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How to give an assistant its own Drum user

An assistant always acts as the Drum user who connected it, with that user’s permissions. Give an assistant its own user when:

  • It runs on its own, for example an agent that records supplier bills each night
  • Several people share it
  • It should be able to do less than the person who set it up

Its changes then show in Drum under its own name, and you can limit it with a role.

Before you begin

You need to be an account admin, or to have permission to manage users and roles. The assistant’s user counts as a user on your Drum plan, like any other.

1. Create a role for the assistant

In your account’s role settings, create a role with only what the assistant needs:

  • The API permissions for its work: api_read to read, and api_create, api_update or api_delete only for the changes it should make
  • The Drum permissions the same work needs in the browser, such as read_all_projects and create_costs for an agent that records costs

Leave out everything else. A tool the role cannot use is not listed, and the assistant cannot call it.

For which permissions each tool needs, see Needs on the tool reference pages. For the API permissions, see The four API permissions.

2. Create the user

  1. Invite a user with an email address your firm controls, such as drum-agent@yourfirm.com.au.
  2. Give it the role you created.
  3. Accept the invitation and set a password, and keep the sign-in details in your firm’s password manager.

3. Connect the assistant as that user

Sign in to Drum as the assistant’s user, then either:

4. Check what it can do

Ask the assistant “Which Drum tools can you use?” and compare the answer with what you intended. Then try one thing it should not be able to do. It should answer that it is not permitted.