User Roles & Permissions

Dantian Clinical Training Logbook works with WordPress’s own user roles and capabilities. Three kinds of user matter: administrators, students and, with Pro, trainers. This page explains how each is recognised and what each can see and do.

Roles at a glance

• The free plugin adds no roles or capabilities. It uses the roles your site already has.
• Administrators are anyone with the manage_options capability. Every wp-admin screen the plugin adds needs this capability.
• Students are logged-in users. The Eligible student roles setting decides who counts as a student in admin lists, pickers and emails. It doesn’t stop other logged-in users using the student screens (see below).

🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.

• Pro adds a Clinical Trainer role, which carries the trainer capability dclb_view_student_entries. You can give it to a user in Users → Add New or on their profile.
• Pro adds trainer access, cohorts and allocations. Allocations control which levels a student can log against.

Administrator

Any user with manage_options, which is the standard Administrator role.

Administrators can:

• Open every Clinical Training Logbook admin screen: Plugin Settings, Logbook Configuration, Logbook Entries, Reflections and Activity Log.
• Build the program catalogue: levels, clinic types, interventions, requirements and clinic minimums.
• Change every setting.
• View every student’s entries and reflections in wp-admin, and download any student’s evidence files.
• Void an entry, or restore a voided one, from Logbook Entries. A voided entry stays visible but stops counting towards progress.
• Use the student screens themselves. Administrator is always an eligible student role, so admins can test the student experience.

🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.

With Pro, administrators can also:

• Manage Student Allocations, Cohorts, Cohort Progress and Usage Analytics.
• Use the full Logbook Entries reports screen: filter, export, reassign an entry to another logbook or cohort, and delete an entry.
• Use Reflections Overview, including leaving reflection feedback when it’s turned on.
• Review any entry’s evidence when a review track is turned on.
• Manage the licence and cloud storage.

Two things administrators don’t get automatically:

• The Trainer Workspace. An administrator only sees students in [dclb_trainer_workspace] for cohorts where they are named as a trainer. Without that, the workspace says “You need to be assigned to a cohort to view trainer dashboards.” Review students from wp-admin instead, or add yourself as a trainer on the cohort.
• Exemption from allocation gating. Once allocations are in use, an administrator without their own allocation sees You have no logbook allocation on the student screens, with a link to Open Student Allocations.

Student

Who can use the student screens. In the free plugin, any logged-in user can open [dclb_entry] and [dclb_overview], log treatments, and edit their own entries. The plugin doesn’t check the user’s role on these screens or when an entry is saved. This is deliberate: it lets custom roles from other plugins, which may not carry the usual WordPress capabilities, still use the logbook. To limit who can log entries, restrict the pages themselves with a membership or access-control tool, or (with Pro) use allocations.

What “Eligible student roles” does. This setting is on Plugin Settings → Site Setup → Roles. By default it’s Subscriber, and Administrator is always included. It decides:

• Who appears in admin student lists and pickers.
• Who the Student login destination redirect applies to.
• (Pro) Who can be given an allocation, and who appears in the reminder opt-out list.

A user whose role isn’t ticked can still log entries in the free plugin. They just won’t show up in those lists.

Students can:

• Log treatments and edit their own entries ([dclb_entry]).
• See their own logbook, progress and demographics summary ([dclb_overview]).
• Download their own evidence files.

Students can’t:

• See any other student’s entries, reflections or files. Every student screen and file download checks that the entry belongs to them.
• Delete or void entries. To fix a duplicate or a mistake, ask an administrator.

🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.

With Pro:

• Students can also open their reflective journal ([dclb_journal]) and usage insights ([dclb_usage]). Both only ever show their own data.
• Allocations. Allocation gating starts once the first active allocation exists on the site. From then on, a student needs an active allocation for a level to log entries against it, and a locked allocation blocks new saves for that level. Until the first allocation is created, Pro behaves like the free plugin. See Student allocations.
• Only users with an eligible student role can be allocated. So once gating is on, a user whose role isn’t ticked can’t log entries.

Trainer (Pro)

🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.

