Find your way around as staff
The five screens an employee actually uses, and the long list of things employees do not do.
Owned by Venue Manager · 11 steps · about 12 minutes
Why this exists
There are two employee roles on this platform and one idea behind both of them: operations are separated from money and identity. An employee can run a night — admit people, chase a guest list, watch the sales board, post to social — without ever being able to move a cent, grant themselves a role, or bind the venue to a contract. That separation is what lets you hire a manager on Monday and put them on the floor on Tuesday.
The role model has three moving parts worth learning once. First, venue_manager implies door_staff: a manager silently has every door permission as well, so you never have to hold two logins. Second, employee is a pseudo-group — it is not a role anybody is granted, it is a gate that means door_staff or venue_manager or admin, and it is what opens the scanner. Third, admin is a superuser: an admin passes every group check, which is why so many of the surfaces below say admin-only rather than listing exceptions.
The most common new-starter mistake is assuming that because a page is under the admin URL prefix, a manager can open it. Some can, some cannot, and the split is not cosmetic. /admin itself — the platform hub card page — is admin-only. So are the ledger, the tax office, payouts, refunds, the universal data suite, role management, and every write that changes an event's status, tiers or prices. Learn the boundary now and you will stop filing tickets about 403s that are working as intended.
The one thing no employee ever does is author an event. Events come from host applications and from admins; a manager reviews, converts and then monitors. If you came here looking for how an event is built, you want the Host / Promoter manual instead.
Before you start
- A seeded database (run the seed once so the demo readers, event and applications exist).
- A door staff or venue manager login.
Practise with
| Persona | Password | Note | |
|---|---|---|---|
| venue_manager | manager@club.test | manager123 | shift lead: implies door_staff, plus intake, sales, guest list, marketing |
| door_staff | door@club.test | door123 | door shift account: scanner + guest list, nothing else |
| admin | admin@club.test | admin123 | the only account that can touch money, identity and contracts |
Steps 1–7 — Venue Manager
their manual →-
1Sign in as the manager and open the scanner. This is the surface every employee shares — it is gated to the employee pseudo-group, so door staff, managers and admins all land here.Expected result The Door Scanner page with a reader picker, a scan box and a Recent scans table.Watch out for If you get a 403 here, you are signed in as a member or a host, not as staff. Employee is not a group you can be granted — check which of door_staff / venue_manager / admin you actually hold.
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2Follow the Guest list search link at the bottom of the scanner. Pick an event from the dropdown so the page has something to search.Expected result The Guest List — Door page with a search box and an override counter reading overrides used / cap.Watch out for The event dropdown only lists events in announced, on_sale, sold_out or in_progress. A draft event never appears here, and that is deliberate — you cannot check people into a night that has not been announced.
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3Open the host application queue. This is the first surface that is yours and not the door's.Expected result A six-column pipeline board with viability scores and status filters.Watch out for Door staff get a 403 here. Deciding what goes on the calendar is not a door decision.
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4Open the events list — your live sales board.Expected result Every event with its status and sales figures.Watch out for You can read this and every event dashboard behind it, but the edit controls are hidden: the page computes an edit flag that is true only for admins. Creating an event, changing its status, and editing tiers or prices are all admin-only writes.
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5Open the marketing dashboard, the last of your five core screens.Expected result Channels, recent posts and scheduled posts.Watch out for You can compose, schedule, publish, cancel and retry posts. You cannot enable or disable a channel or change its handle, and you cannot delete a post — those are admin writes.
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6Understand what is NOT yours: you do not author events. Read the Host / Promoter manual to see where events actually come from — an application, a viability review, an approval, a signed contract, then a draft event.Expected result The host manual, with the event-creation workflows listed under their own owner.Watch out for A promoter asking you to 'just add a date' is asking for something no employee role can do. The answer is an application, or an admin.
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7Memorise the 403 list rather than discovering it at 1am. As a manager you are refused on: the platform admin hub, the ledger and trial balance, the tax office, payouts and refunds, role grants and revocations, the universal data suite and its audit log, event status transitions, tier and price edits, contract section and rider edits, contract lock and countersign, reader provisioning and signing-key rotation, guest-list door-override settings, marketing channel settings, and the intake settings page.Expected result A clear mental line: you run the night, an admin runs the money and the identities.Watch out for Being refused is not a bug report. If you genuinely need one of these, the answer is to get an admin, not to get your role changed.
Steps 8–9 — Door Staff
their manual →Learns the two screens their role actually opens, and what a 403 there means.
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8As door staff, sign in and confirm your world is two screens: this one and the guest list. Everything else you will try is a 403.Expected result The scanner, with the offline bundle control replaced by a badge reading bundle: manager only.Watch out for You cannot download the offline bundle or watch the push feed from a browser. Both ship every pass secret for the venue, so they need a manager session or a provisioned reader's own device token.
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9Try the guest-list admin index once so you know what the refusal looks like.Expected result A 403. Allocating comps is a manager or admin job; checking them in is yours.Watch out for Door staff DO have read access to a specific event's guest-list dashboard when they open it directly, but not to this index. Work from /scanner/guestlist during a shift — it is the screen built for your job.
Steps 10–11 — Admin
their manual →Owns everything on the money-and-identity side of the boundary this workflow teaches.
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10As an admin, open the platform hub to see the other side of the boundary — every card here is a surface no employee reaches.Expected result The admin dashboard with module cards, including Training Manual.Watch out for This page is admin-only. If you are writing a runbook for managers, never send them here; send them to the specific screen their role can open.
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11Look at the group list and the zones each group maps to, so you can answer the question 'why did the door say wrong zone'.Expected result Groups with their zone mappings.Watch out for venue_manager implies door_staff and vip_member implies member. Granting venue_manager therefore hands over the whole door as well — that is intended, but it means there is no such thing as a manager who cannot scan.