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How the staff roles fit together

Everyone who works in Chiban for the town has one or more staff roles. A role decides which pages appear in the staff menu and which actions a person can take. Residents, applicants and contractors are not staff. They sign in with a link sent by email and see only their own applications and projects.

Chiban has seven staff roles, and one person can hold more than one of them.

The roles​

Administrator​

Sets the town up and keeps it running: the town profile, forms, fee schedules, templates, boards, town rule settings, staff accounts and data exports. The administrator can also place legal holds, correct and refund payments, and turn on anonymous complaints once the server has passed its check. An administrator does not issue permits, take counter payments, or schedule and record inspections unless they also hold the land use staff or inspector role.

Land use staff​

Land use staff take applications at the counter, issue permits, collect fees, schedule inspections, assign reviewers, prepare board meetings and packets, draw abutter lists, run enforcement cases, answer Right-to-Know requests and run the reports. In the demo, Sam Clerk at the counter holds this role.

Inspector​

Takes inspection requests, books them, and records results with photos. Inspectors also open enforcement cases, record findings, and record service of an order. An inspector who is a designated enforcement officer can issue cease and desist orders. When an inspector is not also land use staff or an administrator, the Inspections menu entry opens straight onto that inspector's day.

Finance​

Takes payments at the counter, refunds, voids and corrects payment entries, runs the daily cash receipts report and the revenue reports, and records fines a court has imposed.

Records custodian​

Looks after the town's records once they exist: legal holds, the retention schedule and approval of disposal, Right-to-Know requests, redactions, document preservation and the full records export.

Reviewer​

Reviews the applications staff assign, for example the fire chief or the road agent looking at a site plan. A reviewer works from the Reviews page, which lists the applications assigned to them.

Board member​

Reads the packets for the board they sit on. A board member who holds no other role signs in to the Your board page, with the meetings and packets the board has been sent.

Seeing records​

Administrators, land use staff, inspectors, finance staff and records custodians can open any application in the town. Reviewers see only the applications assigned to them for review. Board members see the applications before the board they sit on.

Holding more than one role​

A person with two roles can do everything either role allows. In Alder Pond, the building official, Dana Booth, holds both the land use staff and inspector roles. With both, Dana can record the result of any inspection, including one assigned to another inspector.

Giving someone a role​

An administrator invites staff and sets their roles under Settings, Users. The same page changes a person's roles later and disables the account when someone leaves. Designated enforcement officers are listed under Settings, Enforcement officers.

Each role comes with a fixed set of permissions, and no settings page changes them. The roles and permissions reference lists every permission, the roles that have it, and the pages each role sees.