Linked and associated accounts

A linked account is a child account attached to a parent account. The parent can share individual app connections with its children, and an account can open the other accounts in its family from the Switch… item in the account menu.

Plan: Enterprise

APIANT has two ways to give one person access to more than one account:

Relationship	What it models	What it gives you
Linked accounts	One organization with many accounts, for example a head office (parent) and one account per location (children)	Connection sharing from parent to children, a shared lookup-table scope, and switching between every account in the family
Associated accounts	An outside person, such as a contractor, who needs to work in a customer's account	Switching into each account the person is associated with

How accounts are linked

An administrator of your APIANT installation links a child account to a parent, unlinks it, and grants associate access. No screen in the app and no request to Claude or the assistant creates these relationships.

The family of an account is its parent plus every account linked directly to that parent. A child account can itself be the parent of further accounts, which form a separate family.

What a linked family shares

Resource	Shared?	How it works
App connections	Only when the parent turns sharing on, per connection	An automation in a child account uses the child's own connection first. If the child has none, APIANT looks up the parent chain for a connection to the same app with the same connection name that the owner has shared.
Lookup tables	Only for data saved with the Linked accounts scope	Values saved with that scope are stored on the parent account, so the parent and its children read and write the same entries. This automation and My account stay private to the account.
Automations	No	Each account owns its own automations. To give every child a copy of the same automation, deploy it. See Publish and deploy.

Sign in to the parent account and open Connections.
Open the menu on the connected account you want to share.
Choose Share with children. The connection shows a Shared with child accounts badge.

To stop, open the same menu and choose Stop sharing with children. Child automations that were using the shared connection can no longer use it, so connect the app in each child account that still needs it.

The sharing option appears only on an account that has at least one linked child.

Switch between linked accounts

Open the account menu in the top right and choose Switch….
Search the family by name or email. The parent account's name is highlighted.
Select an account. It opens in a new browser tab.

The Switch Account dialog lists the accounts in your family with a search box above them, and each row opens that account in a new tab.

You stay signed in as yourself. The new tab shows Acting as followed by the account's email in the header, and selecting it returns that tab to your own account. Each tab keeps its own account, so several family accounts can be open side by side.

The Switch… item appears only on an account that has a linked parent or at least one linked child.

Viewing a connection's stored credentials asks you to confirm your own password first.

Switch to an associated account

Open the account menu and choose Switch to associated account….
Select the owner account from the list. It opens in a new tab.

The tab behaves the same way as a linked-account switch: you stay signed in as yourself, and the Acting as link in the header returns you to your own account. The menu item appears only when you are associated with at least one account.

Linked accounts and Claude

Claude, connected through the APIANT MCP server, acts as the account you signed in with when you connected it. Linked-family and associate switching happen in the browser only. Asking Claude to work in a different account requires the Switch Account permission on your user. On app.apiant.ai the default user role does not include it. The Connect to Claude Code item is hidden from the account menu while you are acting as another account.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	What to do
The account menu has no Switch… item	The account has no linked parent and no linked children	Ask your administrator to link the accounts.
Share with children is missing, or saving shows "Sharing is only available when you have linked child accounts."	The signed-in account has no linked children	Share from the parent account, not from a child.
A child automation fails because it cannot find a connection	The parent's connection is not shared, or its connection name differs from the name the automation refers to	Share the parent's connection, or connect the app in the child account under the name the automation uses.
Claude says it needs the Switch Account permission	Your user does not hold it	Work in that account from a browser tab opened with Switch…, or connect Claude while signed in as that account's user.