Skip to content

Roles & permissions

PulseLMS has six roles. Every person in your organization holds one (sometimes more), and the role decides what appears in their sidebar and what they can do. Roles are assigned by an org admin (or a manager for their own team, where permitted) from People.

Where roles come from

Roles are client roles on the identity provider, carried in your sign-in token. platform_admin is a platform-wide (realm) role; the other five are scoped to your organization. Changing a role takes effect on the person's next sign-in or token refresh.


The six roles

Role In one line
Learner Takes assigned courses, quizzes, and earns certificates.
Instructor Supports and grades learners in the courses they teach.
Author Creates, edits, and publishes courses, quizzes, and programs.
Manager Sees and assigns training for their team; runs team reports.
Org admin Administers the whole organization end to end.
Platform admin Operates across organizations at the platform level.

Permission matrix

Legend: ✓ full access · Team limited to the person's team · Own limited to content they authored/teach · ✗ no access.

Learning

Capability Learner Instructor Author Manager Org admin
View Dashboard & My Learning ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Browse catalog, self-enroll (if enabled) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Take courses, quizzes, programs ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Notes, bookmarks, discussions ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Earn achievements & certificates ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Authoring

Capability Learner Instructor Author Manager Org admin
Create / edit courses & lessons ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗ ✓
Upload & configure video ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗ ✓
Build quizzes & question banks ✗ Own ✓ ✗ ✓
Create programs (learning paths) ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗ ✓
Publish courses / attach publish notes ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗ ✓

Instruction

Capability Learner Instructor Author Manager Org admin
Grade quiz attempts ✗ Own Own ✗ ✓
Approve quiz retakes / resets ✗ Own Own ✗ ✓
Nudge learners ✗ Own ✗ Team ✓
View learner progress ✗ Own ✗ Team ✓

\"Team\" is enforced, not advisory

Where this table says Team, the API refuses the action for anyone outside the teams that manager manages; it does not quietly do nothing for them. That now includes resetting an enrollment: if your organization grants a custom role the reset permission, it still only reaches that manager's own team.

People & assignments

Capability Learner Instructor Author Manager Org admin
View People directory ✗ ✗ ✗ Team ✓
Invite / add members ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
Assign / revoke roles ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
Deactivate members ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
Create / manage teams ✗ ✗ ✗ Team ✓
Assign courses & programs ✗ ✗ ✗ Team ✓

Reporting

Capability Learner Instructor Author Manager Org admin
View own transcript ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Learner transcripts (others) ✗ Own ✗ Team ✓
Team / department rollups ✗ ✗ ✗ Team ✓
Quiz item-analysis ✗ Own Own Team ✓
Export / schedule reports ✗ ✗ ✗ Team ✓

Administration

Capability Learner Instructor Author Manager Org admin
Branding / white-label ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
Compliance (e-signature, recert) ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
Notifications configuration ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
API keys & webhooks ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
Edition (Enterprise / Community) ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓
Audit log ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓

Platform admin

platform_admin is a platform-wide role held by PulseTech operators, not by customer staff. It exists for cross-organization operations and support and sits outside the per-organization matrix above. Day-to-day administration of your organization is done by an org admin.


Notes on scope

  • Managers are the team-scoped variant of an admin: everything they can do, they can do for their team only. See teams & managers.
  • Own for instructors and authors means the courses or quizzes they teach or authored, not the whole catalog.
  • A person can hold more than one role (for example, author + instructor); their effective permissions are the union of their roles.

For the sign-in and provisioning side of roles, see getting started and the integrations guide.