Federation Staff Roles

Federation staff access is granted per-federation. Each person you invite to a federation receives one of four roles. The role controls what they can see and do inside the federation admin.

Use Admin → Federation → [federation] → Administration to invite staff and change their roles.

Roles at a glance

Role Label in UI What they can do
normal Viewer Read-only access to all federation data
manager Manager Day-to-day operations: licenses, memberships, organizations
administrator Administrator Structural configuration: divisions, classes, rules, rankings
owner Owner Governance: federation settings, Stripe, user promotion

Viewer

Read-only access. Viewers can open all federation pages and see current data but cannot make any changes.

Use this role for:

  • Board members who need visibility without write access
  • Auditors reviewing license or membership records
  • Organization liaisons who need to look up federation state

What a Viewer can do:

  • View all federation pages: home, divisions, classes, rankings, licenses, organizations, state, history, enforcement log, rules
  • Cannot edit, approve, issue, or delete anything

Manager

Day-to-day operational work. A Manager handles the running of the federation without being able to change its structure.

Use this role for:

  • Secretaries processing license applications
  • Registrars managing class memberships
  • Staff handling organization approvals

What a Manager can do:

  • Everything a Viewer can do, plus:
  • Issue, approve, suspend, and revoke licenses
  • Create and edit class memberships and representation records
  • Sync federation progress
  • Approve and manage organizations (approve, mark pending, grant or remove license issuer access)
  • Act on the enforcement log

What a Manager cannot do:

  • Edit divisions, disciplines, classes, age groups, or categories
  • Edit the license catalog (license items)
  • Edit rule profiles or rankings
  • Connect Stripe or change federation settings
  • Promote other users

Administrator

Structural configuration. An Administrator can change how the federation is organized and how its rules work.

Use this role for:

  • Technical directors responsible for the federation’s class and rule structure
  • Staff managing the ranking or license catalog setup

What an Administrator can do:

  • Everything a Manager can do, plus:
  • Create and edit divisions, disciplines, categories, age groups, class levels, dances
  • Create and edit federation classes and competition levels
  • Create and edit the license catalog (license items) and class license mappings
  • Create and edit rule profiles
  • Create and edit rankings, leagues, and ranking corrections
  • Create and edit representation records
  • Invite staff and promote them up to Manager level

What an Administrator cannot do:

  • Edit federation settings, name, or branding
  • Connect or manage Stripe
  • Set the federation as restricted or published
  • Promote users to Administrator or Owner

Owner

Full governance. An Owner controls the federation’s settings, billing, and who has access at the highest levels.

Use this role for:

  • Board chairs or the primary account holder for the federation
  • The person responsible for the Stripe payout account

What an Owner can do:

  • Everything an Administrator can do, plus:
  • Edit federation name, tag, description, icon, and branding
  • Set the federation as restricted or published
  • Connect and manage the Stripe account
  • Promote users to any role including Administrator and Owner
  • Demote and remove any federation user

Promotion rules

A user can only promote others to roles below their own level, except Owners who can promote to any level including Owner.

Acting role Can promote to
Administrator Viewer, Manager
Owner Viewer, Manager, Administrator, Owner

An Administrator cannot promote a peer to their own level. Only an Owner or a system administrator can do that.

Invitation flow

  1. Open Admin → Federation → [federation] → Administration
  2. Search for the user by name or email
  3. Press Add
  4. The user is added with the default Viewer role
  5. Change the role using the dropdown next to their name

The current user’s role is shown as a tag next to their email address. The role dropdown shows a summary of what each level can do.