How roles decide what someone can do#
For: Admin You’ll need: Nothing.
Every person in your company holds exactly one role, and that role answers two separate questions: which records they reach, and which actions they may perform on them. This article explains both halves, what the five built-in roles already grant, and where your own roles fit in.
The two halves of a role#
Data scope decides which records a role reaches. It is set when the role is created and never changes afterwards:
Data scope |
The holder sees |
|---|---|
‘Whole company’ |
Every record in the company. |
‘Assigned locations’ |
Only records at the locations that person is assigned to. |
‘Own data only’ |
Only their own shifts, hours, availability and absences. |
‘Kiosk terminal’ |
No personal data at all — this is a shared tablet, not a person. |
Permissions decide which actions the role may perform: view, create, edit and delete, plus a handful of named actions like approving hours or publishing a schedule. Permissions are grouped by the kind of record they apply to.
The two combine. A Manager and an Admin may both hold “edit shift”, but the Manager only ever edits shifts at their own locations, because that’s what their data scope allows. Widening what someone may do never widens what they can see.
The five built-in roles#
These ship with Shiftavo and exist in every company from day one.
Role |
Data scope |
What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
‘Owner’ |
Whole company |
The person who signed the company up. Holds every permission, plus billing. Exactly one per company, and it can’t be reassigned, deactivated, or deleted. |
‘Admin’ |
Whole company |
Runs the company in Shiftavo: everything the Owner can do inside the app, without being the account owner. |
‘Manager’ |
Assigned locations |
Runs the schedule where they work — plans and publishes shifts, approves hours, decides leave requests, handles the shift marketplace, maintains areas, skills and demand corrections. Reads the org and leave configuration but doesn’t change it. |
‘Employee’ |
Own data only |
Sees their own schedule and availability, records and confirms their own hours, and takes part in the shift marketplace. |
‘Kiosk’ |
Kiosk terminal |
A service role for a shared tablet at a location. Never assigned to a person, and never offered in a role dropdown. |
Roles are ordered by authority, top to bottom: Owner, Admin, Manager, Employee. That order caps what you can do — you can only give someone a role at or below your own, only change a role that ranks at or below your own, and only deactivate or delete a person whose role ranks at or below yours. On top of that, you can only give someone a role whose editable permissions you hold yourself; the role picker leaves out the rest. ‘Owner’ and ‘Kiosk’ are never offered when you pick a role for a person.
Note
A built-in role can’t be edited or renamed. It ships with Shiftavo and stays in step with the app as new features arrive — an edit wouldn’t survive the next release. To get something different, base a role of your own on it: see How to create a role of your own.
Roles you add yourself#
On the Plus and Pro plans you can add roles of your own — a “Shift Lead” who may publish the schedule but not touch leave, a “Payroll clerk” who reads the reports and nothing else. Your own role is always based on a built-in one: it starts from that role’s permissions and inherits its data scope, and then you tick and untick what it may do.
Two things stay out of your hands, on every plan:
Data scope comes from the role you based yours on and can’t be changed. It’s what keeps a Manager-based role at its own locations.
Fixed permissions — the location permissions and the three kiosk-terminal permissions — come with the data scope and can’t be switched off. The role’s detail page lists them so you can see what a role grants even where you can’t edit it.
A role based on ‘Employee’ can’t review marketplace offers, approve hours, or add kiosk devices — those need a management role.
You also can’t hand out more than you hold yourself: a permission you don’t have is grayed out on a role you’re editing, so you can neither tick nor untick it. And you can’t take away your own permission to change roles.
Note
If your plan later drops below Plus, nothing is taken away. Your roles keep working, everyone on them keeps their access, and you can still read what each one grants — you just can’t add or change roles until you’re back on a plan that includes them.
Where you find all this#
Open Company → Roles from the sidebar, or the ‘Roles’ card on the Company overview page. You need the permission to view roles — Owner and Admin have it, Manager and Employee don’t.
Verify it worked#
Open Company → Roles. Every role your company can use is listed, the built-in ones marked as such. If the entry isn’t in the sidebar at all, your own role doesn’t carry the permission to view roles.