Who counts as a trainer. A user has trainer access if any of these is true:

1. They are an administrator (manage_options).
2. They hold the Clinical Trainer role, or any role with the dclb_view_student_entries capability.
3. They hold the role chosen as Additional trainer role on Site Setup. The default is Administrator.
4. They are named in a cohort’s Trainers list.

Which students a trainer can see. Trainer access opens the workspace. It doesn’t decide which students appear. A trainer sees only students who have a current or upcoming active allocation in a cohort where the trainer is named. This applies to every route above, administrators included.

Students without a cohort are invisible to trainers. A student allocated to a level with no cohort doesn’t appear in any trainer’s workspace. Trainers can’t see their entries or reflections, review their evidence, or leave them feedback. Add the student to a cohort, or move their allocation into one, to make them visible. See Students without a cohort.

Trainers can:

• Open the Trainer Workspace ([dclb_trainer_workspace]) and browse their cohorts’ students, entries, progress and reflections. They don’t need the WordPress dashboard for this.
• Download evidence files for students in their cohorts.
• Flag and review evidence in the entry details, when a review track is turned on under Notifications & Review.
• Leave reflection feedback, and delete their own feedback, when Enable reflection feedback is on.

Trainers can’t:

• Open any Clinical Training Logbook wp-admin screen, unless they are also administrators.
• Edit, void, reassign or delete student entries.
• Change allocations, cohorts or settings.
• See students outside their cohorts, or edit or delete other trainers’ feedback.

Where trainers land. Users with the Clinical Trainer role are sent to the Trainer Workspace page after logging in, unless they’re also administrators or the login asked for a specific page. They also get a Your Trainer Workspace box on their dashboard. Both need a Trainer Workspace page assigned on Site Setup. See Trainer workspace.

Permissions matrix

Action	Administrator	Student (logged in)	Trainer (Pro)	Logged-out visitor
Open Plugin Settings / Logbook Configuration	✅	❌	❌	❌
Open Logbook Entries, Reflections, Activity Log (wp-admin)	✅	❌	❌	❌
Log a treatment / edit own entries ([dclb_entry])	✅ (own entries)	✅ (Pro: needs an active allocation once gating is on)	✅ only as their own logbook	❌ (login prompt)
View own logbook ([dclb_overview])	✅	✅	✅ (own)	❌ (login prompt)
Download an evidence file	✅ any	✅ own only	✅ cohort students only (Pro)	❌
Void / restore an entry	✅	❌	❌	❌
Own reflective journal ([dclb_journal], Pro)	✅ (own)	✅	✅ (own)	❌ (login prompt)
Own usage insights ([dclb_usage], Pro)	✅ (own)	✅	✅ (own)	❌ (login prompt)
Trainer Workspace ([dclb_trainer_workspace], Pro)	Only for cohorts they’re named on	❌ “You do not have access to trainer views.”	✅ own cohorts	❌ (login prompt)
Evidence review (Pro, when turned on)	✅ any entry	❌	✅ cohort students	❌
Reflection feedback (Pro, when turned on)	✅ via Reflections Overview	Reads feedback on own reflections	✅ cohort students, in the workspace	❌
Reassign or delete an entry (Pro)	✅	❌	❌	❌
Manage allocations, cohorts, licence, cloud storage (Pro)	✅	❌	❌	❌

WordPress capabilities used

Capability	Where it comes from	What it unlocks
manage_options	WordPress core (Administrator)	Every admin screen and admin action, all evidence downloads, trainer access
dclb_view_student_entries	Pro’s Clinical Trainer role	Trainer access, the trainer login redirect and the dashboard box
dclb_review_evidence	Pro’s Clinical Trainer role	Granted to the role but not currently checked anywhere. Evidence review uses the trainer and cohort rules above.
(none)	Being logged in	Student screens and own-entry editing

🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.

The Clinical Trainer role stays on your site after Pro is deactivated or uninstalled. To remove it, reassign those users to another role first, then remove the role with a role-management tool.

Related

• Settings reference: Eligible student roles, Student login destination, Additional trainer role
• Plugin settings and pages
• Trainer workspace
• Troubleshooting