Entitlement
An entitlement is what a workspace's subscription permits. It holds which commercial arrangement the workspace is on, whether that arrangement is in good standing, the daily limits it carries, and whether outbound mail must carry a sending signature. Feature access and usage volume are stored as separate things, and neither of them can move a safety rule.
Two questions that look like one#
*Can this workspace use the phone at all* and *how many calls may it place today* are different questions, and merging them produces a product that either hides features to enforce a limit or enforces nothing because the feature is visible. Connect keeps them apart: feature access is one field, the daily limits are another, and a workspace can hold every feature while having a small allowance.
| Field | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| Plan | Which commercial arrangement this workspace is on |
| Status | Whether that arrangement is currently in good standing |
| Feature access | Whether the capability set is open to it |
| Daily limits | The volumes the allowance ledger counts against |
| Sending signature | Whether outgoing mail carries a line saying it was sent with Connect, and what that line says |
The last row surprises people, and it is an entitlement rather than a setting because it is part of what the arrangement includes. It is stored beside the flag rather than hard-coded, so it is one record to inspect rather than a string hidden in the sending path.
What an entitlement can never do#
It cannot open a safety gate. Autonomy rules, suppression, do-not-contact and workspace isolation are enforced separately, and no commercial tier — including the operator's own unlimited standing — bypasses any of them. A generous tier buys volume, not permission.
It also cannot be asserted by a browser. Whatever the screen believes about the arrangement is informational; the gate is checked on the server at the moment the action is attempted, which is the only place the answer can be trusted.
Entitlement, allowance, autonomy, permission#
- An allowance
- What is left of a period's volume, right now. The entitlement declares the limit; the allowance is the ledger counting down from it.
- Autonomy
- Whether Connect may act without asking. Entirely unrelated to the commercial arrangement — a workspace on any tier can require approval for everything.
- A person's permission
- Which member of a workspace may do a thing. Entitlement is about the workspace as a whole; two colleagues in one workspace need not have the same rights.
- A feature flag
- A release mechanism for code. An entitlement is a commercial statement about one workspace, and the two change for different reasons and on different timescales.
The one that bites in practice is the second. A workspace whose replies are all waiting for approval has an autonomy setting, not a commercial one, and upgrading anything will not release them.
Questions#
What happens when a plan lapses?
The status field is what changes, and the gate reads it at the moment of the action. What stops and what continues is set out in a lapsed plan — the records themselves are not affected by its state.
Are limits the same for every workspace on one tier?
The limits are carried on the workspace's own entitlement rather than looked up from a shared table, so a workspace can hold values that differ from the tier's defaults without the arrangement itself changing.
Can I see what my workspace is entitled to?
Yes, on Plan & Usage, which shows the entitlement beside the usage counted against it — see entitlements.