Setting Up Role Based Security     Special Types     Adding / Editing Staff / Employees     Tips

Staff vs. Coach
First make sure you are following the correct path through the system.

We use the term "Staff / Employees" to describe users who will be logging in to www.TennisConnect.org to perform administrative functions (updating web pages, your eCalendar, sending group emails, blocking courts, etc). 

There are five different "roles" or security levels that you can assign to govern Staff / Employee privileges.

A "Tennis Coach" is a person / member of the community who teaches tennis and whom you wish to provide a listing in the Find-a-Coach directory.  A Tennis Coach can log in at TennisConnect.org and update their biography.

The Tennis Coach feature is popular with CTA's and community web sites where you wish to provide local coaches with visibility on your web site, but do not wish to provide administrative access to your database.

The remainder of this article addresses adding Staff / Employees.  Please see the article About Tennis Coaches to learn more about the Tennis Coach directory and search functions.

Setting up Role Based Security
The Employee Directory (Basic Settings | TennisConnect Basics | Option #5 - Staff / Employees) provides users with ranges of permissions to modify / update / or generally use the features of TennisConnect. Users are assigned Roles that govern access to specific modules and features.  You should review your Staff Permissions by role to set the appropriate permission groups that you will later assign to your staff.



There are 5 pre-set roles in TennisConnect: Admin, Tennis Pro, Board Member, Staff, and Business Office.  These are simply labels that provide you with 5 different security profiles that you can attach to any given staff / employee users.

Generally,

• Admin: users can do anything, including set up new users (generally this is the only role with access to Basic Settings)

• Tennis Pro: can usually administer the courts, members, and maybe use Group Email based on your policies

• Board Member: is usually a courtesy role with access to the Contact Manager (Member Administration) and maybe Group Email

• Staff and Business Office are just two additional labels that you can use to tailor permissions to meet your staff responsibility  / accountability guidelines.

When staff users log in their menu options will be restricted to allowed permissions that you have applied to a given role.

Generally you would not allow most roles to download the member roster to Microsoft Excel (this is your customer base), access Basic Settings, or to administer TennisCollect. 

Oddly enough, it is popular to allow virtually all staff to Admin Members and Delete Members; from a customer service standpoint players routinely ask staff to update their address, phone number, or delete a duplicate record (even though your players can perform these tasks themselves, they also expect your staff to be able to meet their requests).



Special Types
Staff
Within Staff / Employees the role "Staff" has a special option to restrict web site builder editing to a specific page group.  You will see in the Web Site Builder that pages can be attached to page groups.  Users in the "Staff" role can be allowed access to the web site builder with the limitation that they can only edit pages in designated groups.  Page groups were initially implemented for High School tennis teams where several TennisConnect customers wanted to provide pages on their web site for local schools (and allow the team captain or a volunteer to update schedules, directions, results, bio's etc).

More recently we have been seeing this privilege extended to team captains and other departments using the web site builder (swim instructors, fitness program directors, etc).

Tennis Pro
The role "Tennis Pro" is somewhat special as well.  The TennisConnect Tennis Court Scheduler allows you to book lessons and lessons available.  A "Tennis Pro" must be attached to these reservation types.  So you should create a "Tennis Pro" profile for each of your teaching Tennis Pros (even if you create a "second" ID for them.  You may be an administrator and a teaching pro, in which case you need to set yourself up twice.  You'll probably never use the Tennis Pro log in because you have your admin log in - but you need to set it up to appear in the court scheduler).

Stringer
The role "Stringer" is used by the String Center to track assigned stringing tickets and to record the history of stringing services.  A "Stringer" does not have a username and password, and has no reason to log in to TennisConnect.  Any Staff / Employee can also be designated as a stringer, and if you check that box, the person will be available to the String Center functions for assigning and tracking racquet service work (this eliminates the need to set up a true "employee" twice - once as a stringer and once for another role).

Adding Staff / Employee
Once you have your role based permissions set, Click

Choose the desired role, and the will "re-paint".  Complete the staff / employee data form:


Tips
When you add an employee, be sure to "Activate" them.

• The Activate / De-Activate switch allows you to keep seasonl employees in the database but turn them "off" in the off season.

• Many customers have a "user" called "Front Desk" so that username is taken on TennisConnect, but you can have a front desk user (maybe the tennis center name?) so that your front desk staff does not have to constantly log in and log out.

• The system audit trail captures every tennis court reservation made and changed, including username, date, time, and IP address (so we can tell if the change was made from within the tennis center or elsewhere).  If you are using a "Front Desk" user you will have to look up your staff schedules to see which employee specifically made a change to the court schedule.

• When you add a Tennis Pro the pro will be listed in the Find-A-Pro system by default.  Use the tennis center or pro shop phone number for "Phone number to use in Find-A-Pro" to direct web site inquiries to the proper department in your organization.

• If you are using / allowing players to access "My Page" they will be able to search for tennis pro's anywhere in the country.  To restrict the results to "your" tennis pro's check your Community Settings at Basic Settings | Tennis Connect Basics | # 8 - Registration Settings - Community tab - Find-A-Pro controls.

• The reason we have fields for things like address, gender, age etc is to address requirements for TennisConnect customers who use the Staff directory extensively, and need this information for making staffing decisions (pool, lifeguards, who can staff the bar or serve drinks at a party, etc).

• Only users in the Administrative Role usually have access to Staff / Employees' contact details (Basic Settings), but other users may have access to Staff for Group Email.