How to grant Admin Access to Google Tag Manager?

If you’ve hired a web analytics consultant to manage your Google Tag Manager (GTM), you’ll have to grant them access so they can do the work. If they used a service for granting account access via a link, you probably wouldn’t be needing this post. Otherwise, it might not be as straightforward! In GTM, there is a distinction between accounts and containers and you can give separate permissions for different structures.

As a Google Analytics consultant, I know I get this question a lot when working with new clients, so I thought I’d write a post with step-by-step instructions.

This post will explain how to give your consultant the correct access so they can do their work.

A short introduction to GTM permission levels

When granting access to a Google Tag Manager account, you can give permissions on the Account Level and/or the Container Level. And you need to be mindful that granting Account permissions doesn’t automatically provide the user with the required Container permissions.

Here is a summary of what permissions are available and what they allow the user to do.

GTM Account permissions

In GTM, the Account usually represents your entire organisation. Within the Account you can have multiple Containers – usually, these represent different websites.

Here are the available Account permission options:

• User – has the ability to view account settings, activity and user management. By default, this permission doesn’t grant any level of access to the Containers.
• Admin – has the ability to view and edit account settings, activity and user management, with automatic Read access to all Containers within the Account.

You don’t need to grant Account permissions before granting Container permissions. And if you grant someone Container permission, they will automatically get User access to the Account.

GTM Container permissions

A container will hold all the tags, triggers and variables for a particular website. If your organisation has multiple brands, each with a different website, and you don’t expect users to complete journeys between the different websites, you’ll likely have one Container per each brand website. You’ll need to grant your consultant access to each Container you want them to work in.

Here are the available Container permission levels:

• Read – users have the ability to view the Container, but not make any edits.
• Edit – users can add and change tags within the Container.
• Approve – users have more rights to make edits, create versions and workspaces, but cannot publish the Container.
• Publish – users have full rights and the ability to publish the Container (i.e. make changes live on your website).

Remember it’s important to grant your consultant access for each container they should work in. I’ll show you exactly how to do it in this post.

Some important housekeeping

Before I get to the instructions, I wanted to give you a few words of caution.

It is important to note that if a team member who is the sole administrator of your Tag Manager account changes roles, you can get locked out of your account. Make sure to plan ahead for how account ownership will be handled if a member of your team changes roles, and ensure that there are at least two active administrator accounts.

How to grant admin access to your GTM

To keep things simple, the following guides will show you how to grant the top level of access – i.e. Publish – to all of your Containers. This is the most common requirement we have for clients but there may be situations when we don’t work on all our clients’ websites. In that case, or if you need to change the permission level, please adjust the instructions as required.

The first step is to log in to your GTM Admin section and select User Management in the Account section.

You can then follow the steps to:

• Add admin access for a new user, or
• Add admin access for an existing user.

How to grant admin access to your GTM for a new user

1. Add the user

In the User Management section, click the blue plus icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Then select Add users.

2. Add the user email address

Type in the user’s email address, tick the Administrator checkbox and click Set all.

3. Set all container permissions

Tick the Publish checkbox and click Done.

4. Send the invitation

Click Invitation to complete the process.

How to grant admin access to your GTM for an existing user

1. Go to the user’s permissions

In the User Management section, find the user you want to grant admin access to in the list of users. Next, click on that user’s options menu (vertical triple dot) and select View user’s account details.

2. Edit user access

While viewing the user’s account details, click on the pencil icon to edit user account permissions.

3. Update user account permissions

In the user’s Account permissions section, tick the Administrator permission. Then, click View all containers.

4. Update user container permissions

Click on the checkbox next to Name to select all containers.

5. Submit container access

After selecting all the Containers, click the Edit button.

6. Set permissions for selected containers

Tick the Publish checkbox and, finally, click Done to save your changes.

What happens next?

Once you’ve followed the steps above, let your consultant know that their permissions are in place so they can log in and confirm. Now they’re ready to start work.

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