User access and roles

The four user roles in SchoolBlocks, how to grant and revoke access, and what each role can do.

The four roles

Each role is granted on a specific organization (a district, a school, a section, a microsite, etc.). A role granted on a higher level flows down to everything under it.

• Admin — full control. Can do everything an editor can, plus manage other people's permissions on that org and everything beneath it. When unsure which role to assign, choose Editor rather than Admin.
• Editor — can edit content, layout, theme, page URLs, and content sources, and can send notifications. Cannot grant or remove other users' permissions. The appropriate role for most people who maintain the site (teachers, office staff, department heads).
• Viewer — can see content marked private (for example, a staff-only portal section). Cannot edit. Use when a private section should be visible to specific people without giving them editing access.
• Follower — subscribes to notifications from that org. Implies viewer access to that one organization only; it does not inherit up or down the hierarchy. Usually parents and community members. No editing power; no private content beyond the one org they follow.

How inheritance works

• Roles flow downward through the org tree. An Editor on a district is an Editor on every school, section, microsite, and page under it, without anyone individually granting that access.
• A more restrictive role cannot be applied lower down: granting Viewer on a specific school under a district where the user is already an Admin does not demote them.
• The Follower role does not inherit. Following the district doesn't auto-follow each school, and following a school doesn't auto-follow the district. Each follow is independent.
• When troubleshooting why a person can edit an org, check the org tree, not just the page.

Granting access

1. Log in as an admin on the org you want to give access to (or a parent org above it).
2. Navigate to that org's homepage.
3. In the admin menu at the bottom, click the gear icon (Page Settings).

4. In the right-side sidebar, click Permissions (admin-only).

5. In the Permissions modal, under Individual:, start typing the person's email and pick them from the search results (capitalization doesn't matter, but it must be the email tied to their Google/Microsoft account). 6. Pick the role from the dropdown — usually "can edit" (the Editor role). 7. Click ADD.

If the person has never logged in to a SchoolBlocks site and isn't in your district's Google/Microsoft directory, the add fails with "user does not exist" — have them log in once first. After granting, ask the person to log in (or, if already logged in, to log out and back in) to see the editor toolbar.

Adding someone to multiple schools

Options:

• Grant to a directory Group — the same Permissions modal has a Group: row that grants a role to an entire Google/Microsoft Group at once.
• Grant at the district level — Editor on the district gives Editor on every school under it. Use only if they need access to every school.
• Grant at a parent section — same logic, smaller scope.
• For one person on many specific schools there's no per-person bulk interface — contact support, who can do it on the back end.

Granting viewer access to a private section

1. Confirm the section is marked private.
2. Open Page Settings → Permissions on that section.
3. Under Individual:, search for the user's email, pick "can view" (the Viewer role), and click ADD. (Viewer is offered only when the page is private or unpublished.)

Removing access

1. Open the Permissions modal on the org where access was granted (Page Settings → Permissions).
2. Find the user in the list of granted users.
3. Remove them using the control next to their entry.

If access was originally granted at the district level, removing it at a single school won't fully revoke it. Remove the access at the district level instead.

FAQ

• "A user was added as an editor but can't see the edit controls." Have them log out, close the browser tab completely, and log back in. The current session is cached.
• "A user has an editor role but the editor toolbar doesn't appear." First confirm they logged out and back in. If still missing, confirm the email their role was granted to is the one they actually log in with. For SSO sites, they must use the email tied to Google or Microsoft 365.
• "A user was given Admin but still can't grant access." Confirm Admin was granted specifically (not Editor), and that they logged out and back in. If the Permissions menu doesn't appear for them, they don't have Admin yet.
• "Who can log in to the help site (help.schoolblocks.com)?" A person can sign in if either (1) they have an Admin or Editor role anywhere on the site, or (2) they have an active (non-deleted) staff record at a site whose district is live or in implementation. The district's status is what matters, not an individual school's.

Last updated: May 2026.