Roles and Permissions

HipChat Server has a user, a room owner, an administrator, and a group owner role.  Additionally, there is an administrative user at the operating system level (the "admin" at the Console/SSH).

By default, people with the user role can do the following:

• Download, install, and use the HipChat apps
• Chat in open chat rooms (and be invited to chat in private rooms)
• Read and send messages
• Download files  
• Search the history of all open rooms and any private rooms they are members of
• Create an API v2 personal token
• Manage how they receive notifications 

As long as the administrator hasn't disabled these features, they can also do the following:

• Participate in private 1-1 chats 
• Invite other users to join 
• Create chat rooms
• Update their own user profile 
• Delete their own messages 
• Chat over video 

Room owners can manage the rooms they've created in the following ways:

• Rename the room
• Delete the room
• Archive or Unarchive the room
• Set the room to private or public
• Enable a guest access URL (unless this has been disabled by the administrator)
• Invite or remove users (if the room is private)
• Install, configure, or remove room-specific integrations

People with the administrator role can use the HipChat apps to chat and also have access to the group and server administration features in HipChat Server. They can administer HipChat Server in the following ways:

• Manage users
  • Add and delete users
  • Change peoples' roles (for example, from user to admin)
  • Force a user to reset their password on next login
  • Set up user directory integration
  • Require new users to have an email address from a specific domain
• Perform group admin tasks
  • Enable and disable features (only allow Admins to create rooms, disable file uploads, etc.)
  • Add, remove, or override emoticons
  • Create APIv1 tokens
    Note: They can't change the HipChat Server group's name or owner.
• Perform server admin tasks, such as configuring the network connection
• View the history of messages and files shared for all rooms (both open and private)
• Manage all rooms (for example, delete a message with a file or change a room owner)
  

HipChat also has a group owner. This is typically the person who installed HipChat Server. The group owner can manage the HipChat group.

HipChat Server also has an OS level administrator. This is the person who installed HipChat Server. This administrator can use the command line interface.  This user does not interact with the application directly but can perform server maintenance tasks like upgrading HipChat Server, changing the SSL certs, and resetting the group owner.