Why can't I see an area of the web office?

You’ve logged in to the web office, but a group is missing from your list, a tab isn’t there, or an area someone mentioned is nowhere to be seen. Nine times out of ten nothing is broken: you’re seeing exactly what your permissions allow, and the fix is a quick word with whoever administers your church’s site.

Why your view looks different

The web office tailors itself to each person. You only see the groups you have permissions on, the tabs for the things you’re allowed to do there, and the area icons on the far left (like Resources or Site Settings) if you’ve been given access to them. Someone helping with one rota sees a much slimmer web office than the site administrator, and that’s deliberate: it keeps the system simple and everyone’s data safe.

You might also see a group you can’t actually do anything in. That usually means it’s only shown so you can reach a group beneath it where your permissions really live.

What to do

1. Note down exactly what you’re trying to do and where, for example ‘add events to the youth calendar’. The more specific you are, the easier the next step is.
2. Check you’re logged in with the right account. If you’ve ever had more than one login, an old one won’t carry your current permissions.
3. Ask your site administrator to grant you permission for that task on the right group. They only need to give you the specific permission the job needs, nothing more.

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Good to know

• If you’re the administrator reading this on someone’s behalf, the guides in this section walk through granting Site Manager, Site Settings and Resources permissions, and Site Manager permissions explained tells you what each tick does.
• Permissions cover a group and everything beneath it, so if you help with several related groups, one grant on their shared parent may cover the lot.
• Very occasionally even the site administrator can’t grant what you need, because a few permission sets (custom fields, for example) are switched on by our team rather than from within your site. If you’ve hit one of those, ask your church’s main contact to raise a support ticket and we’ll sort it out.
• Curious how the whole thing fits together? An Introduction to Permissions is a two-minute read.