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  • Qualtrics Platform
    Qualtrics Platform
  • Customer Journey Optimizer
    Customer Journey Optimizer
  • XM Discover
    XM Discover
  • Qualtrics Social Connect
    Qualtrics Social Connect

User Types


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About User Types

Setting user permissions one account at a time can be tedious. As a brand administrator, you can quickly update and maintain permissions for many users at once by using user types. User types are sets of permissions that can be assigned to user accounts. Whenever you want to make a widespread permission change, just edit the user type and all associated user accounts will update automatically.

Creating a New User Type

  1. Navigate to the Admin page.
    Shows how to navigate to the user types page.
  2. Select User Types.
  3. Click Create User Type.
  4. Name your user type.
    Shows how to name and save a new user type using the pop-up menu.
  5. Click Save. The user type is now created.
  6. Enable/disable permissions by selecting the switch on the right-hand side. For a detailed list of permissions, visit our User Permissions page.
    Shows the user type permissions that can be enabled or disabled.
  7. If any edits were made to the permissions, scroll to the bottom and click Apply to save the new permissions. If not, click User types in the upper-left corner to navigate back to the user types page.

Deleting a User Type

To delete a user type, click the three dots on the right side of the user type and click Delete user type.

Deleting a user type.

Setting a Default User Type

If your users are creating accounts via the self-enrollment feature, they will automatically be assigned a default user type. You can specify which user type will act as the default by clicking the three dots on the right-side of the user type then clicking Set to Self-Enroll.

Setting a default user type.

The user type that has a checkmark under the Self-Enrollment banner is the user type that will be assigned to self-enrolled users.
Green check mark indicating self-enrollment.

Assigning a User Type

Qtip: Changing the user type of a user will automatically update the user’s permissions without needing to manually change each permission.
  1. Navigate to the Admin page.
    Searching for a user
  2. Select Users.
  3. Search for the existing user by using any of the search criteria and filters (Username, First Name, Last Name, etc., as well as Division, User Type, and Account Status). You can use multiple criteria at once.
  4. Click on the username of the desired account.
  5. Click on the User Type dropdown list and select the user type you would like to apply.
    Selecting a user type for a specific user

    Qtip: If you would like to create a user type that isn’t a default Qualtrics user type, navigate to the Creating a New User Type section.
  6. Click Save.

Existing User Types

If you don’t feel like building every user type from scratch, Qualtrics has provided two primary ready-made user types:

  • Brand Administrator: The brand administrator is a special user type with the ability to edit administrative settings for the whole brand. Most users with access to the Admin page are Brand Administrators, with the exception of division administrators (which are a division setting, not a user type).
  • Standard Account / Qualtrics – Standard: This user type generally has access to all the features in the brand except administrative ones.
Qtip: The permissions of an existing user type cannot be changed. To customize a user type, you can create a new user type and select the appropriate permissions.
Qtip: Names of existing user types cannot be changed. User Type names can only be changed when a new user type is created.
Qtip: These are not the only user types capable of the indicated functions. You can find a list of all possible permissions you can apply to a user type on the User, Group, & Division Permissions support page.

Specialty User Types

The following pre-made user types are used only for the corresponding premium software.

  • CX Administrator: These users have the permission Manage CX Users enabled, meaning they can administrate ticket settings usually reserved for brand administrators, roles, and CX dashboard users without being a Brand Administrator. These users do not have access to the Admin page, but do have access to the User Admin tab of a dashboard project.
  • Employee Insights Admin: Users assigned to this type can work on Employee Experience projects, can be participants/dashboard users, and have access to global employee directories (as represented by the Access Directories permission). A user will be considered an EI Administrator if they have any of the following Employee Experience permissions enabled: 360, Employee Engagement, Employee Pulse, Employee Lifecycle, or Ad Hoc Employee Research. These users do not have access to the Admin page. See Administration (EX) for more information.
    Qtip: By default, Employee Insights Admins have more limited permissions than EX Administrators do. Employee Insights Admins have limited use of the library, don’t have access to certain question types (even in survey projects), and lack certain project administration permissions, such as the ability to delete, activate, and deactivate projects. Most importantly, Employee Insights Admins do not have access to Pulse programs. You can always enable these permissions to individual Employee Insights Admins, but if your users need access to these features, we recommend using the EX Administrator user type instead.
  • EX Administrator: Users assigned to this type can work on Employee Experience projects, can be participants/dashboard users, and have access to global employee directories (as represented by the Access Directories permission). A user will be considered an EX Administrator if they have any of the following Employee Experience permissions enabled: 360, Employee Engagement, Employee Pulse, Employee Lifecycle, or Ad Hoc Employee Research. These users only have access to Projects section of the Admin page. See Administration (EX) for more information.
    Qtip: Employee Insights Admins and EX Administrators cannot import Brand Administrators as project participants. Brand Administrators will need to add themselves as participants to projects, or be added by other Brand Administrators. This is to prevent user account admin information from being modified by lower level user admins. If you’d like to change this behavior, Brand Admins can reach out to XM Success Managers and ask to have the Limit EX Admin Update Person permission disabled for the organization.
  • Participant: Users assigned to this type take 360 or EE surveys and view dashboards. These users are created automatically when you add users in the Participants section of your Employee Experience project. See Administration (EX) for more information. If you use CX Dashboards, then users will be assigned the participant user type when you add people in the Users tab of a dashboard and do not specify a user type.
  • Vocalize User: Users assigned to this type are dashboard viewers who can use CX Dashboards, but not build Survey Platform Projects.
    Qtip: If your brand has access to CX Dashboards, the Standard Account user type has access to CX Dashboards.

Best Practices

Some examples of practical user types are:

  • You want to control who creates, views, builds, imports, exports, shares, prints, handles tickets, and every combination in between
  • The sensitivity of your data requires varied levels of viewing permissions across your users

When building user types, keep in mind these important considerations:

  • Manually changing a permission that differs from an individual’s user type should not be done frequently
  • Check the Qualtrics pre-built user types before building one from scratch
  • Having many user types makes upkeep difficult, most brands within Qualtrics maintain 2 to 4

FAQs