A client user is a person at one of your clients who logs in to SAQ. They belong to exactly one client and have no workspace role. A workspace Owner or Admin creates them under Clients → (client) → Users; a new address gets a magic-link login. Every client user is regular to begin with; being added to a project makes them elevated there, once they have a full login.
Before you start
You need a client user account, created by a workspace Owner or Admin. Log in with the link SAQ emails you, or, once you have set one, with your password or passkey. See First login.
Regular versus elevated
| Regular client user | Elevated client user | |
|---|---|---|
| Login | Magic link (15 minutes, once), or a password or passkey if set | Password, passkey, or single sign-on. A magic-link session is never elevated. |
| How you become one | Automatic | Added to a project's members by an Owner, Admin, or Project manager, plus a full login |
| Tickets you see | The ones you started or are a viewer on | Also every ticket on that project that is billed to your client |
| Sidebar | My work, My tickets | Also Board and the project |
| Comments | Shared only | Shared and Internal on the project; never Staff |
| Editing tickets | Title, description, and so on are not editable | Title, description, priority, labels, dates, assignee, and state on the project; kind, unless the ticket has unbilled billable time |
| Being the assignee | No | Yes, on the project |
| Time | Never logs time. Sees billable minutes on a ticket and whether they are billed; never notes, rates, amounts, or estimates | Same |
| Inbox and Review | No | No |
| API tokens | Cannot create one ("Regular client users cannot create API tokens.") | Can; the token must name at least one project, and cannot have the triage scope |
The project's Members tab shows an elevated user as Elevated client user, or Elevated (needs a full login first) until they have set a password or passkey.
How to get a full login
A full login is a session started with a password, a passkey, or single sign-on. If you only ever used login links, open Account → Security: the Password card says "This account has no password yet; set one to get a full login." Set a password, or add a passkey, then log in with it. From then on login links stop working for your address, and your elevations and billing-contact access are usable.
What a regular client user can do
- Start tickets with New. Without a project the ticket lands in the workspace's shared Inbox and is routed by a workspace user. You can also start tickets directly on any project where your client is the billing client or a collaborating client; the ticket is billed to your client by default. Kind, priority, dates, labels, and estimate you cannot set; SAQ assigns the workspace's inbound kind and default priority.
- Comment at the Shared audience on every ticket you can see, and attach files up to 20 MiB. Comments cannot be edited or deleted afterwards.
- Resolve your own tickets: on a ticket you started, the State field offers the current state and the workspace's customer-resolve state (Done by default). Other states are for the workspace users.
- Share within your client: add other users of your client as viewers on a ticket you can see, and remove viewers you added yourself. The reporter can never be removed.
- Follow tickets you were added to as a viewer, for example by being mentioned in a Shared comment.
- Reply by email to notification mails; the reply threads onto the ticket as a Shared comment. A reply on a closed ticket reopens it within the workspace's reopen window.
What elevation adds
On the project you are elevated on, you work much like a workspace member, within your own client's tickets: you see every ticket billed to your client there, read and write Internal comments, can be assigned, edit ticket fields, move a ticket to any state, archive it, and use the Board. You still cannot log time, set billing fields or estimates, see Staff comments, or see tickets billed to other clients on the same project. A viewer grant on a ticket from another project never lets you read that ticket's Internal comments.
An elevated user can also be made Project manager on the project; see Project manager for the narrower client-side version of that role.
Billing contact
The Billing contact flag on your client user lets you download your client's timesheets under Documents and see time bank balances. It works only with a full login. See Billing contact.
Email you receive
Regular client users get an email for new Shared comments and state changes on tickets they started or view. Elevated client users get the same as workspace users, minus Staff comments and Inbox mail: comments, assignments, state changes, and mentions on tickets where they are the assignee, reporter, or a viewer. Your notification mode under Account → Preferences narrows this further. See Email notifications.
Common problems
- The Board or a project is missing from the sidebar. You are not elevated on any project, or this is a magic-link session. Log in with a password or passkey.
- "Billing fields are set by workspace users on the project." Billing client, policy, mode, description, and estimate are never set by client users.
- You cannot change the kind of a ticket. An elevated client user cannot change the kind while the ticket carries billable time that has not been billed yet.