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Roles and Permissions

HoMeeSuite uses a group-based permission system. Every user belongs to one or more groups. A group holds a list of permission strings. When a user performs an action, the platform checks whether any of their groups grant the required permission. Some permissions are also scoped per event — a group membership can be tied to a single event rather than granting access platform-wide (see Area Lead below).

Need-to-know: three-tier contact visibility

Volunteer data is shown in three tiers, so staff only see what they need for their role:

  • Public — a volunteer's display name only, visible to any authenticated volunteer signed up for the same shift (so people can coordinate with friends).
  • Operational — name, display name, shift assignment, and arrival/no-show status. Visible to Area Leads and above (volunteers:read).
  • Contact — email and phone. Visible only to Volunteer Coordinators and above, at all times, not gated behind any escalation (volunteers:contact).

An Area Lead can manage shifts and mark no-shows for their scoped volunteer type(s), but never sees a volunteer's email or phone number anywhere in the app. If an Area Lead needs to follow up with a volunteer (for example, after a no-show), the relevant Volunteer Coordinator handles that — see the Managing Participants guide for the escalation flow.

System groups

Five groups are built in and cannot be deleted. They cover the most common organisational structures out of the box.

Volunteer

The base group for every registered helper. Volunteers have no management permissions — their access is governed by the application itself rather than explicit permission strings. All registered users are Volunteers.

Account and profile

  • Create and manage their own account
  • Update their display name, email, and password
  • Fill in custom profile fields configured by the administrator (e.g. t-shirt size, dietary requirements)
  • Manage notification preferences (email on/off per category)
  • Unsubscribe from email notifications via a link in any notification email

Events

  • Browse the public event list
  • View event details (dates, location, description, FAQs, news posts)
  • Join an event when registration is open
  • Leave an event (before any shifts are signed up)

Shifts

  • View the shift plan for any event they are enrolled in
  • Sign up for available shifts (subject to capacity and compliance item acknowledgements)
  • Cancel their own shift registration (subject to the event's cancellation cutoff)
  • View their personal schedule and upcoming shifts
  • View their tracked hours and goodie tier progress on their personal dashboard
  • See the display names (only) of fellow volunteers already signed up for a shift they are also signed up for

Communications

  • Read messages sent to them by coordinators or event admins
  • Send direct messages to coordinators and event admins (when Communications module is active)
  • Receive broadcast messages from the event team as email and/or in-app notifications
  • View news and FAQ pages for events they are enrolled in

What Volunteers cannot do

  • Create, edit, or delete events
  • View the participant list of other volunteers
  • Manage shifts or assign other users
  • Access any admin panel
  • Sign off goodies for anyone

Area Lead

Scoped, day-to-day shift coordination for one or more specific volunteer types within a single event (e.g. Security, Bar, Stage Crew — not physical locations, since one team can span several locations under one lead). Introduced to replace the old, unscoped Coordinator role for people who run a specific team rather than the whole event.

Intended for: team leads and shift captains who run a specific crew, not the volunteer program as a whole.

Everything a Volunteer can do, plus (scoped to their assigned volunteer type(s)):

Shift management

  • Create, edit, and delete shifts that carry capacity for one of their scoped volunteer types
  • Assign volunteers to those shifts manually (without requiring self-sign-up)
  • Remove volunteers from those shifts
  • Mark shift sign-ups as completed (credits hours toward goodies)
  • Manage shift types and locations
  • Edit the details of a volunteer type they lead (name, description, flags, required compliance items) — creating a new volunteer type or deleting one is reserved for Volunteer Coordinators and above

Volunteer visibility (operational tier only — no contact info, ever)

  • View the full participant list for the event, minus email and phone
  • View an individual volunteer's profile, shift history, and tracked hours
  • Mark a volunteer as arrived / reverse an arrival mark
  • Mark a shift sign-up as a no-show — this automatically notifies every Volunteer Coordinator for the event (a relay, not a permission gate: see No-show escalations)

Communications

  • Send broadcast messages, but only to volunteers who are members of their scoped volunteer type(s) — no "everyone" option

What Area Leads cannot do

  • See any volunteer's email or phone number, anywhere
  • Manage shifts or capacities for a volunteer type they are not scoped to
  • Create a new volunteer type, delete a volunteer type, or edit a volunteer type outside their assigned scope
  • Add or remove members on a volunteer type outside their assigned scope
  • Mark a volunteer as a no-show at the event-enrollment level (only the shift-signup level, which triggers the escalation)
  • Access the Badges module
  • View or manage user accounts (admin panel)
  • Create, edit, or delete events

Being assigned to a volunteer type is a manual, per-person decision an event owner makes — see Assigning Area Leads. An Area Lead with zero assigned volunteer types has zero shift access (fail closed) — never "all types" by default.

