User management introduction

Effective user and role management is key to maintaining secure, structured, and efficient collaboration within Xperience by Kentico. As a digital experience platform (DXP), (Xperience by Kentico) empowers organizations to control access, streamline content workflows, and ensure users have the correct permissions. This short series will guide you through the essentials — logging in, creating and managing users, and defining roles for a well-organized and secure environment.

By mastering these foundational skills, admins, marketers, and content editors can optimize workflows, enforce security best practices, and create a flexible yet cohesive system tailored to their business needs. Whether you’re setting up new Users or defining Roles, this series will help you get started with confidence.

Let’s have a look at the definition of core concepts.

Users in Xperience by Kentico

Simply put, a User is any person with access to the backend of Xperience by Kentico. Whether you are a content editor, marketer, or a global admin taking care of the whole Xperience administration, you are represented by a user entity. In other words, users work with the applications from the administration – they create content, define marketing activities, or send emails.

For example, a typical user adds website articles, creates personalized content variants on website pages, or monitors system operation.

Roles in Xperience by Kentico

A Role defines a collection of permissions for what a user can do in Xperience administration. A role gives you access to different applications in Xperience administration and tells you whether you can create or delete content like an image, add a new page, or send an email.

For example, you will typically have several users with a Content editor role who can add or edit articles and other website pages or update content across the website.

Roles are not exclusive; you can define and assign one general role to several users. You can imagine roles as tags that you can add to users; if they have more roles, they will get the sum of all permissions.

Imagine a company where everyone is doing their assigned job and has a different role than the others. Everything works fine until you realize you need person A to fill in for person B. What to do? Assign B’s role to A, and you’re all set. Person A will have two roles now.

For example, if a user has a Content editor role and a Digital marketer role, permissions from both roles apply. Admins assign these roles to users, such as marketers, editors, and data protection officers.

Permissions assigned to roles give you access to all the necessary features. You can focus on doing your job without being overwhelmed with other Xperience applications you don’t need. The set of role permissions will declutter your dashboard and save you time when looking for the correct application.

If you are an administrator, you need to put some thought into role creation, though. If you set up a role with unnecessary permissions, users assigned to this role can end up in the wrong place, working on incorrect things or otherwise breaking the existing application flow. On the other hand, if you are too strict or forget to include crucial permission for a given role, the user might be unable to perform their job.

Members in Xperience by Kentico

Visitors who register an account in your application are called members. Unlike users who can access the administration, members can access only the front-facing part of your application, like a website. Once they create their account and become members, they can browse the website pages or access restricted, member-only sections.

For example, signed-in members have access to more advanced content or broader sets of downloadable resources compared to regular visitors.

Xperience applications for managing users and roles

Xperience comes with two built-in applications you can use to create, manage, and review users and roles:

Users application allows you to add new users, edit current ones, or add them to roles.
Role management application allows you to create new roles and assign or change permissions for existing roles.

Xperience comes with two predefined roles: Administrator and Digital Channel Manager. If your project requires a more granular system of access permissions, you can easily create custom roles to fit your needs.

Next step

Continue learning about working with roles.