Any person record with a user account can be granted full admin or limited admin rights.
This article covers the following related topics:
What is an Admin?
A Novi admin, short for administrator, is any individual that has some level of access and editing privileges to your Novi database and/or website.
What are the Admin levels?
There are three Admin levels:
Association Admin
Limited Admin
Page Editor
Association Admin: Full administrative privileges
Association Admins have full access to all backend functionality in Novi, as well as the ability to edit pages on the frontend. This is the highest level of access.
Limited Admin: Limited administrative privileges
Limited Admins have limited access to certain areas of Novi in the backend and have page editing privileges on the frontend. They have restricted rights and cannot delete many areas in the backend. For the full list of what Limited Admin's cannot do, hover over the AE tip in the Settings tab on an Individual's record.
Page Editors
The third option, Page Editors, grants the ability to edit specific static page(s) on the frontend of your website. This level applies to member records with a Regular User role (on their Settings tab) and does not give the user access to the backend/database at all. Read further below for more details.
Granting Admin Access
To assign admin rights, navigate to the member record's Settings tab
Under Roles, choose Association Admin (if the Roles section is not showing, make sure the person has a user account)
Click the Save button (top right)
Granting Limited Admin Access
Navigate to the member record's Settings tab
Under Roles, choose Limited Admin Access (see screenshot above)
Then click the Save button (top right)
To learn more about Limited Admin Access, hover over the AE Tip™ in the same section.
Granting Page Editor Privileges
If you need to give someone (say a board or committee member) access to edit certain pages on your website, but you do not want them to have access to your database, assign them Page Editor priveledges. In the screenshot above, this person's Role will be Regular User.
How To Assign Editing Privileges to a Non-Admin:
Create a new page or open the modal to edit an existing page.
Click in the Additional Users Allowed To Edit field and start typing the person's name. Select the name from the drop-down. Note: They must already have a record in the system and a user account or they will not show in this drop-down.
Click Save & Close OR Save & View
Items of Note:
Page Editors will not be permitted to: add new pages, edit this page's properties including SEO info, or edit sections not specific to this page, such as the footer.
The setting to allow non-admins to edit content is only available on regular "static pages" and is not available on pages like the member directory, event details, or blog listings.
The person must already have a record in the database, and also a user account before you can give them editing privileges in the page settings.
If a user needs access to edit multiple pages, an admin will need to add them to this field on each of the static pages.
Admin users do not need to be added to this section because they already have permission to edit content.
AE Tip! You can also add and manage this access via the Manage Admin Users section of Novi.
Why So Few Admin Options?
You may notice that this simple approach is different from other systems you have used in the past. Many enterprise software providers allow admin users to create very complicated permission sets for certain users. Our customers have told us that this is overkill and often confusing. In many cases, it leads admins to assign master admin rights to everyone so that staff can simply "do their jobs."
Save Us from the Interns
We asked customers, "what are you really trying to accomplish?" Ultimately, associations told us that they just didn't want "the intern" messing up their database. That's why we created the limited admin... for the interns.
Limited Admins are prohibited from taking actions that could cost your senior leadership time to fix. These users can't create or modify dues rules. They can't delete most records. They can't start changing your settings. Put frankly, they might be able to mess up a handful of records, but we're not going to let them destroy your whole database by "trying to be helpful."
Remove Department Silos
The American Society of Association Executives recommends that associations break down silos in their organizations, and cross-functional teams are becoming more and more common. Whether it's an "all hands on deck" effort during a major conference or a single person providing one-on-one member service, it's quite common for association staff to venture outside of his or her own domain.
The events person may need access to know whether certain invoices have been paid before an event. The membership person may need to be able to register a member for an upcoming new member orientation. And the website person may need to update a member's profile image on their member record. In any of these instances, we didn't want the software to get in the way.
The Exception: Accounting
To ensure strong controls, we limit accounting access within Novi to customer/member transactions. Things like bank registers, expenses, and payroll are all locked securely behind your QuickBooks login accounts. This article will explain more about how Novi interacts with QuickBooks.