Understanding roles in SimChat

SimChat distinguishes between two main types of roles: staff members and users. Each role has different permissions and access levels.

Staff members

Staff members manage the organisation, create content and review learner activity. They include:

• Owners - full control of the organisation, including billing, plan and all settings
• Administrators - manage staff, users, cohorts, access control and activity
• Authors - create and edit scenarios, and review sessions for the cohorts they staff
• Assessors - review learner sessions and leave feedback for the cohorts they staff, but cannot create or edit content
• Viewers - get the learner experience (practise published scenarios and see their own results) on a staff seat. They cannot create content or see other people's data

Owners and administrators can see the Activity section and review every learner's sessions. Authors and assessors see activity only for the cohorts they staff.

What authors can see and edit is scoped by cohorts: they see content they created, content assigned to one of their cohorts, and content that isn't assigned to any cohort. See How staff access to content works.

Users

Users are the learners who practise with your scenarios. They:

• Can complete scenarios
• Can view their own feedback and results
• Cannot edit scenarios
• Cannot view other users' activity
• Have access only to the scenarios and collections permitted by the organisation

Users can belong to cohorts, which decide which restricted scenarios they can see and which staff look after them. See Creating and managing cohorts.

Cohort staff

Authors and assessors can be made staff of a cohort. Cohort staff review their cohort's sessions, and authors can also write and publish scenarios for it - all without organisation-wide admin access. Add staff from the cohort's page under Cohorts.

Inviting people

Staff members are invited by email or with staff invite links. Learners join through invite links. See Inviting staff members and users.

If your organisation uses single sign-on or LMS integration, staff can also arrive through those systems and wait in a pending approval queue until an administrator assigns them a role. See Single sign-on and LMS integration.

Updated on: 11/07/2026