Why this matters
A business analyst who opens Collate and sees the full administrative surface concludes the tool is not for them. Personas show each group the part of the product that matches their job.
Before you start
A persona shapes the experience, a role decides the permission
These are easy to conflate and important to separate. A role decides what a person is permitted to do. A persona decides what they see and how the interface is arranged, and hiding a feature from a menu is not the same as securing it. One part of a persona is a real boundary rather than a cosmetic one: its AI Context rules constrain what AI and the MCP server can reach on that person's behalf. Know which of the two you are configuring.
Reproducibility is the real benefit
Configuring the interface once per person does not scale and cannot be audited. Defining a persona and applying it to a group means the experience is consistent, reviewable and fixable in one place.
Build personas around tasks
Job titles vary between organizations and change often. What someone needs to do in the platform is more stable. A persona built around a task, such as finding and assessing assets, survives a reorganization.
The interactive demo
Work through the demo below. It runs in your browser with nothing to install. Watch for:
- Creating a persona and adding users or teams to it
- Customizing UI components, widgets, tabs and navigation
- Setting AI Context rules that govern what AI and the MCP server can reach
- App Mode and the home page a persona lands on
After this module you should be able to
- Create a persona and apply it to a group of users
- State clearly what a persona does and does not control
- Design a persona around a task rather than a job title