| User setup > Roles > Managing roles

Managing roles

A District Administrator creates and manages all the roles needed for the district or school. A role consists of a scope (specific school or district-wide [>>]) and a set of permissions [>>], which enable a District Administrator to control a user's access to information and system features.

Typically, a school has from three to ten roles. Other roles are needed for use across the district. Typical roles include: District Administrator, District Health Professional, School Health Professional, School Administrator, School Secretary, and Teacher. Using permissions, it is possible for a District Administrator to create roles for more specific purposes, such as Homeroom Teacher and Non-Homeroom Teacher.

Each role is linked to a base role [>>]. When you create a new role, you choose a base role for it. The role takes on that base role's permissions, which you can then adjust to create a unique role. However, when you make changes to a base role's permissions [>>], you have the option of applying those changes to all roles based on that base role. Since this is optional, it is possible for some of a role's permission to not match those of the base role [Figure 284].

Figure 284 : Role permissions example

A This bold blue font indicates a permission that has been changed but not yet saved.
B ~: Indicates that this permission does not match that of the base role.

Table 51: Permissions pertaining to users

To

You need this permission

Set to

Details

View role settings such as permissions

User > User Roles

View

[>>]

Change role settings such as permissions

User > User Roles

Edit

[>>]

Add, change, and delete roles

User > User Roles

Delete

[>>]

Creating or changing a role

Creating a role involves choosing a base role, naming it, setting its scope, and setting its permissions. Once you have created a role, you can change much about a role but not its scope. In other words, you create a role for a school or for the district. For the purposes of creating or making changes to it, you have the option of making a role inactive across the system, that is, user accounts may have this role assigned but the users are not able to use it.

To create or change a role [DA]:

Figure 285 : Roles page

Figure 286 : Edit Role page

A Active Role: Sets the role to be active. If your system employs a directory service this option is Directory Common Name. When a role is inactive, any users with that role do not receive its associated standard alerts [>>].
B Description: We recommend making the name as explicit as possible.
C Short Name: A short name for the role. This is the name PowerSchool SMS uses in lists across the system.
D Base role: [>>] Determines the role's initial set of permissions. For an existing role, the base roles available in this list are only those in the same base role group [>>]. Note: When you make a choice here, PowerSchool SMS refreshes the page and sets up the base role's permissions while preserving your other entries.
E Scope: Sets the role's scope [>>] to District or a specific School. Caution: Once you save the new role, you cannot change its scope.
F +: Expands this group of permissions.

Assigning a role to a user account

A user account [>>] can have one or more roles assigned to it. As a District Administrator you can assign a role to one or more user accounts at a time. When users with multiple roles sign in to PowerSchool SMS, the role that provides the most access (within the associated scope [>>]) is applied. Note: When you assign a role to a user account, that user may receive standard alerts associated with that role [>>]. Note: If the system employs a directory service, you can use this service to assign roles.

To assign a role to a user account [DA]:


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