Collection Permissions

A Collection is a named set of files a team works on together: a project, a client matter, a campaign, a reel. Files inside a Collection can live on any Source, anywhere in your catalog. The Collection is what holds them together. Your organization role (Owner, Admin, Editor, or Viewer) still applies account-wide; see Roles & Permissions. What this page covers is the second layer: the Owner, Admin, Editor, or Viewer role someone has on a specific Collection. The org role sets the permission boundary for Sources — but Collections work differently. A Viewer in the org can create their own Collections from any Source they have access to, and can make changes within those Collections. What they can’t do is edit Sources directly. Collections have more moving parts than Sources, so they use four roles instead of Source-style Can Edit / Can View. And unlike Sources, a Collection can be shared with someone without showing them any of the folders around it.

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The four Collection roles

Every person on a Collection has one of these roles. Roles are listed from most to least powerful. A few notes on what each role is for:

• Owner runs the Collection. They’re the one person who can delete it or hand the whole thing off to someone else.
• Admin does everything an Owner does except deleting or handing off. Use this for co-leads or people who need to manage the member list.
• Editor is the day-to-day role: adding files, leaving comments, changing what’s in the Collection.
• Viewer is for clients, stakeholders, or anyone who should see the work but not touch it.

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The two ways to share a Collection

Collections can be grouped into folders, the same way Sources can. That means there are two places you can share from:

• Share the Collection itself. You pick the people and give each one a role (Owner, Admin, Editor, or Viewer). They see the Collection as a direct shortcut in their Shared with me view. They don’t see the folder the Collection lives in, or any other Collection nearby. The Collection is the whole view they get.
• Share the folder the Collection is in. The share covers every Collection inside that folder, now and in the future. The folder shows up in the recipient’s navigation, and they can open anything in it with the role you chose.

Pick by the outcome you want:

• Share the Collection when the person should see only that one thing. Common for client shares and one-off collaborations.
• Share the folder when the person should see everything in a grouping, including Collections you haven’t made yet. Common for team folders where new work lands all the time.

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What “Shared with me” looks like

When you share a Collection directly, the recipient finds it in a dedicated view called Shared with me. It’s a flat list of every Collection someone has handed them directly. There’s no folder context, no sibling information, just the Collections and the role they have on each. This is what makes Collection sharing different from Source sharing. With a Source, the recipient can always walk up the folders to the share. With a direct Collection share, the folder tree is invisible. The Collection is the whole world they see.

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When folder structure still matters

If you share at the folder level instead, the same rules as Sources apply. The folder shows up in the recipient’s navigation, every Collection inside it is covered by the share, and the role you chose applies to all of them. Any Collection added to that folder later is automatically covered, too.

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How overlapping shares combine

A person can pick up access to a Collection from more than one share (say, they’re a member of the Collection itself and a member of the folder it lives in). On that Collection, 1Archive picks the more powerful of the roles they got from each path. The folder share doesn’t cancel the direct membership; the two are compared and the stronger one applies there. For example, if Rhea is an Editor on the 2024 Campaigns folder and was later added as an Admin on the Holiday Promo Collection inside that folder, her effective role on Holiday Promo is Admin. Everywhere else in 2024 Campaigns, she’s still an Editor. If Rhea’s org role is Viewer, she can still hold an Editor or Admin role on a Collection — Viewer is a permission boundary for Sources, not for Collections. What she can’t do is make changes to any Source directly.

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Handing off a Collection

Because every Collection has exactly one Owner at all times, changing hands is a single swap rather than two steps. You name the new Owner and give up the role in the same save, and 1Archive treats that as one transfer. If you tried to drop the role first, 1Archive would turn down the request, because the Collection would be left without an Owner.