Volunteer Coordinator

Event-wide volunteer and shift coordination, with standing access to volunteer contact information. Renamed from the old, unscoped Coordinator role — every existing Coordinator became a Volunteer Coordinator automatically, with no loss of access.

Intended for: the people who run volunteer operations for an entire event — not a single team, but everyone.

Everything an Area Lead can do, but event-wide (not scoped to specific volunteer types), plus:

Shift management

  • Create, edit, and delete shifts, shift types, and locations across the whole event
  • Assign or remove any volunteer from any shift

Volunteer management (contact tier — always on, not escalation-gated)

  • See every volunteer's email and phone number
  • Mark a volunteer as a no-show at the event-enrollment level, with a comment
  • Add a manual worklog entry
  • Sign off (or reverse) a goodie tier for a volunteer

No-show escalations

  • Receive an in-app notification (and opt-in email) whenever an Area Lead marks a shift sign-up as a no-show
  • See the open escalations panel at the top of the Participants page and resolve each one with an outcome (Reached, No answer, Excused, Backfilled) once followed up

Communications

  • View and send broadcast messages to the full event audience (when Communications module is active)

Badges

  • Create, rename, and delete badge groups; design layouts; assign participants; export printable PDFs

What Volunteer Coordinators cannot do

  • Create, edit, or delete events
  • Change event settings (modules, dates, goodie type, registration toggle)
  • View or manage user accounts (admin panel)
  • View or manage groups and permissions
  • Access global settings

A person can hold both Area Lead and Volunteer Coordinator at once — there's no reason to block it. The volunteer-type scoping only restricts the parts gated by the Area Lead grant; the Volunteer Coordinator grant already sees everything event-wide.

Event Admin

Manages events and all event-level operations. Has read access to users and groups (needed to assign helpers to events), but cannot change user accounts or global settings.

Intended for: festival or convention organizers running one or more events.

Everything a Volunteer Coordinator can do, plus:

Event lifecycle

  • Create new events
  • Edit event details (name, slug, dates, location, welcome message, cover photo)
  • Delete events
  • Open and close volunteer registration per event
  • Configure the cancellation cutoff hours

Event configuration

  • Enable and disable per-event modules (Volunteer Planning, Communications, Shopping, Inventory)
  • Set the goodie type (None, Goodie, T-Shirt)
  • Configure the voucher ratio
  • Enable or disable shift alerts per event
  • Create, edit, and delete goodie levels (name, hour threshold, description)

Broadcast communications

  • Send broadcast messages to all enrolled volunteers or a filtered subset
  • Schedule broadcasts for future delivery (when Communications module is active)
  • Cancel scheduled broadcasts

Read access to user management

  • View the global user list
  • Create new user accounts (user receives a password reset email immediately)
  • View a user's group memberships (read-only)
  • View the global group list and group permissions (read-only)

What Event Admins cannot do

  • Edit or deactivate existing user accounts
  • Create, edit, or delete groups
  • Change group permissions
  • Manage custom profile fields
  • Access global settings (SMTP, communication channels)

Superadmin

Full unrestricted access to everything. The Superadmin group holds a wildcard permission (*) that bypasses all individual permission checks.

Intended for: platform administrators and technical staff who need global control.

