How staff access to content works

Staff access is managed through cohorts. See Creating and managing cohorts.

What your staff can see and edit is decided by their role and the cohorts they staff. This keeps different teams working on their own content - for example separate teams for anatomy, surgery and clinical skills - without everyone editing everything.

How it works

Owners, administrators and assistant administrators always see and edit everything, whatever the cohorts. Assistant administrators never see learner data
Cohort leads author, review and publish content aimed at the cohorts they staff, and see those cohorts' learner data. Organisation-wide content is visible to them but read-only
Authors see and edit content they created, content assigned to one of their cohorts, and content that isn't assigned to any cohort. They submit their work for review rather than publishing it themselves
Assessors don't work on content at all - they review learner sessions for the cohorts they staff
Viewers get the learner experience, published scenarios only, and are not affected by cohort staffing

Staffing a cohort also covers every sub-cohort nested inside it, so adding someone to a programme gives them every course beneath it. Content assigned to more than one cohort can be edited by the staff of any of them, so share a cohort only where shared editing is intended.

See Understanding roles in SimChat for what each role can do, or open Staff → Roles explained in SimChat for the full permission grid.

Scoping an author, cohort lead or assessor to a cohort

Go to Cohorts and open the cohort
On the Staff tab, select Add staff
Choose the author, cohort lead or assessor

A staff member can staff more than one cohort. You can also assign cohorts when inviting staff, under Cohorts they'll manage on the invite form. Cohort leads must always be given at least one cohort.

Assigning content to cohorts

Content is assigned through its access setting. On a scenario, set Who can access this scenario? to Specific cohorts in the Key details step, or use Manage access on the scenario list. Collections have the same setting.

Once assigned:

The cohort's learners can access it, as can learners in any sub-cohort beneath it
The cohort's staff can see it, and authors and cohort leads can edit it

Content that isn't assigned to any cohort stays visible to all of your authors, and to all learners if its visibility is set to everyone.

Closing the catalogue: Only show assigned content

By default, learners see everything published to All users in this organisation as well as content assigned to their cohorts. To show learners only what has been assigned to them, turn on Only show assigned content under Organisation settings → Policies.

When it is on, learners, viewers and assessors see only the scenarios and collections assigned to their cohorts, or to a parent cohort. Content open to everyone is hidden unless it sits inside a collection assigned to their cohorts. Imported library scenarios are always organisation-wide, so put them in an assigned collection to reach a closed catalogue. Authoring views are unaffected.

With this setting on, a learner in no cohort sees an empty catalogue. Link your learner invite links to a cohort so new joiners are placed automatically, and use the No cohort filter and bulk Add to cohort action on the Users page to place anyone who isn't.

Author policies

Under Organisation settings → Policies, administrators can narrow what the Author role may do on its own. Every switch is on by default, so nothing changes until you turn one off. These settings never restrict administrators, assistant administrators or cohort leads.

Policy	On (default)	Off
Authors can create collections	Authors create collections	Only administrators create collections; authors can still add scenarios to collections they may edit
Authors can delete content	Authors delete the scenarios and collections they may edit	Authors ask an administrator to delete, even for their own drafts
Authors can make content available to everyone in the organisation	Authors may choose All users in this organisation as an audience	Authors can only target specific cohorts; content already open to everyone stays that way until an administrator changes it
Authors can edit organisation-wide content	Authors edit any unpublished content not restricted to another cohort	Authors edit only their own work and content aimed at cohorts they staff; everything else is visible but read-only

Templates

Scenario templates have no cohort dimension, so only administrators and assistant administrators create, edit and delete them. Authors and cohort leads can start a new scenario from any template. See Creating and managing scenario templates.

Publishing

Authors submit their drafts for review. Administrators and assistant administrators can publish anything; a cohort lead can publish content aimed at their own cohorts. Live scenarios are locked below the administrator tier - cohort leads and authors use Propose an update instead, which goes through the same review. See Submitting scenarios for review and publishing updates.

Updated on: 08/09/2026

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