Roles and Permissions

Roles and Permissions let you control what each member of your team can see and do in EventWorks. Create roles that bundle permissions together, then assign those roles to users for quick, consistent access control.

Getting There

Navigate to Settings > General tab, then click Roles or Abilities in the left-hand menu.

Overview

EventWorks uses two related concepts for access control:

Roles — named groups of permissions (e.g. "Manager", "Coordinator", "Finance"). You create and manage these.
Abilities — individual permissions that control access to specific features (e.g. "edit-settings", "create-events"). These are built into EventWorks and cannot be created or deleted.

You combine abilities into roles, then assign roles to users. Users can also be given individual abilities directly if needed.

Key Concepts

Role-based access means you define a role once with the right set of abilities, then assign it to as many users as needed. When you update a role's abilities, every user with that role is affected immediately. Direct ability assignment lets you give a specific user an individual ability without creating or modifying a role. This is useful for one-off exceptions. Additive permissions — a user's effective permissions are the combination of all abilities from their roles plus any abilities assigned directly. Permissions are never subtracted; they only add up.

How To...

Create a Role

Go to Settings > General tab > Roles.
Click Create.
Enter a Title for the role (e.g. "Event Manager", "Finance Team").
Select the Abilities this role should have by ticking the relevant checkboxes.
Optionally, select the Users to assign this role to immediately.
Click Save.

Edit a Role

Go to Settings > General tab > Roles.
Click Edit next to the role you want to change.
Update the role's title, abilities, or user assignments as needed.
Click Save.

Note: Changing a role's abilities immediately affects all users assigned to that role.

Delete a Role

Go to Settings > General tab > Roles.
Click Delete next to the role you want to remove.
Confirm the deletion in the dialog that appears.

Warning: Deleting a role removes it from all assigned users. Those users will lose any abilities they only had through that role. Make sure affected users have the access they need through other roles or direct assignments before deleting.

Manage Individual Abilities

Go to Settings > General tab > Abilities.
You'll see a list of all available abilities with a count of how many users have each one.
Click Manage next to any ability to open the assignment modal.
In the modal, you'll see all users with checkboxes:

- Users who have the ability via a role are shown with a badge indicating which role grants it — their checkbox is greyed out (you can't remove role-based abilities from here). - Users with direct assignment have an active checkbox you can toggle.

Tick or untick users as needed and click Save.

Tip: The Abilities page is useful when you need to quickly see who has access to a specific feature, or when you need to grant a single permission to a user without modifying any roles.

Settings & Configuration

The roles and permissions system controls access throughout EventWorks. Key abilities include:

edit-settings — access to the Settings area
Abilities for creating, editing, and deleting events, accounts, invoices, and other records
Abilities for viewing reports and financial data

The full list of available abilities is visible on the Abilities page.

Tips & Best Practices

Tip: Start by creating a few broad roles (e.g. "Admin", "Manager", "Coordinator") rather than many highly specific ones. You can always refine them later.

Tip: Use the Abilities page to audit who has access to sensitive features like financial data or settings management.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I create new abilities?

No — abilities are built into EventWorks and represent specific features or actions. You can only assign existing abilities to roles or users.

Q: What happens if a user has the same ability from both a role and a direct assignment?

Nothing special — the ability is simply active. If you later remove the role, the direct assignment still applies (and vice versa).

Q: How do I see what a specific user can access?

Go to Settings > General tab > Roles and check which roles a user belongs to. Then look at the abilities assigned to those roles. You can also check the Abilities page to see direct assignments.

Q: Can I restrict access to specific events or accounts?

Roles and abilities control feature-level access (e.g. "can create events"). For data-level isolation (e.g. restricting which events a user can see), use the team-based access settings in Event Settings.