Staff & Roles
This page explains how to give people beyond yourself their own scoped login to Agon — for example, a front-desk person who should be able to book clients into classes and mark attendance, but shouldn't see reports or payments.
Navigation label — Staff & Roles: EN: Staff & Roles · IT: Personale e Ruoli · FR: Personnel et rôles · DE: Mitarbeiter & Rollen · ES: Personal y Roles · PT: Equipe e Funções · NL: Personeel & Rollen
Before you start
Only studio managers can access Staff & Roles in the left sidebar's People section. This feature has no client-facing surface — clients never see staff accounts, roles, or permissions.
Every account that isn't a client falls into exactly one role: the two built-in roles (Manager and Instructor), or a custom role you define yourself. A role is a named permission set; a staff account is a login assigned to one role. Changing an account's role changes what it can do immediately — there's no separate "permissions" step per account.
Overview
The two built-in roles
- Manager — full access to everything in Agon: every page, every setting, payments, reports, marketing, payroll, and this Staff & Roles screen itself. Unchanged from how Agon worked before this feature existed.
- Instructor — the same capability instructors have always had: their own schedule, their own classes' rosters, and marking attendance. Unchanged from how Agon worked before this feature existed.
Neither built-in role can be renamed, edited, or deleted.
Custom roles
A custom role is a name (for example, "Front Desk") plus a permission checklist across exactly five areas, each with two independent levels:
| Area | View | Manage |
|---|---|---|
| Classes | See the calendar and class types | Schedule, edit, and cancel classes and class templates |
| Members | See client profiles | Create and edit client profiles |
| Bookings | See bookings | Book or cancel a client into a class on their behalf |
| Check-ins | See check-in history | Mark attendance |
| Memberships | See a client's membership | Assign or edit a client's membership |
You can grant any combination — View without Manage on some areas, Manage on others, or nothing at all in an area you want fully hidden from that role.
Every other area of Agon is Manager-only in this version — payments, reports, marketing, settings, staff/payroll, point of sale, appointments, establishments, instructors, promo codes, gift cards, products, tags, waivers, and invoices. A custom role has no way to reach any of these, no matter what you grant it. This is a deliberate scope line for this release, not a bug — if your front-desk person also needs to, say, record a product sale, that's not possible with a custom role yet.
Creating a custom role
- Go to Staff & Roles in the left sidebar and switch to the Roles tab.
- Click + Add Role.
- Enter a Role name (e.g. "Front Desk"). It must be unique — you can't reuse a name already in use by another role.
- For each of the 5 areas, check View and/or Manage as needed.
- Click Save.
The new role appears in the Roles tab alongside Manager and Instructor, which are shown read-only (you can view their permissions but not edit them).
Editing or deleting a custom role
Open a custom role and change its name or permission checklist at any time — every staff account assigned to it picks up the change on their very next action, not their next login. Deleting a role is blocked while any staff account is still assigned to it; reassign them to a different role first, then delete it.
Adding a staff member
- Go to Staff & Roles in the left sidebar (defaults to the Staff tab).
- Click + Add Staff.
- Enter their Full name and Email.
- Enter a Temporary password. There's no invite-email flow in this version — share this password with the staff member directly, the same way you'd hand someone a new PIN.
- Choose their Role — Manager, Instructor, or one of your custom roles.
- Click Save.
The new account appears in the Staff table with their name, email, role, and an Active badge. They can log into the desktop app immediately with the email and password you set.
If the role you're assigning is the built-in Instructor role, and this person will actually teach classes or take appointments, add them from Instructors instead. An account created here with the Instructor role can log in, but has no bio/photo profile and won't appear in any instructor-assignment dropdown (scheduling a class, a class type's default instructor, booking an appointment) — only an account created from the Instructors page gets that profile. Use this Staff & Roles flow for the Instructor role only if you don't need them to appear in those pickers.
Changing someone's role
- Find them in the Staff table and click Edit.
- Choose a different Role.
- Click Save.
The change takes effect on their very next action — permissions are checked fresh every time, not just at login — so you don't need to ask them to log out and back in.
Resetting a staff member's password
- Find them in the Staff table and click Reset password.
- Enter a new password (at least 8 characters) and click Save.
The new password takes effect immediately — share it with the staff member directly, the same way you shared their original temporary password. There's no invite/reset email for staff accounts in this version, and staff can't request their own reset (that's a Client-only flow, see password-reset) — a Manager always sets it on their behalf. This also means a staff member with historical records tied to their account (so their account can't be removed and recreated) is no longer stuck if they forget their password.
Deactivating, reactivating, or removing someone
- Deactivate — reversible, the same as deactivating a membership type or a product. A deactivated account can't log in, but its history (classes they taught, check-ins they recorded, and so on) is untouched, and you can Reactivate it later.
- Remove — permanent. Blocked if the person has historical records tied to their account (for example, an Instructor who has taught classes, or anyone who's recorded a check-in or a sale) — deactivate instead in that case.
You can never deactivate or remove your own account, and Agon will never let you leave the studio with zero active Manager accounts — the action that would cause either is blocked before it happens.
Sidebar visibility
Before this feature, every staff account — Manager or Instructor — saw the entire left sidebar. Now, what a signed-in account sees is driven by its role:
- Dashboard always shows, for every staff account.
- Calendar and Class Types show if the role has Classes View.
- Clients shows if the role has Members View.
- Memberships shows if the role has Memberships View.
- Everything else (Instructors, Appointments, Establishments, Payments, Reports, Marketing, Settings, Staff & Roles, Staff Payroll, POS, and so on) only shows to a Manager.
A Manager still sees every item unconditionally, regardless of any role's permissions. This is the intended, correct behavior of this feature — if a staff member's sidebar looks sparse, it's reflecting their role's permissions accurately, not a bug.
Mobile app limitation
Logging into the Agon mobile app with a custom-role account doesn't work usefully yet — the mobile app currently only recognizes Client and Instructor accounts, so a custom-role login falls back to the regular client view instead of anything scoped to that role's permissions. The desktop app is the supported surface for Staff & Roles right now.
What if something goes wrong?
I can't see a page I used to see This is expected if your role (or an account you manage) changed recently — see Sidebar visibility above. Only a Manager can grant broader permissions; ask your studio manager to add the relevant View/Manage permission to your role, or to reassign you to a role that already has it.
I accidentally can't manage anything If you reassigned a Manager to a more limited role (or a custom role with few permissions) and that person can no longer do what they need, reassign them back to Manager, or grant their current role the specific permissions they're missing. This specific situation can't happen to your last Manager — Agon blocks any reassignment, deactivation, or removal that would leave the studio with zero active Manager accounts — but it can still happen to any Manager as long as at least one other Manager account remains active.
A staff member forgot their password Any Manager can set them a new one — see Resetting a staff member's password above. There's still no self-service reset for staff (only Clients have that), so the staff member needs to ask a Manager.