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Custom Roles

Create new user roles and customize their permissions

Michael Hughes avatar
Written by Michael Hughes
Updated over a year ago

In This Article


What Are Custom Roles?

Seismic Learning users have certain permissions depending on the role they're assigned. Standard roles include admins, managers, creators, and learners, and their powers descend in that order.

If you need an employee to inhabit a role that sits somewhere between these options, you can create a custom role. Custom roles can be specially configured to meet your company's needs.


Creating and Deleting Custom Roles

To create a new custom role, select the gear icon in the upper right corner > Settings > Roles > New Role.

Enter a name for the new role, then choose the permissions the role should have. When you're finished, select Create Role at the bottom of the page.

📝 Note: The Role Name field is limited to 25 characters.

Deleting a Custom Role

You can delete custom roles provided:

  • They are not being used in a smart group rule.

  • They do not have any users assigned to them. This includes both archived and unarchived users. 

To delete a custom role, select the gear icon > Settings > Roles, then select Edit Permissions next to the custom role. Scroll to the bottom and select Delete Role. Select Yes, delete to confirm your decision. 


Locate Users by Custom Role

Admins and users with people permissions can use the Role filter to easily locate users assigned to a specific role, including custom roles.


Creating a New User with a Custom Role

After you create a custom role, it appears in the role-assignment step of the user creation workflow. Look for the header “What role should this person have?"

Select Learn about Roles to review the permissions granted to each role.


Role ID

All roles have a Role ID. This number appears alongside the role name on the Roles tab of the Settings menu.

Use the Role ID when making user updates in bulk through either the API, the bulk sync API, or the bulk user import tool.


Importing Custom Roles with the Bulk User Importer

To accommodate custom roles, the Bulk User Import accepts Role ID. The Role ID allows users to be created or updated through the import by matching the Role ID rather than the role name.

The Role name column only supports the four standard roles: admin, manager, creator, and learner.

The following guidelines should be followed to avoid failures during the import process:

  • The supplied Role ID for a new or existing user must be a valid ID of an existing role in the account.

  • If “custom” is listed in the Role column, a valid Role ID must also be provided.

  • When information is provided in both columns, Role name and Role ID for a single user, the Role ID is used.


Creating Smart Groups with Custom Roles

Custom roles can be selected when setting up a role-based rule in the smart group rule builder. 


Custom Roles and Daily Digest Emails

All roles, including custom ones, can receive a daily digest email containing lesson activity. Digest emails can be enabled or disabled on the My Account tab in the Settings menu.

When Send me a daily digest email of activity is enabled, anyone with permission to grade completions will get a daily digest with information about lessons that need to be graded.

At this time, only users assigned to admin and manager roles will see the other parts of a daily digest email, including:

  • Lessons completed the previous day

  • Overdue assignments

  • Content added to the Learn tab as optional learning


Questions? Contact the Support team at support@lessonly.com

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