User Roles and Permissions

DBL tailors your experience by defining specific user roles, each with its own set of permissions. This guide outlines these roles and what they can access and manage on the DBL platform. Getting to know this information will help you navigate DBL with confidence and make the most of your experience.

Some titles in DBL Next have evolved. Below is an overview of the titles used previously in DBL Classic and their counterparts in DBL Next.

Individual Roles

These are not formal roles that a user can assume or have delegated to them, and these terms apply based on the current conditions of a user.

• Visitor: A guest to DBL who has not created an account or logged in.
• Unverified User: An individual who has begun creating a personal account on DBL but has not yet verified their email address.
• User: Any individual who has created a personal account on DBL.

Organizational Roles

These are users within DBL who are assigned additional responsibilities as managers for one or more organizations.

• Account Manager: oversees account activities and settings.
• Content Manager: handles uploading, maintenance, and downloading of content.
• License Manager: manages the licensing process and agreements.

Roles and Content Items

In DBL’s Roles model, only organizations have direct permissions to act on content items. Users inherit these permissions based on their role within an organization that holds direct or delegated authority over specific content. If a user’s role grants the necessary permissions within an organization, they automatically have access to that organization’s entire catalog of content items.

However, if a managing organization needs to assign responsibility for a specific content item to another organization rather than granting access to the entire catalog, it can do so through Granular Content Item Responsibilities.

Granular Content Item Responsibilities

Building on the Roles model, DBL allows organizations to delegate responsibilities for specific content items by assigning roles such as Item Editor, Item Licenser, Item Admin, or Item Observer.

This content item-level capability gives organizations precise control over managing and overseeing individual content items, enabling them to distribute tasks while maintaining governance.

This contrasts with the primary Roles model, where a Content Manager gains access to the organization’s entire catalog of items. Item-level responsibilities, however, allow for more targeted delegation, limiting access to specific content items as needed.

• Item Editor: granular responsibility for updating the metadata and Scripture content of a specific content item
• Item Licenser: granular responsibility for managing license agreements associated with a specific content item
• Item Admin: granular responsibility for inviting/updating other organization's responsibilities for a specific content item
• Item Observer: granular view-only access to information (e.g., metadata, usage statistics) of a specific content item

In addition to these granular responsibilities, each content item also has two special designations:

• Primary Item Editor: this identifies the organization that was identified as the “provided by” organization when uploading the content item.
• Primary Item Licenser: this identifies the organization name presented in the licensing flows for the content item. 

These designations can be updated by Account Manager from organizations assigned the Item Admin responsibility for that specific content item. For more information on how to make those changes, please view our article ‘See Your Editable Content.’