The short version
Your sidebar only shows pages you're allowed to open. If a section is missing, you don't have access to it — nothing is broken. Typing the address directly won't get you in either: every page is checked again on the server, so hiding a link is never the only protection.
The five access levels
Access is a ladder. Each level includes everything below it.
Level | Who it's for | What it unlocks |
Standard | Everyone who signs in | Summary, and your own row on Employees |
Team Lead | Account Directors and Group Directors | Client health pages, the weekly Client Pulse check-in, Manage Leads, Revenue Overlap, Staffing |
Admin | Department and division leadership | KPI Targets, Client Profitability, Pulse Summary, Corrections, capacity planning, Commission Book |
Leadership | Executive and finance leadership | Divisional P&Ls, Census, AI Solutions, Hiring Pipeline, Assignment History, and granting access to others |
Super admin | The Signal team | Everything, plus the usage analytics dashboard |
A note on naming: on the General Access screen, the top two levels are labelled with internal nicknames — Gandalf for Leadership and Sauron for Super admin. They're the same things described above. You'll only ever see those labels if you already have Leadership access.
Account Directors and Group Directors are moved up to Team Lead automatically the first time they sign in, based on the clients they own in Nova. You shouldn't need to ask.
Three extra grants that sit outside the ladder
Some areas are sensitive enough that they're granted individually rather than inherited from your level. Being an Admin or even Leadership does not automatically get you these.
Growth
Covers People (per-person compensation and payroll) and Performance Radar.
Two things have to be true before you can see anything:
You've been granted access, and each tab is granted separately. Performance Radar is off by default and has to be turned on for you specifically.
You enter the shared unlock password when you open the tab. This isn't cosmetic — without it the page genuinely cannot load data. The password isn't remembered: reloading the page asks again, and it re-locks after the tab has been in the background for a few minutes.
Your access is also scoped. You see the divisions — and for the largest divisions, the specific departments — you were granted, and nothing else. The filtering happens on the server, so there's no way to widen it from the screen.
Growth access is granted on Growth Access by a designated Growth manager. Leadership level does not include it.
Planning
Unlocks Recruiting Pipeline, which contains candidate names. Admins don't get it by default — it's granted per person, and Leadership includes it.
Employee Pulse
Employee Pulse is visible to Admins and above for the whole company, and to a Team Lead who has direct reports — scoped to their own team.
Two things people commonly trip over
Divisional P&Ls has a second layer. Getting into the page isn't the same as seeing everything on it. The personnel expenses section is limited to a short, separately maintained list of people, and downloading the per-person personnel export needs its own password on top. Leadership access alone isn't enough for either.
The Iris assistant follows admin access specifically. The Cmd/Ctrl + I button appears for Admins and above. It's possible to have Leadership access to pages and still not see the Iris button, which is expected rather than a bug.
How to request access
What you need | Who to ask |
A higher access level (Team Lead, Admin, Leadership) | A Signal admin — they'll set it on the General Access screen |
Growth (People or Performance Radar) | A designated Growth manager, via the Growth Access screen |
Planning / Recruiting Pipeline | A Signal admin |
The Growth unlock password | The person who granted your Growth access |
You can't sign in at all, or you're being signed out | The IT team — that's an account problem, not an access level |
A new Signal seat, or budget for one | Your manager |
Access changes take effect the next time your browser refreshes its session. If you were just granted something and still can't see it, do a hard refresh or sign out and back in — Signal caches your access level briefly so a page reload doesn't flash your permissions away.
What Signal is careful about
A few deliberate choices worth knowing, if only so they don't look like faults:
Access is never silently removed mid-session. If Signal can't confirm your level for a moment, it keeps what you had rather than locking you out.
Every sensitive request is re-checked on the server. Bookmarking, sharing or guessing an address doesn't bypass anything.
Revoking access is recorded, not erased. Grants keep a history of who gave what and when.
Standard-level users have a deliberately small sidebar — Summary and their own Employees row. Global search and the Iris button are hidden for them too.
Related
Welcome to Signal — orientation for new users
Find your way around — the full page list
Growth Access — how Growth grants are administered
Admin Tools — the General Access screen itself
Getting help — who to contact