Everything an Event Admin can do, plus:

User management

  • View the full user list with search and filtering
  • View any user's complete profile, group memberships, and activity
  • Edit user profile fields on behalf of a user
  • Deactivate and reactivate user accounts
  • Assign or remove users from any group

Group management

  • Create custom groups with any combination of permissions
  • Edit existing custom group names and permission sets
  • Delete custom groups
  • View and manage system group memberships (assign users to Superadmin, Event Admin, Volunteer Coordinator, Area Lead, Volunteer)

Custom fields

  • Create custom profile fields (text, checkbox, select)
  • Edit field labels, types, options, and required status
  • Reorder fields
  • Delete fields

Global settings

  • Configure SMTP settings (host, port, credentials, sender address)
  • Send a test email to verify SMTP configuration
  • Configure communication channel settings

Setup

  • Access the first-run setup wizard at /setup (only available before any Superadmin exists)

Custom groups

In addition to the five system groups, Superadmins can create custom groups at Admin → Groups → New Group. Custom groups let you grant a precise subset of permissions — for example:

  • A read-only auditor group with only events:read and volunteers:read
  • A communications manager group with only communications:read and communications:manage
  • A shift-only coordinator group that can manage shifts but not mark arrivals or sign off goodies

A user can belong to multiple groups. Their effective permissions are the union of all permissions across all their groups.

Permission strings reference

Each permission follows the pattern module:resource:action. Superadmins hold * which matches all of them.

Permission What it grants Default groups
admin:users:read View user list and profiles Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin
admin:users:write Create user accounts and edit existing ones Event Admin, Superadmin
admin:groups:read View groups and their permissions Event Admin, Superadmin
admin:groups:write Create, edit, and delete groups Superadmin
admin:fields:read View custom profile fields Superadmin
admin:fields:write Create, edit, and delete custom fields Superadmin
admin:settings:read View global settings Superadmin
admin:settings:write Save global settings Superadmin
events:read View the admin event list Event Admin, Superadmin
events:manage Create, edit, and delete events Event Admin, Superadmin
volunteers:read View participant lists and volunteer profiles (operational tier — no contact info) Area Lead, Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin
volunteers:manage Mark arrivals, manage worklogs, sign off goodies Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin
volunteers:contact See volunteer email and phone (contact tier) Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin
shifts:read View shift management pages Area Lead, Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin
shifts:manage Create, edit, delete shifts and assign volunteers (Area Lead is scoped to their volunteer type(s) — see Area Lead) Area Lead, Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin
communications:read View broadcast and messaging management Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin
communications:manage Send broadcasts (Area Lead's recipients auto-restrict to their scoped volunteer type's members — see D-13) and manage communication channels Area Lead, Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin
badges:read View badge groups, designs, and printable badge assignments Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin
badges:manage Create/edit/delete badge groups, design badges, assign participants, and export printable PDFs Volunteer Coordinator, Event Admin, Superadmin

Assigning users to groups

Navigate to Admin → Users, open a user's profile, and use the Groups section to add or remove group membership. Changes take effect immediately — the user's next request picks up the updated permissions.

Assigning an Area Lead is different — it also requires picking which volunteer type(s) they lead, and that assignment is event-scoped rather than platform-wide. Do this from the event's Participants page instead — see Assigning Area Leads — not from the global Admin → Users group manager.

Navigation by role

What appears in the sidebar depends on the user's permissions.

All authenticated users see:

  • Dashboard — upcoming shifts and event summary
  • Events — browse and join events
  • Notifications — notification centre
  • Profile — account settings and preferences

Area Leads additionally see inside each event:

  • Participants — enrolled volunteer list (operational tier only — no email/phone)
  • Shifts — shift management view, scoped to shifts carrying their volunteer type(s)
  • Shift Types, Volunteer Types, and Locations
  • Broadcasts — scoped composer (when Communications module is active)

Volunteer Coordinators, Event Admins, and Superadmins additionally see inside each event:

  • Participants — enrolled volunteer list with full contact tier and no-show escalation management
  • Shifts — full shift management view with assignment sheet
  • Shift Types, Volunteer Types, and Locations
  • Schedule — event calendar
  • Broadcasts — full-audience mass messaging (when Communications module is active)
  • Badges — design badge groups, assign participants, and export printable PDFs

Event Admins and Superadmins additionally see:

  • Event Settings — dates, modules, goodie levels, registration toggle
  • Enrollment Results

Superadmins additionally see:

  • Admin → Users
  • Admin → Groups
  • Admin → Settings
  • Admin → Events (global event list for all events)