A grant is one person's access to one tool, written down on their record. Folkbase keeps every grant next to the reason it exists, so the question "what can this person open, and why" has an answer you can read. Role templates, access requests, reviews, and offboarding all work in grants.
What a grant holds
Each grant carries five things:
- Tool: the system the person can open, such as Slack, GitHub, or Google Workspace.
- Scope: how far the access reaches inside that tool.
- Granted by: the person who granted it.
- Justification: the role or the request that justifies it.
- State: where the grant stands today.
A grant is always in one of four states. The state tells you whether access is open right now. The history on the record tells you how it got there.
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pending | Queued and waiting to open |
| Active | Open, and the person can use the tool |
| Suspended | Paused, but still on the record |
| Revoked | Closed, with the time it closed |
Role templates set the baseline
Most grants come from a role template. A template lists the grants a role should have, so the access for a Product Designer or a Support Lead is defined once and reused for everyone in that role.
A grant that comes from a template names the role as its justification. That is what keeps the record readable later: the reason for the access is the job the person holds, written down when the grant was made rather than recalled from memory. How template grants queue and open for a new hire is covered under onboarding.
Requests for extra access
Templates cover the common case. When someone needs a tool their role does not include, they ask for it:
- The person requests access to a tool from their own access view.
- A manager or an admin approves the request.
- The grant lands on the record with the request as its justification and the approver as the person who granted it.
The result looks like any other grant. It has a tool, a scope, a name, and a reason. Nothing is handed out in a side channel and then forgotten.
Every grant carries its own reason for existing.
Read access off the record
In most companies, the answer to "who has GitHub" lives in several admin consoles and the memory of whoever set up the account. Getting it means a ticket to IT and a wait.
In Folkbase the answer is on the record: each tool a person can open, who granted it, and the role that justifies it. Admins see the whole workspace. Managers see their team's access. Staff see their own.
With an integration installed, a grant is more than a note. Revoke it in Folkbase and the account closes in the tool. The connected tools are listed on the integrations page.
Access grants by role are part of every plan, Starter included. Access reviews and integrations come with Growth. See pricing for each plan.