If your company just rolled out Hook and you're the lucky soul tasked with wrangling users and locking down permissions, this one's for you. Hook's flexibility is great—until you have hundreds (or thousands) of people to manage. This guide will show you how to set up user permissions and team roles in Hook so your org stays secure and you don’t lose your mind.
Let’s skip the hand-waving and get into what actually works, what’s a waste of time, and where things can trip you up.
1. Get Clear on What You Actually Need
Before you start clicking around in Hook’s admin dashboards, pause. Too many big teams end up with a tangled mess of roles, half-baked permission sets, or—worse—everyone as an admin “just to make things easier.”
A few questions to answer first:
- Who really needs admin rights?
- What data or actions are sensitive (billing, integrations, deleting things)?
- Do you have contractors or temps who need limited access?
- How many teams or departments will use Hook? Do they need to see each other’s stuff?
Pro tip: Sketch out your ideal permission structure on paper or a whiteboard. It’ll save time when you’re in the weeds later.
2. Understand How Hook Handles Users, Teams, and Roles
Hook’s permission system is pretty flexible, but you have to know the moving parts:
- Users: Individual accounts tied to one person (or, sometimes, a service account for bots or automations).
- Teams: Groups of users, usually mapped to departments, projects, or functions.
- Roles: Bundles of permissions you assign to users or teams. Out of the box, Hook gives you basic roles like “Admin,” “Editor,” and “Viewer,” but you can create custom ones.
What works: Out-of-the-box roles cover most real-world needs. Resist the urge to invent a dozen custom roles unless you truly need them.
What to ignore: Don’t try to use teams as a way to limit individual permissions—roles do that job better.
3. Set Up Teams That Mirror Your Real-World Org
The easiest way to avoid headaches down the road is to match your Hook teams to your actual org structure.
Steps:
- List your departments or functional groups. Think: Marketing, Sales, Engineering, Finance, Support, etc.
- Create a team in Hook for each group. Name them clearly—skip the cutesy names so folks know where to go.
- Add users to each team. Bulk import if you have a lot, but double-check email addresses.
Got cross-functional projects? Create temporary teams for those, too. Just remember to clean them up when the project ends.
What doesn’t work: Mixing unrelated users into the same team for convenience. It makes future permission changes a nightmare.
4. Assign Roles Thoughtfully—Don’t Just Hand Out Admin
This is where most orgs go wrong. Giving everyone admin rights feels like the easy way, but it’s just asking for chaos (and maybe a security incident).
Steps:
- Start with the least privilege. Make “Viewer” the default for most users.
- Assign “Editor” only to people who truly need to make changes. This should be a minority.
- Reserve “Admin” for trusted team leads or IT. If you’re not sure, they probably don’t need it.
Custom roles: If you have specialized needs (say, someone needs to manage integrations but not billing), create a custom role with just those permissions. But keep custom roles to a minimum—every extra role is another thing to remember and audit.
Audit tip: Schedule a quarterly review of who has admin. People change jobs, but permissions tend to stick around unless you’re diligent.
5. Use Permission Inheritance (But Keep It Simple)
Hook lets you assign roles at both the user and team level. Team-level roles apply to everyone in the team unless you override them for a specific user.
- Assign roles to teams by default. This keeps things tidy.
- Override only when absolutely necessary. User-level overrides are easy to lose track of and can lead to “Why can’t I see X?” confusion.
Example:
If everyone in Engineering should be an Editor, set that at the team level. If you have a junior engineer who should only be a Viewer, override just for them.
What to ignore: Don’t go wild with individual overrides unless you have a solid process for tracking them.
6. Set Up Access Reviews and Audits
Even with the best setup, things drift over time. People leave, teams change, projects end. Set up a regular (say, quarterly) review of user access.
How to do it:
- Export a user/role/team report from Hook.
- Look for:
- Orphaned users (people who left)
- Too many admins
- Teams that no longer make sense
- Weird one-off custom roles
- Fix anything that doesn’t look right.
Pro tip: If you have an IT or security team, make this part of their standard process.
7. Dealing with Contractors, Temps, and Service Accounts
Not everyone needs the keys to the kingdom.
- Contractors: Create a separate team (e.g., “External Contractors”) with minimal permissions.
- Temps: Set an end date for their access, or schedule a reminder to remove them.
- Service accounts: Only give them the permissions they need. Document what they’re for.
What doesn’t work: Letting contractors float around in regular teams forever. It’s a security risk and a huge pain to clean up later.
8. Automate Where You Can, But Don’t Rely on Magic
Hook has some integrations for user provisioning (like SSO/SAML). Use them if you can—they make onboarding and offboarding way less painful. But…
- Always double-check permissions after auto-provisioning. The mapping from your identity provider to Hook isn’t always perfect.
- Don’t assume SSO solves everything. You still need to review roles and team membership regularly.
What to ignore: Fancy “smart” permission suggestions. They’re rarely smarter than a human who knows the org.
9. Communicate Changes Clearly
Nothing frustrates users faster than suddenly losing access or getting dropped into the wrong team.
- Send a quick email or Slack message before making big changes.
- Let people know who to contact if something breaks.
- Document your permission model somewhere everyone can find it.
Pro tip: A simple Google Doc or Confluence page is fine—don’t overthink it.
10. Common Pitfalls and How to Dodge Them
Here’s what trips up most large orgs:
- Too many admins: Leads to accidental changes or security issues.
- No process for removing users: Ex-employees still hanging around.
- Wildly inconsistent role assignments: No one knows who can do what.
- Custom roles for every edge case: Creates confusion and makes audits harder.
How to avoid:
Stick to team-based roles, keep custom roles rare, and make access reviews part of your routine.
Keep It Simple—And Iterate
You can spend weeks crafting the perfect permission matrix, but the truth is: you’ll have to tweak it anyway. Start with straightforward teams and roles, limit admin rights, and review things regularly. The simpler your setup, the easier it’ll be to manage, even as your org grows.
Hook’s flexibility is a blessing and a curse—give people just enough access to do their jobs, document your choices, and don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If you’re stuck, ask yourself: “If I left tomorrow, would someone else be able to figure this out?” If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track.