# Team roles: custom member roles that your apps enforce

> Define your own roles, like Sales Rep or Finance, assign them to members, and apps you build show or allow things based on each person's roles.

Aug 31, 2026. Topics: Collaboration, Apps. https://www.generalinput.com/changelog/2026-08-31-team-roles

Workspaces can now define their own team roles, such as Sales Rep, Recruiter, or Finance, and give each member one or more of them. Apps use those roles to decide what each person sees and can do, so one app can serve a whole team with the right view for each person.

### How it works

- **Your vocabulary.** Team roles are names your workspace defines. They sit alongside, and never replace, the built-in Owner, Admin, and Member roles that control workspace permissions.
- **Assigned centrally, applied by each app.** You manage who holds which role in one place; each app decides what a role means for it, for example "Finance can approve refunds."
- **Delivered to every app.** App handlers, app agents, and app screenshots all receive the viewer's roles, and an app can read the live member roster instead of keeping its own copy.
- **Built into authoring.** The app builder can see your members and their roles while it builds, so you can ask for role-based behavior in plain language.
- **Permissioned.** Changing someone's roles requires permission to update member roles.

This builds on [apps knowing who's using them](/changelog/2026-07-20-apps-warm-servers-viewer-identity).