Should users be able to invite and set different types of permission for each invitee?

Question

I noticed that in Google Drive, if you were to invite more than one person, you're only able to set one type of permission (Viewer, Commenter, or Editor) for everyone.

So if you had different sets of permissions for multiple people, you'd have to add each of them manually.

I noticed that Dropbox and Box do this too.

What do you think is the reason why they aren't offering the convenience of being able to set different permissions for multiple people in one invite?

I'm guessing it's because it's an uncommon use case, but wanted to hear your thoughts.

Answer 1

I believe in at least some of those cases creating multiple users gives them all the same permissions for ease of the bulk operation. You can then go and edit individual permissions after that, I believe.

It seems like it is a convenience operation for adding whole bunch of people easily at once. You COULD add them in separate batches, grouped by the permissions they need, or you can just add them all at once, then go fix the outliers afterwards (which is what I do with Dropbox).

I could imagine UIs with more complex permissions-granting at the moment of add, or a UI that provides a switch to toggle on "Advanced" mode for the same function, giving the easy option as a default but letting people with more complex use cases switch to the more granular mode for their purposes.

Seems like a pretty low-priority, low-ROI feature for most companies to implement, however (especially after it is already built), which is probably why many don't.