The role is one of the central concepts of the Enterprise Portal. A role is a collection of tasks, services and information for a group of users. The role defines which service and information the user should be able to access and the activities he or she may perform. The role also defines how the visualization of the contents and the navigation structure within the Enterprise Portal. A role may contain all kinds of information and combines everything the user will see on his or her Enterprise Portal.

Roles are stored in the Portal Content Directory (PCD). The PCD is a file system in which the objects necessary to build roles are stored.