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Overview

The User and role management module provides an interface for administrators to manage roles, define the hierarchy between roles and assign users to roles. It allows admins to define custom roles with different read and write permissions on the SurveyStream web app, enabling streamlined management of user access levels.

Only users with Survey Admin role have access to this module.

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Needed for features

This module is available by default for all surveys and can be used if team members need different levels of access on the web app.

Defining the field supervisor roles on SurveyStream is mandatory if the following features are selected:

  1. Assignments

    For the Assignments module, it is necessary to define at least one field supervisor role and corresponding users because field supervisors can only view and edit assignments for targets and surveyors who are supervised by them.

    The mapping of supervisors to targets and surveyors is defined in the Supervisor Mapping module, for which defining roles is a prerequisite.

  2. Emails

    In emails, the direct supervisor in charge of a surveyor is CC’ed on emails sent to the surveyor.

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Prerequisites

Roles and users can be added and updated on SurveyStream any time before or during the survey. A valid email address is required to add users to SurveyStream.

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Configuration

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Key concepts

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  Role

Every user is assigned a role on SurveyStream depending on the level of access they need to be given on the web app. Users can have different roles in different surveys.

For e.g, roles could be field manager, cluster coordinator, regional coordinator, etc. These role names are often specific to the field operations of an organization or even of specific survey teams.

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  Reporting role

A reporting role refers to the role to which a particular role reports.

For e.g, if a cluster coordinator reports to a field manager, reporting role for cluster coordinator is field manager.

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  Role permissions

Permissions define view/edit access to different parts of the web app. The types of permissions are:

  • View: Gives user access to view the inputs and outputs of a module
  • Edit: Gives user access to edit inputs and outputs associated with a module
  • None: Gives user no access to a module

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  Survey Admin

Survey Admin is a default role available on all surveys. This role has edit access on all modules of a survey. The role can’t be edited or deleted unlike other custom roles added for a survey.

The user who creates a survey is automatically assigned the Survey Admin role. You can add more users with Survey Admin role. It is mandatory to have at least one user with the Survey Admin role.

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Process

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Add a new role

Use this action to add a new role to the survey with view/edit/no access to different modules in the survey. Each role should be given a unique role name. The role name is used to identify the role, for e.g, users are assigned to the role using the role name.

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Edit role hierarchy

Once all roles are added on SurveyStream and if there is more than one custom role in the survey, the next step is to set the hierarchy among the roles. The hierarchy must follow these rules:

  1. One role is assigned the highest hierarchy level
  2. All roles except the one assigned the highest hierarchy level are assigned a reporting role
  3. Two roles can’t have the same reporting role
  4. The hierarchy can’t be cyclic. For e.g, if role A is the reporting role for role B, role B can’t be the reporting role for role A.

A valid role hierarchy for a survey with roles: field manager, regional coordinator and cluster coordinator is cluster coordinator -> regional coordinator -> field manager.

3

Add new user

After adding roles and defining the hierarchy, the last step is to add users and assign them an appropriate role. For users with the lowest field supervisor role, you also need to provide the values for mapping criteria fields selected under Module Questionnaire.

If the user is being added to SurveyStream for the very first time, an email is sent to the user’s email address asking them to set up their password for logging in.

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Other actions on roles

  • Edit: Can be used to edit role name or permissions associated with the role anytime before or during the survey.

  • Duplicate: Can be used to duplicate a role to create another role with the same permissions. Since role names must be unique, the user must provide a role name for the duplicated role.

  • Delete: If a role is added by mistake or is no longer relevant (due to changes in the team), this action can be used to delete the role.

    Please ensure that there are no users assigned to a role before deleting the role. You can check this by looking at the column ‘Users assigned’ in the roles table.

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Other actions on users

  • Edit: Can be used to edit the user role or values for the mapping criteria fields.

  • Remove: If a user is no longer part of the survey, this action can be used to remove the user from the survey.

    The remove action only removes the user’s access to the survey. The user can still login on SurveyStream and access other surveys they are part of. To completely remove a user’s access to SurveyStream, please contact the SurveyStream team.

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Walkthrough

  • Video walkthrough for adding/updating roles
  • Video walkthrough for editing role hierarchy
  • Video walkthrough for adding/updating users