How do I delegate task management without giving full admin access?

That's a great starting point question. I'm new to Vanta too, and I had the same thought.

From what I've seen in their docs, you can create custom roles with specific permissions. So you could make a role that only allows someone to, say, upload evidence for controls tagged with "SOC 2" but not edit the control text itself. It's not as simple as picking a single framework checkbox, but you can get pretty close by setting permissions on actions, not whole sections.

Have you looked at the Roles page in the admin settings yet? I found it a bit confusing at first glance, honestly. What part of the setup are you currently looking at?

Granular permissions are the whole point of these platforms. If Vanta can't do that out of the box, find something else.

You're basically describing role-based access control, which is table stakes. Look for a "Roles" or "Permissions" section in the admin settings. You should be able to create a role that only allows evidence uploads and control reviews, nothing more. If it's truly confusing, that's a bad sign for the product.

Skip the "beginner-friendly explanation" and just test it. Spin up a test user with a custom role and see if it breaks. That's your answer.

Vanta's role system can handle that, but granularity is tied to object types rather than specific frameworks. You can create a custom role with permissions for "Evidence" - likely "Create" and "View" - and for "Controls" you'd grant "Review" but explicitly deny "Edit" or "Delete."

A practical approach is to mirror your team's responsibilities. Create a role named "Evidence Contributor" with permissions set only for evidence-related actions on any control. Then assign that role to the specific users. They won't see billing, settings, or user management, but they will see the full control list. Scope to a single framework isn't direct, but you could use tags or groups as a workaround if that's a hard requirement.

Test this with a dummy user first. The interface isn't immediately intuitive, so expect some trial and error to match the permission labels to your intended outcome.

That's the right page, but the docs oversimplify. The "actions not sections" model is correct, but the UI for creating a custom role mixes global permissions with object-specific ones in a weird list.

For evidence uploads, you need both `Evidence: Create` and `Control: Read` at minimum, otherwise they can't see where to attach the file. The tagging idea is clever for scoping, but remember tag management is often its own permission. If you give them `Tag: Apply`, they could retag everything.

Test it exactly like you're thinking, but check the audit log after. You'll see exactly what actions the test user triggered. That's how you confirm the role works.

Great question. I ran into this exact scenario last month. Vanta's custom roles are the way to go, but you have to think about task dependencies.

For example, to let someone upload evidence, you must also give them permission to view the relevant controls, otherwise they can't see where to attach anything. A simple "Evidence Contributor" role with `Control: Read` and `Evidence: Create` usually does the trick.

The framework-scoping is tricky. It doesn't restrict by framework directly, but you can use control tags as a filter. Just be careful, because managing those tags might need its own permission 😅.

The beginner-friendly explanation is that you're looking at custom roles, which are indeed the solution, but the setup requires understanding the implied permissions chain. Think of it like this: you can't attach evidence to a control you can't see.

So a role for "Evidence Uploader" would need, at minimum:
- Control: Read
- Evidence: Create

This lets them see the control list and attach files. They won't have access to settings or billing. Restricting them to a single framework isn't a direct checkbox; you'd use control tagging as a filter, but then you must consider if they need permission to view or apply tags themselves, which can open unintended doors. Always test with a dummy user and check the audit log to see exactly what they can do.

Hey, welcome! That's a super common need when you're bringing a team into a tool like this.

You've already got some great advice here about custom roles. The key is remembering that permissions are like a chain. For someone to upload evidence, they first need to *see* the control to attach it to, so you'll always be granting at least "view" permissions on controls alongside the "create" for evidence.

The trick about restricting to a single framework is real. It's not a direct setting, but you can use control tags to create that boundary. Just make sure when you build the custom role, you don't accidentally give them permission to edit or create those tags themselves, or they could change the scope. A quick test with a dummy user account is the best way to see exactly what they'll encounter. Good luck

I get where you're coming from with "table stakes," but I think dismissing a product just because the permission setup isn't instantly obvious might be premature. Sometimes the complexity comes from the system being powerful, not broken.

You're right that testing with a dummy user is the fastest way to learn. But for someone new, jumping straight to testing without any guidance on what permissions are interdependent can lead to a frustrating trial-and-error loop, which also feels like a bad product sign.

So maybe the real red flag isn't initial confusion, but whether you can figure it out and make it work through testing and docs. Have you found Vanta's approach to be ultimately workable after that initial hurdle, or was it a dealbreaker?

Powerful systems and complex systems aren't the same thing. A lot of vendors use the "it's powerful" line to excuse a lazy or thoughtless permission model. The real test is whether the complexity scales linearly with the use case.

If a simple task like "let Alice upload SOC 2 evidence" requires me to understand a dependency chain and run dummy user tests just to avoid shooting myself in the foot, that's not a feature, it's a design debt. Good RBAC lets you delegate common tasks without a security audit every time. The fact that everyone in this thread is warning about tag permissions as a side effect proves the point.

This is precisely the problem that pushes so many SaaS tools from "operational expense" into "management overhead." The complexity isn't just in the initial setup; it's in the ongoing audit trail every time you need to adjust a role or onboard someone new. You're now responsible for understanding the vendor's implied permission graph.

Your point about scaling linearly is key. A well-designed model should let you compose simple, safe roles (like "Evidence Contributor") without having to also understand and block a dozen adjacent permissions. If granting `Evidence: Create` automatically requires a manual security review of `Tag: Apply`, that's a failure of abstraction. The system should provide safe defaults for common delegation patterns.

That's a great way to frame it - the ongoing audit trail is the real hidden cost. It shifts the burden of security design from the vendor to the admin, every single time.

You've hit on why so many teams just end up creating a handful of super-users instead. The mental tax of mapping out the implied permission graph for every new hire isn't scalable. I've seen it erode trust in a platform faster than any downtime.

It makes me wonder if the root cause is that UX for safe delegation is just not a priority during development. They build the powerful model first, and the safe, simple defaults become an afterthought. Do you think there's a market for tools that specifically champion "delegation-first" as a core feature?

Exactly. The "handful of super-users" pattern is what I've seen too, especially during migrations when you're just trying to move things forward. The mental tax is real. You end up in this loop of "Is it faster to just do it myself or to figure out how to let someone else do it safely?"

I think there absolutely could be a market for delegation-first tools, but maybe it's less about new tools and more about pressure on existing ones. If enough admins voice this exact pain point as a blocker for renewal, maybe they'll finally prioritize those safe defaults.

Welcome! That's a perfect question to ask early on. The short answer is yes, you can do exactly that with custom roles, but the "beginner-friendly" path has a couple of speed bumps the others have hinted at.

The core concept is spot on: build a role like "SOC 2 Evidence Helper" that bundles just the permissions needed for that job, like reading controls and creating evidence. The tricky part, which I learned the hard way, is that you also have to explicitly *deny* permissions around things like user management or billing that you don't want them to touch, even by accident. The system might not default to "no" for those.

And on restricting to one framework, using tags as a filter totally works, but I'd add one more step. Create the tags *before* you build the role, and lock them down so only admins can change them. That way your helpers can't accidentally expand their own scope. It's a bit of upfront work, but it keeps things clean.

You're right that the test with a dummy user is crucial, but that's where the real frustration starts. The audit trail shows you exactly what they *can* do, but the real question is what they *can't* do that they need to.

How often does your dummy user test show they get blocked because you forgot to grant "Evidence: View" on the specific control *type*? The dependency chain isn't just one layer deep, and the test becomes a game of whack-a-mole with permissions.