Inviting staff members and users

Manage your team at: Staff → Invites (for staff) and Users → Invites (for learners)

SimChat distinguishes between staff members and users (learners). Each has different access levels and a different way of joining.

Staff members vs users

Staff members include:

Owners and administrators who manage the organisation
Assistant administrators who edit and publish any content, without seeing learner data or managing people
Cohort leads who author, review and publish for their cohorts and see those cohorts' learner data
Authors who create draft scenarios and submit them for review
Assessors who review learner sessions for their cohorts but don't create content
Viewers who get the learner experience on a staff seat, without seeing anyone else's data

Users are the learners who practise with your scenarios. They cannot edit scenarios or see other users' activity.

See Understanding roles in SimChat for the full breakdown, or Staff → Roles explained in SimChat for the permission grid. A short description of the selected role appears on every invite form.

Inviting staff members

Staff join through an invite link. One link can be reused by a whole team joining with the same role, or limited to a single use for one person.

Go to Staff → Invites in the sidebar, or select Invite staff on the Staff page
Select New invite link
Enter an Invite name so you can recognise it later
Under Staff role, choose Viewer, Assessor, Author, Cohort lead, Assistant administrator or Administrator
For authors, cohort leads and assessors, choose Cohorts they'll manage. New joiners become staff of those cohorts, and of everything nested inside them. Cohort leads must be given at least one
Set Maximum uses and an expiry if you need them
Select Create link

Copy the link and share it however suits - email, a message, your intranet. Anyone who uses it joins your organisation with the role and cohorts you chose.

Invite staff members to join your organisation

Want someone to run one cohort - reviewing its sessions, and writing and publishing scenarios for it - rather than your whole organisation? Invite them as a cohort lead with that cohort selected. For someone who should only write, and never see learner data, use author; for someone who should only mark, use assessor. See Creating and managing cohorts.

You can change someone's role and cohorts later from Staff → All staff.

Inviting users

Learners join through invite links too. Share the link however you like - through your LMS, by email, or from SimChat directly. Learners create a SimChat account and are attached to your organisation when they use the link.

Linking an invite to a cohort is optional for administrators. Leave it blank for an organisation-wide invite, or choose a cohort so new joiners land somewhere you can point content at and report on. Cohort leads and authors creating invites must always pick one of their own cohorts. See Creating and managing cohorts.

To create a learner invite link:

Go to Users → Invites in the sidebar
Select New invite
Give it a descriptive name, for example "Year 2 Medical Students"
Optionally choose a Linked cohort. Learners who join through this link are added to it automatically
Set any optional limits:

Maximum uses - how many people can use this link
Expiry date - when the link stops working
Video minutes per user and Audio minutes per user - leave blank for no per-user limit

Select Create invite link

You can then copy the link to share manually, or send invitations by email directly from SimChat.

Create invite links for users to join your organisation

Maximum uses and Expiry date control the invite link itself. To control how long each learner keeps access after they join, use the access expiry option below.

Per-user minute limits divide up your organisation's shared balance - they do not add extra minutes. See Setting per-user minute limits.

Setting when access expires

When you create a learner invite link, you can choose when the people who join through it lose access:

No expiry - access continues until you remove or deactivate the user
A number of days after joining - each learner's access ends that many days after they join
A fixed date - everyone who joins through the invite loses access on the same date

Access expiry only applies to people who join from that point onwards. Learners see a reminder before their access ends. You can also change a single user's expiry date, or set a new one when reactivating someone, from the Users page.

Anonymous access

For situations where learners shouldn't have to create an account - research studies, open days or large one-off cohorts - turn on Anonymous users when creating an invite link. With this on:

Learners join instantly without registering, with no email or password
No personal data is collected about them
You must set a maximum number of uses for the link

Anonymous participants accept the data usage terms before they start, and their activity still counts towards your organisation's minutes.

Organising users into cohorts

Cohorts help you organise learners and control access:

Go to Cohorts in the sidebar
Select Create cohort
Name your cohort, for example "Cohort 2026"

After creating a cohort you can add users to it one at a time or in bulk from the Users page, point an invite link at it so new joiners land in it automatically, restrict scenarios and collections to it, nest sub-cohorts inside it, and add the staff who run it. See Creating and managing cohorts.

Joining through single sign-on or your LMS

If your organisation uses SSO or LMS (LTI) integration, people can join without invites at all. Learners are added automatically, and staff are held in a pending approval queue until an administrator assigns their role and cohorts from the Staff page. See Single sign-on and LMS integration.

Updated on: 08/09/2026

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