Team
The Team section in the left sidebar is where you manage who has access to your Hydra workspace and how incoming conversations get routed. It has two subsections:
- Members — invite teammates, change their role, or remove access.
- Channels — create named queues that route widget chats and inbound emails to specific groups of teammates.
Only Admins see the Team section. Members still appear in channel rosters but can't add or remove other people.
Roles
Hydra has three roles. The right one for most teammates is Member.
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything an Admin can do, plus billing changes (plan switch, cancel, payment method), and ownership transfer. There is exactly one Owner per workspace — you, by default. |
| Admin | Full access to every operational and configuration feature, including Team management, Channels, Settings, Bots, Widgets, Flows, Mini-Apps, and Knowledge editing. Cannot change plan, cancel the subscription, update payment method, or transfer ownership — those are reserved for the Owner. Admins can view the Billing page (current plan, usage, plan comparison) but won't see "Manage subscription" or "Switch to" buttons. |
| Member | Day-to-day operational access: Inbox, all CRM (Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities), Tickets, Reports, and read-only access to Knowledge and the Help Center. Members cannot edit bots, widgets, flows, custom fields, channels, or invite other teammates. |
When a Member is logged in, the sidebar hides the configuration tools they don't have access to — they won't see those areas at all.
About the Owner role
The Owner exists so that workspace billing and ownership transfer can never be locked out by a demoted Admin. Owners and Admins have identical access to every feature except billing changes.
Transferring ownership
If you need to hand the workspace off — you're leaving the company, you want a co-founder to handle billing, you accidentally became the Owner of someone else's workspace — you can transfer the Owner role to another teammate.
- Go to Settings → Billing.
- Scroll to the Transfer ownership card at the bottom of the page (only Owners see this).
- Pick the teammate you're transferring to from the New Owner dropdown. Only teammates who have already accepted their invite are eligible — pending invites won't appear.
- Re-enter your Hydra password to confirm it's really you.
- Click Continue, review the confirmation, then click Yes, transfer to {name}.
The change is immediate. The new Owner takes over billing access; you become an Admin (you keep every other capability). An entry lands in the audit log so the trail is preserved.
A few important things to know:
- Only the current Owner can transfer ownership — Admins can't initiate this.
- A workspace always has exactly one Owner. The transfer promotes the target first, then demotes you, so the workspace is never left without one.
- Once you've transferred, you can only get the role back if the new Owner transfers it back to you.
- If you lose access to your account entirely (lost password and 2FA, lost email), email hydrausersupport@gmail.com with proof of identity and we'll help recover the workspace manually.
Inviting a member
- Go to Team → Members.
- Click Invite member.
- Enter the teammate's email address and choose a role (Member by default).
- Click Generate invite link, then copy and share the link with them. The link is valid for 7 days.
The invitee opens the link, sets a password, and lands in the workspace. Their row in the Members list will switch from "Invite pending" to active once they accept.
Changing a member's role
In the Members list, use the role dropdown next to any teammate to switch them between Admin and Member. The change takes effect immediately on their next page load.
You can't change your own role from this page (to avoid accidentally locking yourself out), and you can't change the Owner from here.
Removing a member
Click Remove on any row. Confirm the prompt and the teammate loses access immediately — both the Hydra workspace and their auth login are revoked. Pending invites can be cancelled the same way.
You can't remove yourself, and you can't remove the only Owner.
Channels
A channel is a named queue that incoming conversations land in. Each channel has its own:
- Members — the teammates who can see and reply to conversations in this channel.
- Assignment mode — Manual (anyone can claim) or Round-robin (Hydra rotates new conversations through members).
- Bot co-pilot — optionally pair a bot with the channel; it can either auto-suggest replies on every customer message, or only when an agent clicks "Suggest reply." See Bot co-pilot below for the details.
- Routing — for messaging channels, which widgets route here. For email channels, a unique inbound email address that creates conversations.
Creating a channel
- Go to Team → Channels.
- Click New channel.
- Pick Messaging (widget / portal / live chat) or Email (inbound + outbound email).
- Give it a name and description, then Create.
For email channels Hydra generates an inbound address on reply.hydra-help.com. Forward that address through your DNS/MX provider to Hydra's inbound webhook to start receiving customer email.
Assigning members to a channel
Open the channel and use the Members section to add or remove teammates. Both Admins and Members can be channel members. A Member who isn't on any channel won't see any conversations in their inbox — make sure to add them somewhere.
Routing widgets to a channel
For messaging channels, open the channel and use the Widget routing section to assign one or more widgets to it. A widget can only route to one channel at a time.
Bot co-pilot
You can pair a bot with a channel so that it helps your human agents craft replies — without ever speaking to the customer in the channel itself. Open the channel, pick a bot under Bot (co-pilot), then choose a Suggestion mode:
- On-demand — nothing happens automatically. The agent clicks Suggest reply above the reply box and the co-pilot drafts a single suggestion based on the conversation so far.
- Auto — every time the customer sends a message that hasn't been answered yet, the co-pilot drafts a suggestion the moment the agent opens the conversation. This also fires immediately after a human handoff lands the conversation in this channel, so the next human in line sees a draft reply waiting for them.
Either way, the suggestion appears in a purple banner above the reply box. The agent can click Use this to drop it into the reply field (and then edit before sending), or Dismiss to ignore it. Suggestions are never sent automatically.
Live agent replies in the widget
When an agent replies from the inbox, the customer sees the message live in the chat widget — they don't have to refresh. The reply appears in a green bubble with the agent's name above it, and a small "You're now connected with a human teammate" notice is dropped in just before the first agent message so the customer knows the conversation has shifted from the bot to a person.
Once the conversation is assigned to a human, the bot stays out of the way: any further messages from the customer are saved to the inbox for the human to handle, and the bot will not auto-reply on top of the agent's responses.
Tip — what should I call my channels?
Most teams start with one channel per product line or support tier: e.g. "Tier 1 Support," "Sales Inquiries," "VIP." Resist the urge to create one channel per teammate — that's what assignment is for.