Read-only licences in Beacon let you give team members the ability to view the data in your database, but not change things.
Unlike regular licences, read-only licences are free.
You can assign team members to read-only licences on your Team Members page.
At Beacon we believe that getting data into the hands of more people in your organisation is a good thing. Read-only licences are perfect for those team members who just need to view your data, but don't need a paid-for licence yet.
For example, you might assign read-only licences to:
- Your CEO - so she can access data before major donor meetings
- Volunteers - to see registrations lists
- One of your Trustees - to view some key charts
- A colleague who might need full access in the future
In this article:
- What can read-only team members do?
- How many read-only licenses are we allowed?
- How are read-only users different to roles & permissions?
- How can we give edit access to one of our read-only users?
link What can read-only team members do?
Here's full list of all of the things a read-only team member can and can't do in Beacon:
link Individual records
Can:
- View records
Cannot:
- Edit records
- Archive, unarchive, delete records
- Document merge
- Log notes & activities to timelines
- Send emails from Beacon
- Smart Bcc emails to timelines
link Lists of records
Can:
- View lists of records (all types, unless you're using roles & permissions)
- Search records
- Filter records
- Resize columns
Cannot:
- Create or edit views
- Export to CSV/PDF
- Bulk update
- Bulk archive, unarchive, and delete
- Bulk create related records
- Merge duplicate records
- Choose or re-order columns
- App actions (e.g. export to Mailchimp)
link Charts
Can:
- View existing charts
Cannot:
- Create charts
- Edit charts
- Delete charts
link Forms
Can:
- View existing forms
Cannot:
- Create forms
- Edit or delete forms
link Imports
Can:
- View existing import templates
Cannot:
- Create import templates
- Update or delete import templates
- Run imports
link Exports
Can:
- View existing export templates
Cannot:
- Create export templates
- Update or delete export templates
- Run exports
link Document templates
Can:
- View existing document templates
Cannot:
- Create document templates
- Update or delete document templates
- Run document merges
link Email templates
Can:
- View existing email templates
Cannot:
- Create email templates
- Update or delete email templates
- Send emails from Beacon
link Customising records
Cannot:
- Customise records. Only admins can do that.
link Other areas
Other features in the database are off-limits to read-only users. This includes (but isn't limited to):
- Apps
- Workflows
- Gift Aid settings
- Payment settings
- Billing settings
- Sidebar settings
link How many read-only licences are we allowed?
Beacon has a limit on the number of read-only licences available, based on the number of standard licences you have.
You can have 10x the number of read-only licences as you have standard licences.
Let's say you were paying for 2 standard licences, and one-part time licence. The number of read-only users allowed would be the number of standard licences multiplied by 10: 2 x 10 = 20 read-only licences.
link How are read-only users different to roles & permissions?
The Roles & Permissions feature gives you fine-grained control over who can access and edit what data in your database. It is available on Beacon's Professional and Premium plans.
Read-only team members can be assigned to roles, but those roles will not give them the ability to edit anything (as they're read-only).
Let's say you want to give volunteers read-only access to your database. To keep things simple, you want to hide everything that's not relevant to them: charts, forms, certain people fields, and data on grants you're applying for. Read-only users will be able to see these by default, but you could use roles & permissisons to prevent this.
link How can we give edit access to one of our read-only users?
If a read-only team member needs to make changes in your database, then they're no longer read-only!
You will need to assign a paid licence to them.