User Roles & Permissions

SmaCH has three user roles. Two are held within an organization, viewer and administrator. The third, super-admin, covers the whole platform. How roles are granted and changed is described in Managing organizations and users.

Role overview

graph TB
    SA[Super-admin<br/>SmaCH team]
    OA[Administrator<br/>organization staff]
    VI[Viewer<br/>read-only]

    SA -->|creates and manages| ORGS[Organizations]
    ORGS -->|contains| OA
    ORGS -->|contains| VI

    SA -.->|every organization| ALL[All features and StaRT]
    OA -.->|own organization| MGT[Artworks, monitorings, inventory, members]
    VI -.->|own organization, read-only| VIEW[Artworks and monitorings]

    style SA fill:#0000A5,color:#fff
    style OA fill:#1AFFBB,color:#000

A person can be a member of several organizations, with a different role in each.

1. Super-admin

Who: the SmaCH team, its experts and conservation scientists.

The super-admin role is granted on the account, from the administration console. It is not a membership: a super-admin reaches every organization without belonging to any.

Responsibilities

Run the directory from the administration console: organizations, users, members, roles and invitations.
Run monitorings on site with the StaRT mobile app.
Configure artworks and follow their monitorings, in any organization.
Support the organizations and analyse their monitoring data.

Super-admins have the same permissions as administrators on artworks, monitorings and the inventory. The difference is the scope: every organization rather than one.

When writing data, a super-admin works in one organization at a time: in the web application, the organization opened; through the API, the one named by the X-Organization header.

What they can do

Area	Permissions	Scope
Organizations	create, view, edit, delete	all organizations
Users	create, edit, invite, reset a password, grant or withdraw super-admin	all users
Members	add, change a role, remove	all organizations
Artworks	view, create, edit, delete, configure	all organizations
Monitorings	set up, start, stop (StaRT), follow and analyse	all organizations
Inventory	view and manage loggers, sensors, gateways and packaging	all organizations
Directory figures	members per organization, last login, logins over 90 days	all organizations

A super-admin cannot withdraw the super-admin role from their own account.

2. Administrator

Who: the staff of an organization, such as collection managers or registrars.

Responsibilities

Manage the members of the organization: invite people, change their role, remove them.
Manage the equipment inventory.
Create and configure artworks.
Run monitorings on site with the StaRT mobile app.
Follow and analyse the organization’s monitorings.

What they can do

Area	Permissions	Scope
Members	invite, resend an invitation, change a role, remove	own organization
Artworks	view, create, edit, delete, configure	own organization
Monitorings	set up, start, stop (StaRT), follow and analyse	own organization
Inventory	view and manage loggers, sensors, gateways and packaging	own organization

An administrator can neither change their own role nor remove themselves from the organization, so that nobody loses access to it by mistake.

Typical workflow

1. Create the artwork (web application)

Describe the artwork.
Assign its inclosure (static protection) and crate (transport protection) from the inventory.
Set its base thresholds (temperature, humidity, vibration) and recording frequency.
Write its checklist.
Set its status from draft to ready.

2. Set up the monitoring (StaRT)

Choose the type: stationary (museum or store) or transport (movement).
Let the app detect the dataloggers (logger and sensor pairs), and for a transport the gateways.
Review and adjust the configuration.
The monitoring is created as pending, and the artwork moves from ready to standby.

3. Start the monitoring (StaRT)

Press Start: a start event is sent with its position and time.
The monitoring moves from pending to in_progress, and the artwork from standby to monitoring.

4. During the monitoring

The monitoring collects events: alerts on crossed thresholds, and positions during a transport.
Notifications, free messages from a user, are part of the API; StaRT does not send them yet.
Follow the alerts as they arrive in the web application.

5. Stop the monitoring (StaRT)

Press Stop: a stop event is sent with its position and time.
The monitoring moves from in_progress to ended, and the artwork from monitoring back to ready.
An ended monitoring cannot be restarted.

6. Monitor again: a new monitoring is set up on the same artwork, from step 2.

3. Viewer

Who: members invited to follow the organization’s artworks and monitorings, such as partners or observers.

Responsibilities

Follow the organization’s artworks and monitorings.
Read the alerts and the history of each monitoring.

Viewers have read-only access to their organization. They cannot modify any data, use the StaRT mobile app, or see the inventory. The API enforces this: a viewer who calls an inventory endpoint, or tries to write an artwork or a monitoring, receives a 403.

What they can do

Area	Permissions
Artworks	view (read-only)
Monitorings	view, with their timeline and charts (read-only)
Alerts	view (read-only)
Inventory	no access

Permission matrix

Action	Super-admin	Administrator	Viewer
Scope	all organizations	own organization	own organization
Create organizations	yes	no	no
Create users, grant super-admin	yes	no	no
Invite members, change their role	yes (all)	yes (own)	no
Create and configure artworks	yes (all)	yes (own)	no
Use the StaRT mobile app	yes (all)	yes (own)	no
Set up, start and stop a monitoring	yes (all)	yes (own)	no
View artworks and monitorings	yes (all)	yes (own)	yes (own, read-only)
Follow alerts as they arrive	yes (all)	yes (own)	yes (own, read-only)
View and manage the inventory	yes (all)	yes (own)	no
Administration console	yes	no	no

Application access

Role	Web application	StaRT mobile app
Super-admin	full access, including the administration console	on-site execution
Administrator	management of the organization	on-site execution
Viewer	read-only	no access

Every user, whatever their role, can change their name and language from My profile.