How to Document App-Specific Roles and Permissions During Client Onboarding

With many components, such as devices, networking, and user accounts that need to be discussed with the clients during onboarding, SaaS applications are often overlooked. This creates gaps, including overprovisioned access, unclear administrative rights, and compliance blind spots, which might be left unnoticed. Since SaaS roles play a critical part in most workloads, documenting app-specific roles and permissions at onboarding is essential.

By embedding app-specific role and permission documentation into your onboarding process, you can:

• Reduce access risks through least-privilege enforcement
• Create audit-ready records for compliance (ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR)
• Streamline reviews and role adjustments
• Give clients a repeatable governance process

In this guide, we’ll cover practical methods, prerequisites, and best practices MSPs can adopt to capture SaaS role assignments effectively.

At a glance:

📌 Prerequisites:

Before proceeding with documentation of app-specific roles and permissions, make sure you meet the following requirements:

• Admin dashboards access: Ensure that the team is able to access the SaaS application’s administrative dashboard, where roles and permissions are configured during onboarding.
• Predefined (Role-Based Access Control): Apply the RBAC framework or the principle of least privilege for standardized role-based access control models.
• Documentation template: Utilize tools like a spreadsheet, IT Glue, or a wiki for recording assignments.
• Optional: Scripting or API access for SaaS apps that allow automated export of role/permission data

Task 1: Define a standard documentation template

📌 Use Case:

This template becomes the foundation of audit trails and repeatability. This also ensures that all applications are documented uniformly.

Create a reusable template with fields for the following critical details:

• Application name
• Role types (Admin, Editor, Viewer, Custom)
• Assigned users or departments
• Permission level
• Assignment date and approver
• Notes or rationale

Task 2: Apply RBAC Principles at Onboarding

📌 Use Case:

RBAC allows MSPs to group clients’ teams by role, making the documentation clearer, consistent, and easier to maintain.

Rather than assigning permissions user by user, leverage role-based access control. Here’s how:

1. Group employees by function (HR, Finance, IT) to reduce the complexities of managing roles.
2. Map these groups to application roles, enforcing least privilege and applying security policies at scale.
3. Any exceptions, such as an employee who needs temporary elevated access, should be clearly documented to maintain compliance readiness.

Task 3: Capture role and permission data during app setup

📌 Use Case:

This specific task ensures MSP governance process starts with an accurate snapshot of the client’s SaaS environment.

Onboarding is the best moment to capture a snapshot of team members’ baseline permissions. For each SaaS application, document the following:

• Default roles offered: Examples include roles like Global Admin, Power User, and End User.
• Role hierarchies and privileges: This comprises role ranks based on authority, defining what each role can access, modify, or control within the application.
• Security add-ons: These pertain to mandatory methods required for particular roles to enforce additional security layer like MFA, conditional access, data segregation, and more.

Task 4: Automate extraction where supported

📌 Use Case:

Automation speeds up operations related to onboarding. It also minimizes human errors and creates structured exports ready for storage in documentation systems.

Manually documentation of roles and permissions can be tedious and error-prone. Thankfully, many SaaS platforms provide APIs or integrations that let you export role assignments directly. Here’s one example:

Get-SaaSAppRoleAssignments -App 'CRMApp' | Export-Csv CRMApp_Roles.csv

• This example command retrieves all role assignments for the SaaS app “CRMApp” and saves them into a CSV file called CRMApp_Roles.csv.

Task 5: Link documentation to the onboarding workflow

📌 Use Case:

Integrating the capture of SaaS roles and permissions into workflows guarantees they are consistently applied across clients.

Consider doing the following when incorporating documentation to the onboarding workflow:

1. Embed documentation tasks into your onboarding checklist.
2. Assign responsibility for capturing app permissions (IT lead or app owner).
3. Require sign-off before onboarding is marked complete.

Task 6: Schedule access review cadence at onboarding

📌 Use Case:

Defining cadence at onboarding reinforces governance as an ongoing responsibility, not a reactive measure.

Onboarding should include the following considerations:

• Setting of expectations: Discuss the need for quarterly or semi-annual access reviews to your clients, how it benefits them in the long run, and potential consequences of review avoidance.
• Access calibration: Align reviews with compliance frameworks and client QBRs for up-to-date role and permission designations.
• Document the cadence: This task documents review cadence in the onboarding package to reinforce governance from day one.

Automation touchpoint example

The following are sample operations where automation is used to document app-specific roles and permissions:

• Using scripts: MSPs can use scripts or APIs to export permissions from SaaS apps into CSV.
• Saving exported permissions: The exported permissions, now in CSV format, can be stored in repositories like NinjaOne Docs.
• Automation: MSPs can automate quarterly reminders for role/permission reviews in the PSA.

NinjaOne integration for role and permission documentation

NinjaoOne and its tools can help with different tasks involved in documenting app-specific roles and permissions during client onboarding.

Why documenting access during onboarding matters

It takes several considerations in building a secure and compliant environment. Documenting SaaS roles and permissions helps enhance this undertaking through the following:

• Establishing structured templates for role documentation
• Application of RBAC to enforce least privilege
• Capturing permissions at onboarding to establish a clean baseline
• Automating extraction where APIs are available
• Integrating documentation into onboarding workflows
• Scheduling periodic reviews for ongoing compliance

By treating role documentation as a critical onboarding deliverable, MSPs strengthen client trust and lay the groundwork for safer, more transparent SaaS operations.

Related topics:

• IT Automation – Everything You Need to Know
• How to Automate New Client Onboarding Checklists Using Power Automate
• 5 IT Documentation Best Practices for 2025
• Understanding the importance of documentation for effective IT management