Collaboration Overview

Account Collaboration

Account collaboration enables multiple users to work together on shared cloud environments without using the same login credentials. A primary account can invite team members, share selected resources and control exactly which actions each collaborator is permitted to perform.

Large projects are often managed by developers, administrators, project managers and support teams. Using a single shared account for all users can create security, accountability and access-control problems. The collaboration feature provides a more secure and structured way to organise team access.

The primary account hosts the required environments and shares selected components with collaboration members. The same environment can be shared with multiple users, removing the need to create unnecessary copies for each team member.

Account collaboration structure showing a primary account and collaboration members
The primary account shares selected environments with authorised collaboration members.
In this article

How Account Collaboration Works

The account collaboration process is based on a simple workflow. One account owns the environments and manages the collaboration, while invited members receive access according to assigned roles and permissions.

1
Create Collaboration The primary account creates a collaboration and defines its purpose.
2
Invite Members Users receive invitations to join using their individual platform accounts.
3
Assign Access Environments, nodes, roles and permissions are assigned to each member.
4
Collaborate Members manage shared resources within the permissions granted to them.
✓

Key benefit

A single environment can be shared with several team members. This improves resource utilisation and avoids maintaining duplicate environments for different users.

Primary Account and Collaboration Members

P

Primary Account

The primary account owns the collaboration and retains full access to all hosted environments, including shared and unshared resources.

It manages invitations, members, shared components, roles and permissions.

M

Collaboration Members

Collaboration members are users who accept an invitation from the primary account.

They can work with shared environments in the same way as regular resources, but only within the access level granted to them.

Primary Account Responsibilities

  • Create and manage the collaboration.
  • Invite new members and remove existing members.
  • Select which environments or components are shared.
  • Assign roles and permissions to each collaborator.
  • Review and adjust member access when responsibilities change.
  • Pay all charges generated by shared environments and collaborator actions.

Collaboration Member Capabilities

  • Access shared environments through an individual platform account.
  • Perform permitted operations without using the primary account credentials.
  • Work with shared nodes, services and application components.
  • Create new environments on the primary account when sufficient permission is granted.
  • Manage other collaboration settings only when the assigned role allows it.

Permissions and Shared Resources

The primary account controls the actions available to each collaboration member. Permissions can be adapted to different responsibilities, such as application deployment, environment monitoring, infrastructure management or collaboration administration.

Environment access Controls which environments or groups are visible to the collaborator.
Operational actions Defines whether a member can start, stop, restart, scale, configure or redeploy shared resources.
Deployment access Allows approved users to deploy or update applications within shared environments.
Creation rights Permits a member to create new environments under the primary account.
Collaboration management Allows authorised members to manage invitations, roles or permissions for other collaborators.
i

Security recommendation

Assign only the permissions required for each user’s responsibilities. Review access regularly and remove permissions that are no longer needed.

Billing and Account Quotas

All charges for shared environments are applied to the primary account. This includes resource usage generated by actions performed by collaboration members.

When a collaboration member is permitted to create a new environment, the new environment is created under the primary account. Therefore, the primary account’s quotas, limits and available resources are used instead of the member’s account restrictions.

i

Important

The primary account remains financially responsible for all shared environments and for any additional resources created or consumed by authorised collaborators.

Leaving a Collaboration

When a member leaves or is removed from a collaboration, access to all shared environments on the primary account is revoked immediately.

This also applies to environments that the member created while working under the collaboration. Since those environments belong to the primary account, they remain available to the owner but are no longer accessible to the former collaborator.

✓

Offboarding practice

Before removing a member, review active deployments, scheduled tasks and ownership responsibilities to ensure a smooth transfer of work.

Expected Result

Team members can work securely with shared environments using their own accounts. The primary account retains ownership, controls permissions and remains responsible for resource usage and billing.

This structure improves security, accountability and operational flexibility while eliminating the need to share credentials or duplicate environments for each user.

Important Notes

  • The primary account retains full access to all collaboration resources.
  • Members only see and manage resources granted through their assigned permissions.
  • All shared-environment charges are billed to the primary account.
  • Primary-account quotas apply to environments created by collaboration members.
  • Access is removed when a user leaves or is removed from the collaboration.
  • Use individual accounts instead of sharing the primary account password.

What’s next?