Award Management User Permissions: 2-Minute Easy Guide

The most damaging permissions mistake in an award programme isn’t a data breach. It’s a judge who can see entries they were never assigned, or an entrant’s identity in a round meant to be anonymous.

On this page

• Access through groups
• Four rights per function
• Criteria limit which entries
• Setting it up well
• Frequently asked questions

Award management user permissions work through groups

Access is given to groups rather than to individuals. Each group has a label, a description and its members’ emails, and holds a set of rights. You can start from a preset role — System Admin, User Admin, User Journey Manager, Analytics Manager, Award Management Team, Applicant or Judge — or choose Customized and build rights up function by function.

Four separate rights for every function

Each function carries four rights — read, create, update and delete — rather than a single on-off switch. That matters: someone who reads everything and changes nothing is a very different risk from someone who can edit.

• Studio — pages, flows, templates, account types and the applicant experience
• Admin — contacts, the audit log and data health
• Application — the to-do list, records and team
• Read, create, update, delete — set separately for each

Criteria decide which entries a group can see

Function rights decide what someone can do. Criteria decide which submissions they can do it to. A criteria is built from the flow it applies to, the stage within that flow, and optional field conditions — for example, limiting a panel to entries where Award Category equals one value. Conditions stack, so a panel can be scoped to one category at one stage of one programme.

Important: the default is permissive. Submissions from any flow you haven’t listed in a criteria stay visible, so add one criteria per flow for every group that should be limited.

Setting up award management user permissions well

1. Create one group per judging panel, not a single judges group, so each panel can be scoped and revoked on its own.
2. Start from the nearest preset role, then customise.
3. Add a criteria for every flow each group should be limited to.
4. Scope by stage as well as flow, so panels see only the round they are judging.
5. Set criteria before entries open, and revoke panel access at announcement.

These steps apply the principle of least privilege: everyone gets exactly the access their role needs, and no more.

For the full reasoning behind each setting, including revocation and anonymised judging, read our in-depth guide to user groups and permissions. To see how roles are created in the first place, watch the award management account types video.

Award management user permissions: frequently asked questions

More AwardScience videos

Browse every walkthrough in the AwardScience video library, or book a live demo to see award management user permissions set up for your own programme.