Access by region

In a large organization, a regional biologist often should only see their own area’s data. Access by region does that: it scopes a member to one or more locations, so they only see the records collected there.

Who can do this

This needs the Admin role.

Scoping members is done in organization settings. Paid plans

Scope a member

In Settings, under Access by region, each member shows what they are scoped to. Choose Edit scope, tick the locations to grant, and choose Save scope. Granting a region covers everything beneath it, so a member scoped to a region sees every site and record under it.

Leave a member’s scope empty to give them the whole organization. Owners always see everything and cannot be scoped.

Regional admins

Give an admin a region and they become a regional admin: an administrator whose authority is bounded to that region, the way a state agency’s regional office runs its own area while headquarters oversees the whole agency. Within their region only, a regional admin can:

• See, edit, and approve or reject records.
• Manage the members in their region: change a member’s role (to member or viewer) and adjust their scope, as long as that member stays within the regional admin’s own region.

A regional admin cannot reach outside their region or take organization-wide actions. Reserved for an org-wide admin (an admin with no region) or an owner: editing survey types, editing the location tree, inviting new members, publishing to the public data layer, and organization settings.

An admin with no region is an org-wide admin (the headquarters role) and keeps full authority.

Scope follows the tree

Because a record is bound to a place, and places form a tree, a scope is just a branch of that tree. Move a site under a different region and a member scoped to that region sees it automatically.

Putting a member on leave

When someone is away for a while, parental or medical leave, a sabbatical, or a field technician between seasons, you do not have to remove them and lose their role and history. Pause access puts the member on leave: they keep their account, role, scope, and everything they have entered, but they cannot open the organization, and they stop counting as a billed seat. That frees the seat, so a temp covering the role can use it while the person is away.

In Settings, under Team, choose Pause access next to the member and add an optional note (for example, “Parental leave until September”). The member shows as On leave, and on their own dashboard the organization shows as Access paused.

When they return, choose Reactivate. If reactivating would put you over your plan’s seat limit because the seat was reused, pause or remove the stand-in first. Owners cannot be paused (change their role first if an owner is going on leave), and you cannot pause yourself.

Related

• Locations