The role-based UI functionality enables administrators to optimize the number of actions presented to users, so as not to confuse users by seeing actions they don’t need or use for their role. Initially this support was just for container managers (in particular, project managers). It has been extended to a concept called profiles which sets action visibility at the site or organization level.

A site administrator, organization administrator or container administrator can specify which users have visibility to the actions defined. For site and organization administrators this can be done through profiles. Profiles can be created at Site->Profiles or Org->Profiles. The actions defined will be presented with their default settings, and the administrator can choose to hide those actions. The administrator can then specify which participants (users, groups, orgs) belong to the profile. All members of the profile will have that visibility. If a member is in multiple profiles, the greatest visibility is provided.

At the container level, the administrator can specify the visibility based on user roles. Anyone in those roles will have the visibility specified. Container-level role visibility will override any profile in which the member might be a participant.

See About Configuring Action Visibility by Role for more details about profile and role-based visibility administration.