Overview

The Default Role for Employee Accounts setting controls which portal access role is automatically given to a new Employee (Secretary) the moment their online account is created in Classter.

A role in Classter defines what a user sees and can do after logging in to the portal: the menus available, the modules they can access, the dashboard content shown to them, and the actions they are allowed to take.

By configuring this setting, an institution ensures that every new Employee account starts with a consistent and appropriate portal experience, without staff having to manually assign a role to each new account one by one.

This setting belongs to a family of five similar settings, one for each account type in Classter: Student, Teacher, Employee (Secretary), Parent (Guardian), and Partner. All five settings work in the same way for their respective account type.

 

 

What This Setting Does

• It is a single-select dropdown list. The available options are all the portal roles that the institution has created and marked as Employee-type roles.
• When a new Employee online account is created, Classter automatically assigns the role selected in this setting to that new account.
• This setting affects the role assigned at the moment of account creation, and also at the moment an existing account is converted to Employee type, as described below. It does not change the role of an account that already has Employee-type access, and it has no ongoing effect afterward.
• Administrators can always change an individual Employee account role afterward, using the Change Role (also called Manage Role) option available from the actions menu on the corresponding Employee user account. Doing so only affects that one account and does not change the institution-wide default defined by this setting.
• If this setting is left empty, new Employee accounts are created without any role assigned. Since a role controls what a user can see and do, an account with no role effectively has little or no usable portal access until an administrator manually assigns one. Configuring this setting is strongly recommended.

Important distinction: this setting is about portal access rights, not about a specific job title, department, or position within the office. Working as a front-office receptionist, a registrar, or an admissions coordinator is completely separate from the portal role that this setting assigns. Two employees with very different job titles or departments can perfectly well share the same portal role, because a portal role only defines what they can see and do inside Classter, not what job they perform.

 

 

Where It Is Used

This setting is applied automatically in the following situations:

• New Employee account creation. Whenever an administrator creates a new online account for an Employee (Secretary) in Classter, individually or as part of a bulk operation, the system reads this setting and assigns the selected role to the new account.
• Converting an existing account to Employee (Secretary) access. If an administrator changes an existing account so that it now includes Employee-type portal access, for example giving a Teacher additional office duties, Classter assigns the role configured in this setting to that account for the current academic period. If this setting has no value configured, the role already assigned to that account for that period is removed instead, rather than being left unchanged.
• Copying settings to a new academic period or another institution. When settings are copied forward to a new school year, or to another institution in a multi-institution setup, Classter attempts to carry this setting forward automatically, pointing to the equivalent role in the destination, provided a matching role exists there. If no equivalent role exists, the setting should be reviewed and reselected after the copy.
• Deleting the role currently selected here. If the role that is currently set as the default for Employee accounts is deleted from Role Management, Classter automatically clears this setting, since it can no longer point to a role that no longer exists. New Employee accounts created after that point will have no default role until the setting is updated again.

This setting is not applied to Employee accounts that already exist and keep their current type. It only determines the starting role for brand-new or newly-converted accounts, and the rollover fallback described below.

 

 

Business Logic / Behavior

• The list of available roles for this setting is not a fixed list built into Classter. It always reflects the Employee-type roles that the institution itself has created and configured under Role Management, in the order they have been arranged there.
• Only one role can be selected as the default at any time, for a given academic period.
• This setting is defined per academic period. Each academic period can therefore have its own default Employee role, and the setting can be reconfigured, or carried forward automatically, from one period to the next.
• Changing the value of this setting only affects Employee accounts created or converted after the change. It is never applied retroactively to accounts that already have a role assigned.
• This setting can also be copied between different institutions in a multi-institution (multi-company) setup, in the same way it can be copied between periods.

 

Fallback Role During Academic Year Rollover

This setting has one additional, more specific purpose beyond assigning roles to new Employee accounts. When Classter copies a user account forward into a new academic period and cannot find a matching role for that user in the new period, it checks whether the account has Administrator, Owner, or Employee (Secretary) type portal access. If so, Classter assigns the role configured in this setting to that account for the new period, rather than leaving the account without a role.

In practice, this means the value configured here can end up being used as a safety-net default not only for Employee accounts, but also for Administrator and Owner accounts, if their own role could not be carried forward automatically. For this reason, it is recommended to always keep this setting configured, even at institutions with very few dedicated Employee (Secretary) accounts.

 

K-12 Mode and Higher Education Mode

The behavior of this setting is the same whether the institution is running in K-12 mode or in Higher Education mode (controlled by the Enable Configuration for Higher Education setting – see Related Settings below). Enabling or disabling Higher Education mode does not change how or when a default role is assigned by this setting; it only changes which features and menus may be available inside the role itself.

