In Arbor Workflows, Custom Roles allow you to define specific groups of people such as "Department Heads," "Safeguarding Leads," or "Site Managers" so you can assign workflow steps to a role rather than a specific individual.
This ensures that even if staffing changes, your workflows continue to run smoothly without needing constant manual updates.
Note: Custom Roles replaces the feature previously known in Habitude as "Shared Information: Roles." While the name has changed to better align with the Arbor MIS ecosystem, the functionality remains the same.
Why use Custom Roles?
Using Custom Roles makes your workflows dynamic and scalable. Instead of editing every workflow when a staff member leaves or joins, you simply update the members of the Custom Role.
Consistency: Ensure the right people are always notified for approvals (Decisions), Checklists, or Forms.
Efficiency: Build a workflow once and apply it to multiple departments or schools by simply swapping the role members.
MAT-Wide Standardisation: For MATs on the Plus Tier and above, Custom Roles are necessary for "Push Down" workflows, ensuring the correct local staff members are engaged at each school.
How Custom Roles Work
A Custom Role acts as a "container" for one or more users. When you reach a step in a workflow that requires human intervention—such as a Decision, Checklist, or Form—you can assign that step to a Custom Role.
Human-Led Steps and Roles:
Decisions: Assign a role (e.g., "Finance Approvers") to handle Yes/No approvals.
Checklists: Assign a role to complete a set of tasks (e.g., "Site Team") to ensure compliance.
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Forms: Request specific information from a role (e.g., "Year Group Leads") mid-workflow.
Tiers and Access
The ability to use and manage Custom Roles depends on your Arbor Workflows subscription tier:
For Schools:
Core: Not available (Core users have access to Arbor Roles only).
Comms: Included. You can create and manage Custom Roles alongside Arbor Roles to use within workflows up to 5 steps long.
Perform: Included. Use Custom Roles with advanced features like Conditional Logic (e.g., setting a specific decision-maker based on the form data provided at the start).
For MATs:
Essentials: Use central team Arbor MAT MIS roles.
Plus & Advanced: Full access to create Custom Roles across the trust and manage them for "Push Down" workflows to your schools.
Setting Up a Custom Role
Navigate to the Settings (By selecting your initial from the right-hand corner once in Arbor Workflows).
Select School Settings
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Select Roles and then toggle to Custom Roles.
Click Add Custom Role.
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A pop up will appear for you to enter the details
Name your role: Use a clear, descriptive name (e.g., SBMs, Heads of House, or IT Support).
Description: This could be the name of the role, description of responsibility or a specific task you want this group of people to carry out
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select Create
Once you have selected Create you will be navigated to the Custom Roles index where you can begin assigning your users. Select the role title you have just created to start doing this.
Select the '+' next to each school to enter the email address of the user. It is important to note that if within your workflow you are tagging to this custom role, all schools will need to have a user assigned otherwise the workflow can fail due to gaps in the data, even if the workflow is not running for that school.
For information on Arbor Roles in Arbor Workflows check out this article: Arbor Roles
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can one person be in multiple Custom Roles? A: Absolutely. A staff member can be part of as many roles as needed. For example you might have a Teacher who also have the responsibility of the 'Extra-Curriculum Lead' and 'Community Engagement Champion' which might be roles in workflows you are running.
Q: Is this different from MIS Business Roles? A: Yes. While MIS Business Roles (like "Teacher" or "Admin") will pull through as Arbor Roles as long as they meet the relevant criteria to do so. Custom Roles are defined by the user in Arbor Workflows and may be used where an Arbor Roles for a workflow does not exist or is not representative of the people carrying out the task.