Roles & Access: Planner, Admin, Custom

Forge has three access roles — Planner, Admin and Custom — that sit on top of your Salesforce permissions. Every Forge user has exactly one role. This page spells out what each role includes, how a role is assigned, and how Custom profiles are built, with the complete lists of pages and sections underneath.

The three roles at a glance

How a role is assigned

• On sign-in, Forge reads the person's real Salesforce permissions. If they hold Modify All Data, Manage Users or Customize Application (through their profile or any permission set), they become an Admin; otherwise a Planner. A renamed or cloned admin profile still counts, because Forge checks the capability, not the profile name.
• An Admin can change anyone's role in Admin > Users. A role set by hand is never overwritten by the Salesforce-based sync; only an explicit forced re-sync replaces it.
• The sync never changes a Custom user. A Custom role is only ever set by an Admin, by choosing a profile for the user.
• Forge always keeps at least one Admin: demoting or removing the last remaining Admin is refused.
• Forge-native organizations (no connected Salesforce org) have no Salesforce permissions to read, so roles there are set by an Admin.

What Admin adds beyond Planner

• The whole Admin section: every page in the list under Admin section pages — users and profiles, navigation visibility, email, integrations, Salesforce settings and caching, configuration, payments, and monitoring.
• Managing who can do what: inviting users, assigning roles, creating and editing custom profiles, and assigning users to profiles.
• The Beta Features page, where features are switched on for the org.
• Page Designer, once it is enabled for your org.
• Global Options, which is shown in the sidebar for Admins only.
• Payment gateway configuration and org-level fee management (also requires the Blackthorn Payments Admin permission set in Salesforce).

What Custom includes

A custom profile is a named set of permissions, such as Registration Coordinator. You build it in Admin > Profiles and assign it to users from Admin > Users (or assign users to the profile directly from the Profiles page). Each user has one role, so a user has one profile.

• Two grids: Global Navigation (the sidebar items) and Event Navigation (every page inside an event). Each row is set to Read, Write or left blank.
• Read lets the person open the page and see its data. Write includes Read and also lets them create, edit and delete on that page.
• Blank means no access: the item is hidden from navigation and the matching actions are refused, not just hidden.
• Custom objects your org has added appear as extra rows in the same grids, so they can be granted the same way.
• Custom users never see the Admin section, Beta Features, Page Designer or Global Options. One exception can be delegated: a profile with Write on Card Field Customization may use the Customize fields picker without being an Admin.
• Actions that Forge reserves for the Planner role or above are not reachable from a Custom profile, whatever its grants. Test a new profile by signing in as a user who holds it.
• If a profile is deleted, its users must be reassigned; until then they are told they have no access.
• AI assistants (MCP) and Slack commands act with the signed-in user's role. A Custom user can only be given write access to them if their profile holds at least one Write grant, and each tool checks the specific grants it needs.

Full lists

The tables below are generated from the same definitions Forge enforces, so they stay complete as pages are added. Admin and Planner have full access to every Global and Event navigation item; Custom is set per profile. The Admin section is Admin-only.