• In K-12 mode, Employee roles are typically built around office and administrative functions such as student records, front-office communication, and basic scheduling.
• In Higher Education mode, Employee roles commonly extend to functions such as enrollment processing, registrar duties, and administrative support for academic departments.

Recommendation: whenever an institution is set up for the first time, or switches between K-12 and Higher Education mode, review the Employee role selected in this setting to make sure it still provides the correct set of features for that mode.

 

 

Examples

 

Example 1 – Standard School Setup

Green Meadows School has a single Employee portal role named “General Office Staff,” which grants access to student records lookup, basic communication tools, and the front-office calendar. The administrator sets the Default Role for Employee Accounts to “General Office Staff.” From that point on, every new employee account, whether created individually or in bulk, automatically receives the “General Office Staff” role, and no extra manual steps are required.

 

Example 2 – Multiple Roles at a Larger Institution

Northfield College has two Employee (Secretary) portal roles:

• “Front Desk Staff”: standard access to basic student and contact information, and appointment scheduling.
• “Registrar Office Staff”: includes everything in “Front Desk Staff,” plus enrollment records, transcript management, and academic period configuration.

The administrator sets the Default Role for Employee Accounts to “Front Desk Staff,” since most newly hired employees start in that capacity. When a new registrar office employee joins, the account is first created with the “Front Desk Staff” role like everyone else. A staff member then opens that account and uses Change Role to switch it to “Registrar Office Staff.” This individual change does not affect the institution-wide default, so future new employee accounts continue to receive “Front Desk Staff” automatically.

 

Example 3 – Effect of Deleting the Selected Role

At Lakeside Institute, the Default Role for Employee Accounts is set to “Office Support – Basic.” An administrator later deletes that role while reorganizing the institution roles. Because the role no longer exists, Classter automatically clears the Default Role for Employee Accounts setting. Until an administrator selects a new value, new employee accounts will be created with no default role assigned. It is therefore important to update this setting immediately after removing or renaming a role that was being used here.

 

Example 4 – Rollover Fallback for a Non-Employee Account

At Cedar Valley Academy, an Owner-type account had a custom role named “Owner – Full Access” in the previous academic period. When the new period is set up, Classter cannot find a matching role under the same reference for that account. Because the account has Owner-type portal access, Classter falls back to the role configured in Default Role for Employee Accounts, currently set to “General Office Staff,” and assigns it to that account for the new period. The administrator later notices this during a routine review and uses Change Role to restore the account to an appropriate elevated role for the new period.

 

 

When to Use

 

When to Configure or Update This Setting

• During initial setup of a new institution in Classter, before the first Employee accounts are created.
• When the institution reorganizes its Employee roles, for example renaming, merging, or replacing the role currently used as the default.
• When switching between K-12 and Higher Education mode, to confirm the assigned role still offers the right features for the new mode.
• After settings have been copied to a new academic period or another institution, to confirm the role that was carried over is still correct.

 

When Not to Change It

• If the institution has only one Employee role and it already suits everyone, there is no need to revisit this setting regularly.
• This setting should not be used to manage exceptions for individual employees, for example an employee who needs broader access for a specific project. Exceptions like this should be handled with the Change Role option on that specific account, not by changing the institution-wide default.

Note: because this is a single-select setting rather than an on/off switch, “enabling” and “disabling” do not directly apply to it in the usual sense. The closest equivalent to disabling it is leaving it empty, which is not recommended, since new Employee accounts would then start with no role and effectively no usable portal access until one is assigned manually, and the rollover fallback described above would also have no role to fall back to.

 

 

Notes

 

Prerequisites

• At least one role of type Employee (Secretary) must already exist and be fully configured, with its menus, modules, and access rights set up, in Role Management. If no Employee-type role has been created yet, the dropdown for this setting will be empty.
• It is recommended to decide on the overall Employee role structure wanted for the institution, whether a single general role or several tiers by function, for example front office, registrar, or finance, before configuring this setting, so the correct role is chosen from the start.

 

Related Settings

• Default Role for Student accounts (“Main Settings > General Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles – Student_Dashboard_Default_Role”)
• Default Role for Teacher accounts (“Main Settings > General Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles – Teacher_Dashboard_Default_Role”)
• Default Role for Parent (Guardian) accounts (“Main Settings > General Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles – Parent_Dashboard_Default_Role”)
• Default Role for Partner accounts (“Main Settings > General Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles – Partner_Dashboard_Default_Role”)
• Enable Configuration for Higher Education (“Main Settings > General Settings > Higher Education Customization – Xrisi_parametropoihshs_kolegiou”)

 

Terminology Note

Depending on how an institution has customized the terminology used in Classter, “Employee” may appear on screen under a different label, such as Secretary, Staff, or Administrative Staff. This does not change how the setting works, only its on-screen name.