---
title: "Managing user permissions on the PDF viewer server | Nutrient"
canonical_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/document-engine/viewer/permissions/"
md_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/document-engine/viewer/permissions.md"
last_updated: "2026-05-30T02:20:01.241Z"
description: "Discover how collaboration permissions enhance document security by allowing precise user actions like viewing, editing, and deleting annotations in real-time."
---

# User permissions

Collaboration Permissions is a feature that gives you a fine-grained permission system for defining actions allowed by individual users when multiple users are working on the same document.

[Try for Free](https://www.nutrient.io/sdk/document-engine/getting-started.md)

[Launch Demo](https://www.nutrient.io/demo/collaboration-permissions)

Collaboration permissions allow a user to:

- View an annotation, comment, or form field

- Edit an annotation, comment, or form field (available in Nutrient Web SDK)

- Delete an annotation, comment, or form field

- Fill out a form

- Reply to a comment thread

These permissions are based on the configuration present in the [JSON Web Token](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/document-engine/viewer/client-authentication.md) (JWT). Since these permissions can’t be modified on the client side, they’re more secure than the previously existing client-side restrictions.

Collaboration Permissions doesn’t handle the creation of annotations, comments, or form fields. Such permissions are granted by specifying the `write` permission in the `permissions` array in the [JWT](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/document-engine/viewer/client-authentication.md).

Permissions are available for any Document Engine installation with [Instant](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/web/instant-synchronization.md) enabled in the license.

If Collaboration Permissions is enabled, by default, the user isn’t allowed to perform any of the actions unless specified.

## Supported client platforms

Collaboration Permissions is available in the following Nutrient frontend SDKs:

- [Nutrient Web SDK](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/web/collaboration-permissions/introduction-to-collaboration-permissions.md)

- [Nutrient iOS SDK](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/ios/collaboration-permissions/introduction-to-collaboration-permissions.md)
---

## Related pages

- [Document viewer server](/guides/document-engine/viewer.md)
- [Managing multiple users](/guides/document-engine/viewer/multiple-users.md)
- [Image server and viewer](/guides/document-engine/viewer/images.md)
- [Seamless viewing of Office documents made easy](/guides/document-engine/viewer/office-documents.md)
- [PDF viewer server](/guides/document-engine/viewer/pdf.md)
- [Secure document sharing](/guides/document-engine/viewer/secure-document-sharing.md)
- [Real-time collaboration server](/guides/document-engine/viewer/real-time-collaboration.md)
- [Document and PDF streaming server](/guides/document-engine/viewer/streaming.md)