Table Of Contents:
When to Add Collaborators to a Case
Here are a couple of specific examples where it will be helpful to invite collaborators to a case that your funeral home is working on in Gather:
➡️ Clergy Members Who Host Several of Your Services
Invite your local pastor as a Collaborator and assign them to the cases they're officiating. They can enter the service details themselves — order of service, scripture readings, who's speaking — instead of relaying them to your director over the phone. When they update it, your team sees it immediately. They see nothing about the families they aren't serving.
➡️ Trade Funeral Home and Crematory Partners
If you don't have an in-house retort, your cremation partner can be assigned to the cases they're handling and update their own steps in Keep Track. You stop calling to ask "is he back yet?" — you just look. And they never see the burial cases down the hall.
➡️ Third-Party Transport or Removal Companies
Assign them to the case, and they can mark the transfer as complete and log the details as they happen. Your director gets the update without waiting for a callback.
Any partner who touches one case but not the rest. A celebrant, a cemetery contact, a hairdresser or cosmetologist, a funeral home you're working a trade case with. If they need to see one case, they can.
How to Invite Collaborators to a Case
Adding new collaborators to Gather is easy! Here is how you do it:
Click your backend settings icon in the top left-hand corner of your dashboard view. Then select 'My Team'.
From the My Team page, you'll find a new Invite Collaborator option right below Invite New Team Member. Enter their name and email, and optionally their Business or Affiliation - that's what shows up next to their name inside Gather, so a year from now everyone still knows that "Dave Reynolds" is Reynolds Transport and not a new hire.
After sending your collaborator an invitation, you can configure their security and permissions in your funeral home at a more granular level. Review the collaborator's permissions closely to ensure they have the correct level of access to case information.
Collaborators will receive a secure link with easy-to-follow setup instructions, the same as a staff member would.
Important Note: Review an invited collaborator's permissions carefully and closely to ensure they have the correct level of access to case information.
What a Collaborator Can See by Default
The moment the invite goes out, one thing is different from a normal team member: the Can view ALL CASES permission is switched off.
With that toggle off, the Collaborator can only see cases they've been assigned to or are watching. Every other case in your system is invisible to them - not just hidden from the main list, but genuinely unreachable:
It isn't in their case list or on their dashboard
It doesn't come back in search
It isn't in their reports or exports
It won't load even if someone sends them a direct link to that case
A Collaborator's view grows and shrinks with the work. Assign them as the primary Case Assignee (or add them as a Case Watcher), and it appears. Unassign them and remove them as a Case Watcher, and the case is no longer in their view.
On the cases they can see, Collaborators can genuinely work - updating front-of-house tasks, completing back-of-house tracking steps, and entering the details you need from them. This isn't read-only access; it's real participation, scoped to their part of the job.
Important Note: Collaborators can never invite someone with full visibility. If they invite anyone, that person comes in restricted too.
Every Collaborator Can Have Their Own Permissions
A Collaborator isn't a locked-down, one-size-fits-all role. Under the hood, they're a full Gather user, which means the entire permissions grid is available to them and can be configured differently for each Collaborator you invite.
When you send the invite, the Collaborator starts from your funeral home's default permissions - with Can view ALL CASES forced off - and their permission screen opens right away, so you can tailor it before they ever log in. You can change it at any time afterward, too.
That includes control over things like:
Case Information: whether they can see case financial data, case vitals, autoforms, or pending cases
Case Assignment: whether they can be named as the assigned funeral director on a case
KeepTrack: whether they can complete steps, skip steps, or edit step prerequisites
Statements and Payments: adjusting items, modifying prices, adding, editing, or removing payments
Reports: Cases, Helpers, Rolodex, KeepTrack, Dispatch, Prep, Revenue, Payments, and more, each toggled individually
Team and Configuration: labels, workflows, inviting or removing team members, managing others' permissions
In practice, that means each partner gets exactly the access their job requires:
Your pastor might get nothing but the ability to view and enter service details on their assigned cases - no financials, no vitals, no reports.
Your trade crematory gets KeepTrack step completion so they can log receipt, cremation, and return, but no access to statements or payments at all.
Your transport company gets just enough to see the pickup details and mark the transfer done.
A funeral home you partner with regularly might get considerably more - including, if you want it, the Can view ALL CASES toggle switched back on.
Same feature, four very different levels of access, all set by you.
How do Collaborators Impact My Existing Staff?
Your existing staff are unaffected and keep full case visibility - the Can view ALL CASES permission stays on for everyone already in your Gather, and for every new team member you invite the normal way. Collaborators are purely additive: a new way to loop in the people outside your walls who are already part of the service you provide.
Need More Support With Collaborators in Gather?
If you need technical assistance or support with inviting collaborators into Gather, please call our team at (208) 908-0488 or email help@gather.app.