Adding Project Roles in Prospero lets you plan out who you’ll need for your projects before you’ve cast or hired them. Think of roles as placeholders or team spots that you can assign people to later. This makes it easy to plan your season, build events on your calendar, and update them when casting is finalized.
ℹ️ Project Roles are separate from User Roles, which define app user permissions and access to the app. For more on user roles, see Permissions and User Role-Based Access.
What Are Project Roles?
A role represents a specific position or part on a project (e.g. “Director,” “Lighting Designer,” or “Bob Cratchitt”). A role can be created with or without a person assigned. Once a person is assigned to a role, all future events that include that role will automatically update to include the designated person. This means you can build out an entire calendar of rehearsals and performances using roles before you have people assigned.
How to Add a Role to a Project
To create a role for a project, go to the Projects tab and select the project you want to edit.
Go to the Roles tab and click + Role.
Enter a name for the role (for example, “Tiny Tim” or “Stage Manager”) and add a custom color and icon.
Assign a person right away—or leave it blank as a placeholder to fill later.
Adding Prices to Roles
If staff are available when someone reserves a space, you may want to add customer-facing prices for certain roles to help calculate quotes or invoices.
If you haven't set pricing tiers, go to Settings > Rentals and create your Price Tiers (for example, “Standard” and “Non-Profit”). These tiers will show for locations and items available to reserve as well as for roles.
In the Role Editor, toggle which tiers to apply to the role and enter the price per hour for each available tier.
Assigning People to Roles
When you’ve confirmed who will fill a role, return to your project’s Roles tab. Click on the pencil icon next to the role to fill.
Select the role’s person field and select the person to fill the role.
Prospero will automatically update any future events that include that role to now include the assigned person.
Using Roles in Events
You can attach roles to your events the same way you add people or items. If a role already has a person assigned, adding the role will automatically add that person to the event.
When hovering over a role in the event editor, the assigned person will be highlighted if they’re already on the event. If they’re not on the event yet, you’ll see a “+” button to quickly add them.
Once roles are added to events, there are two ways you can easily view all the events that include a specific role:
Filter events by role in the main calendar
Go to a role in a project, click the three-dots menu, and select See on Calendar
Role Groups
Just like people groups and item collections, you can create role groups to quickly add sets of roles to events.
To create a role group, go to the Roles tab in a project and click + Role Group.
Select the roles to be part of the group.
Adding a role group to an event will automatically add all the roles in that group.
When adding or removing roles from a group, you can choose how those changes should affect your calendar—either update existing events or leave existing events unchanged.
Summary
Roles allow you to:
Plan projects with placeholder team members
Assign people later and automatically update your calendar
Group related roles for quick scheduling
Apply customer-facing prices alongside roles
Using roles gives you the flexibility to plan early and update easily as your production plans solidify.
Have questions? Contact us at hello@prosperoapp.com or chat with us in the app!