Reseller Admin Interface: User roles, workflows, and data security

For agencies and digital service providers building websites at scale, it is crucial to find a multi-site management and website building tool that can both simplify and optimize the process of creating, building, and maintaining client websites.

As we covered in Web agencies’ most common pain points and how to solve them, there are many intertwined factors to take into consideration when building websites at scale – and how best to tackle them as a whole.

For example, factors such as project management, manpower, build times, keeping customer data secure, and website maintenance are all impacted by the multi-site management tool used and all impact how workflows can be optimized.

So, what should you, an agency or digital service provider, look for in a platform to boost productivity, coordinate your team, manage deadlines, and streamline collaboration during the website development process? First, if you are not using one already, you should research the benefits of using a multi-site administration tool.

When considering a multi-site account management tool, you should consider whether it has the capacity to not only handle your current clientele, but that there is also room to grow your business.

Other questions include: 
• How many user roles are there for the team?
• How do user roles impact data security? 
• How many client user roles are there? 
• Can you assign sites to team members? 
• Can you create customizable workflows?

Let us look at each of those points in greater detail.

Team user roles:

An important first step towards setting up smart fulfilment workflows is assigning team members to a user role with appropriate permissions and restrictions. For example, which users need to be able to manage other team members? Or who needs to be able to create and edit sites? Who only needs to see an overview of accounts?

It is important to keep the needs of your team in mind, as some website builders have limited team user roles. In Mono Reseller Admin Interface, however, we have more than 10 pre-created team user roles with varying permissions, including roles such as admin, fulfilment, SEO, website content update, designer, and viewer to give you and your team flexibility.

Assign roles to your team that grant the appropriate permissions to users, so they can – in fact – do what they need to do, while also including any restrictions, so they - cannot - do what they should not do.

And that brings us to our next point: data security and user roles.

Data security and user role permissions and restrictions:

The purpose of user roles is to allow or restrict users to perform certain actions, but this can - and should - also be applied to the information that users are allowed to or restricted from accessing. You want to make sure that sensitive customer data can only be accessed by those on your team who need it. 

In Mono's Reseller Admin Interface, while all team members can access an overview of all sites, the information they can see is highly dependent on their user role. For example, those with an Admin user role have the most permissions and can access customer contact information, while those with a Viewer user role have the most restrictions and they cannot access customer contact information. 

The interplay between user roles and data security is a key factor for agencies and data service providers to consider with a multi-site management tool, especially in busy periods where extra temporary, project, or freelance workers join the team to meet demand. For these additions to the team, if your multi-site tool does not have an adequate team role to fit your needs, you could look towards client user roles. 

Client user roles:

Many website builders not only have limited team member roles, but they also have limited client user roles as well. So, it is important to find a website builder that can support your needs for team and end-user roles.

With Mono, you can create unlimited customized end-user roles, giving you the option to lock down or open up certain parts of the Mono Editor. This means that you can decide and control what each role will be able – and not be able – to do when logged into Mono Editor. 

These roles are provided login information to our website builder, Mono Editor, bypassing our multi-site management tool. This gives you as an agency or digital service provider the flexibility to grant the appropriate access to Mono Editor to not only your clients, but also to project-based or temporary additions to your team, such as freelancers, without added data security concerns. 

However, it is important to keep in mind that if you do use one of these customizable end-user roles for project-based team members, while they cannot access sensitive customer data, they also cannot access the Reseller Admin Interface (RAI) to assign sites or update workflows. If this is not quite the solution for you and your team, let us look at how being able to assign sites to team members can help - both in terms project-based workers, but also the team in general. 

Assigning sites:

For agencies and digital service providers, a handy tool for website fulfilment and project management is the ability to assign sites to relevant team members. Let us say that the team member working on the first stage of the fulfilment flow is done with their portion of work. This team member can then assign the site to the next team member in the fulfilment flow, notifying their team member that the site is ready for them to work on. Not all website builders, and their accompanying multi-site tools, include this feature.

However, this feature is supported in Mono's Reseller Admin Interface. In RAI, all sites that are assigned to a specific user appear in their own individual dashboard. Once a user assigns a site to the next user in the fulfilment flow, that site will be removed from the first user's dashboard and will be added the next user's dashboard; seamlessly alerting this next user that the site is ready to be worked on.

The functionality to assign sites also works in cooperation with user roles in RAI. For example, some user roles are allotted functionality - but only on sites that are assigned to them. One such user role is the Consultant user role, which has the permissions of viewing and editing accounts that are assigned to them. This would also be an option for agencies and other website resellers to bring in extra help - limiting access to only relevant sites. Interested in learning more about user roles in RAI? Read about RAI user role permissions and restrictions here.

RAI's impressive capabilities in terms of team and user roles, data security and assigning sites is also evident in creating customizable workflows. 

Customizable website fulfilment workflows:

Website resellers must manage multiple projects at once - each with their own requirements, complexity, and timeline. With many sites and many team members, it can then be incredibly helpful for agencies and digital service providers to create fulfilment workflows when creating, building, and managing websites. Depending on the website builder or multi-site management tool, this functionality can also be limited.

RAI, however, supports this functionality.

Once you and your team have decided on a fulfilment workflow, Admins can create this workflow under Admin > Status Categories in RAI. Note: These status categories are fully customizable, so you and your team can determine the website creation flow that works best for you. Status, or fulfilment, category information can easily be updated under the site's account information.

How can setting up these website fulfilment categories help? First, these can provide admin users with an overview of sites in different fulfilment stages. With the powerful filters in RAI, admins can easily filter sites based on fulfilment status, assigned user, subscriptions, and more. Interested in status categories? Learn how to set up fulfilment stages here.

Are you looking for expanded functionality and customization of user roles and workflows to improve your website creation process? We have the solution.

The Mono multi-site administration solution: 

The Mono platform has been designed to help resellers build and manage websites at scale, with customization and extensive functionality in mind. Whether you have hundreds or tens of thousands of sites, we can help. 
 
Our suite of platforms and products (Reseller Admin Interface, Mono Editor, Mono Customers, Mono On-Site Engagements, Mono Ecommerce+, Mono Cookie Consent, and Mono Extras) allows digital service providers and agencies the ability to build, fulfil, and scale websites quickly and efficiently.
  
As a reseller, you will appreciate the powerful multisite account management and editing capabilities at your disposable with our Reseller Admin Interface. With a multitude of clients with different wants and needs for websites, you can quickly assign sites to team members, add site subscriptions, track editing actions and much more. With over 10 user roles, unlimited end-user roles, and custom status categories, as well as many other impressive features, you can customize RAI to fit the needs of your website building business.  
 
Want to see what our multi-site and website building tool can do for you? Get a demo of the Mono Plaform.