types are logged and available to be viewed.

Because a single editing session produces both the summary entry and the individual grant and revoke entries beneath it, you can read the log at whichever level of detail you need - a quick scan of what changed, or the exact permission keys involved, such as settings.view_manage_merchant_profile.

Use the search bar to find entries by target or details, and the All actions and All users filters to narrow the list to a specific type of change or a specific administrator. Export CSV downloads the currently filtered view, which is handy for compliance reviews and periodic access audits.