Getting started as a user in an organization
If you are part of a team and you’ve been invited to Buffer as a user within an organization, this guide can help you get set up and ready to work with the tools and social channels you have been given permission to access.
In this article:
- What are "organizations"?
- Getting your invitation
- Access levels and permissions
- Working within your dashboard
What are "organizations"?
As an individual Buffer user, you have your own organization with the ability to add your own personal social channels that only you have access to. You might also be part of another organization as a user with access to that organization's social channels. Learn more about the levels of user permissions below.
Notes
- You will always access an organization’s social channels and tools on your own Buffer dashboard and you will never need to log into another Buffer account.
- You will have access to all of the business features of that organization even if you personally have a different plan. Most users of an organization are personally on a free plan. However, when they switch over to the organization they've been invited to, they'll see access to the features available on their organization's business plan.
Getting your invitation
Follow these steps to accept your invitation and get set up in the organization:
- Watch for an email invitation. You'll get an email telling you who invited you, which organization, and your role. The subject line will read "[Inviter] invited you to join [Organization] on Buffer." Click Accept invitation.
📝 Invitations expire a set number of days after they're sent. If yours expires, ask the person who invited you to send a new one.
- Create or log in to your Buffer account
- If you don't have a Buffer account, clicking View invitation takes you to a "You've been invited to join [Organization Name]" page. Enter a password and click Sign Up.
- If you already have an account, log in using your existing credentials.
- Accept the invitation in the invitation modal
- Once you're signed in, Buffer shows an invitation modal over your dashboard with a quick rundown of what you can do once you join. Click Accept Invite to join.
- Find your new organization in the switcher
- Once you accept, you'll land in your new organization's dashboard. Your active organization is shown in the bottom-left corner of the sidebar, along with its plan. Click it any time to switch between organizations you're a part of. Learn more in Switching organizations on the web.
💡Troubleshooting Tips
Not receiving the invite?
- Check your inbox, including spam or junk folders.
- If you still can't find the invitation, contact your organization owner to confirm they entered the correct email address and to possibly resend the invite.
Still need help? Reach out to our team at hello@buffer.com so we can help!
Access levels and permissions
Your organization owner will set up your access to the organization and to social channels. Your access level and permissions are explained below.
📝 It’s important to note that even with Admin access, you won’t automatically have access to all channels; you still need to be invited to any channels you should see within each tool. If you have Admin access but haven’t been invited to any channels, you won’t be able to create posts or respond to comments. However, as an Admin, you are able to invite yourself to any channel at anytime.
| Tool | Admin access | Full Access (channel specific) | Needs Approval access (channel specific) |
| Account settings |
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| Publishing |
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| Community |
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| Analytics |
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Community access levels
Community access is set separately from Publish access, either the same way across all of a person's channels or customized per channel.
| Tool | Admin Access | Full Access | View Only | No Access |
| Community | Same access as their Community permission level, applied across channels they can access | Reply, like, resolve, and view comments | View comments only; reply, like, and resolve are disabled | Can't open Community for that channel |
Working within your dashboard
Switching your organization
Once you’ve accepted your invitation and you’ve set up your account (if you didn’t have one already), you can now see your own individual organization and the new organization by navigating to your account menu. You can switch between the two organizations depending on where you’d like to work.
If you are a member of three or more organizations, you'll see the active organization listed and then you can click the arrow next to the active organization to see the full list of organizations you belong to. Select an organization from the list to switch.
📝 Notes
- If both organizations have the same name (such as the default “My Organization”), you can hover over each organization to see which channels are connected. The owner can rename the organization using this guide.
- If your organization owner hasn’t set you up with access to any channels yet, you’ll see a message saying they need to grant you access. We suggest contacting the owner and asking them to set up your permissions using this guide.
Scheduling posts in the publishing dashboard
If this is the first time you’ve used Buffer’s publishing tool, we recommend visiting our guide for scheduling posts. If you’ve scheduled posts before, keep in mind that you will have access to many other features with the organization’s business plan that you may not have used previously if you were on other plans.
Working with drafts
All users with channel permissions are able to create draft posts in the drafts area. The drafts area is great for crafting ideas for posts, as well as creating final posts that you'd like to submit for approval. The option to request approval on drafts, as well as the ability to approve draft posts, will depend on permissions. Learn more on how to create and approve draft posts here.
Viewing metrics and working with reports in the analytics dashboard
All users can view metrics in the dashboards. All admins can view metrics in channels they have permission to access, plus create reports and view campaigns. If this is the first time you’ve used Buffer’s analytics tool, we recommend visiting our guide to Getting started with Buffer's analytics features.
Engaging with comments
Whether you can view or reply to comments in Community depends on the Community access your organization owner or admin has set for you, separately from your Publish access.
- Full Access lets you reply, like, and resolve comments.
- View Only lets you read comments but not interact with them.
- No Access means you won't see that channel in Community at all.
📝 Not sure what you're allowed to do? Go to Settings → Role & Permissions to see your role and your access level on each channel.
Connecting or refreshing channels
If you have admin access via the social network itself, you can connect and refresh (reconnect) channels within the organization. It’s very important to be sure you’re connecting channels in the right organization. You can switch organizations in the account menu as shown above. Follow this guide to learn more about connecting and refreshing channels.
📝 As an Admin, once you connect a social channel, you will have Full Access to it.
If you notice that some of the channels you have access to have been locked, this is likely because the owner of the organization downgraded their account. When a plan is downgraded, the account is moved to the Free plan with access to only three social channels and no additional users. This is the reason those channels become locked for you.
In this case, you should chat with the organization owner and see if they had intentionally downgraded the account. It’s possible they didn’t know that downgrading their account would stop you from being able to access those channels or tools.
Removing yourself from an organization
If you need to be removed from an organization, you can reach out to the organization owner or one of the organization Admins and ask them to remove you from the organization using these steps.
Other articles that might be helpful:
- Adding users and setting up permissions
- Changing your Buffer account name and avatar picture
- Switching organizations on the web