Why Can't This User Do X?

A user reports that a button is greyed out, an action is missing from a menu, or a contract they can see won’t let them make changes. Nothing looks broken, and they are clearly signed in, so it reads like a bug.

Almost always, it is not. Pactly hides or disables an action when the signed-in user lacks permission for that specific contract. Four things decide what a user can do: their role, whether they own the contract, which groups they belong to, and whether their role is read-only. This article maps the symptom you see to the cause behind it.

Before changing anyone’s role, check these in order. Most “why can’t they do X” reports resolve at one of the first three.

Each role grants a fixed set of actions. If the action is not in the role, the button never appears, regardless of which contract is open. This is by design, not a fault.

Common cases that surface as “missing” rather than “greyed out”:

• Lite is a full User minus a few capabilities, including the Pactly Word Plugin (the Word add-in). A Lite user signs in fine but has no add-in access, so “Open in Word” and the plugin are unavailable.
• Requester raises and tracks its own contract requests through intake. It has no general Manage or Review views, so a Requester cannot browse the wider repository or run a playbook review.
• User Manager manages people, not contracts. It can add, edit, and deactivate users and assign roles and groups, but it has no contract actions at all.

To see exactly what each role grants, read the Role Permissions Reference. If the user genuinely needs the action, change their role rather than working around it.

This is the single most common cause, and the most confusing, because the contract opens normally. The user can read everything but every edit and action is greyed out.

The reason is scope. A standard User can find and view contracts across the company, but can only edit, manage, and act on contracts they own. A non-owner User sees the record but cannot change it. Nothing in the UI explains this, so it looks like a permissions glitch.

Roles differ in scope:

If a User needs to work on a contract they don’t own, you have two paths:

• Reassign the owner to that user (done on the contract itself), or
• Give them a company-wide role such as Manager, if they routinely work across other people’s contracts.

Groups control which contracts a user can see. When a contract is assigned to a group, only members of that group see it in their lists. If a user can’t find a contract that you know exists, check whether it sits in a group they don’t belong to.

Two group behaviors cause “missing contract” reports:

• Group membership. A Manager assigned to specific groups sees only contracts in those groups. A Manager with no groups sees everything. Adding the user to the right group restores visibility.
• Sensitive groups. A group marked Sensitive hides its contracts from everyone who is not a member, including Admins. This surprises admins who expect to see every contract. The only fix is to add the person to the group; their role does not override it.

Users are added to groups in the same Add / Edit user dialog where you set their role. For how groups and the sensitive flag work, see Groups & Document Access.

Some roles are read-only by design. The user can open and read, but every create, edit, and action control is hidden, so the whole screen looks “locked.”

• Viewer can find and open contracts, templates, and forms, but cannot create or change anything.
• Reports can use the analytics dashboard and run data exports, but has no contract actions.

If a read-only user needs to do real work, the role is the cause. Move them to a role that grants the actions they need (typically User for owner-scoped contract work, or Manager for company-wide). See the Role Permissions Reference.

• Administration
• User Roles
• Role Permissions Reference
• Groups & Document Access