Overview
Every school has its own culture around collaboration and confidentiality. August Schools now lets SysAdmins customize visibility settings for each role, so your staff can work together effectively without compromising the sensitivity of clinical or counseling notes.
Why configure role visibility?
Match your school culture — defaults are a sensible starting point, but every school is different. Now you can configure visibility to reflect how your team actually works.
Protect confidential notes — ensure that counseling, nursing, or other sensitive encounters are only visible to the right people.
Enable cross-role collaboration — give roles like the dean or learning specialist just enough context to coordinate care, without exposing confidential documentation.
Reduce confusion — clear visibility rules mean staff know exactly what they can and can't see, and why.
Understanding visibility types
Before making changes, it's helpful to understand the two types of visibility you can configure for each role.
Full visibility
Full visibility controls who can see the complete contents of a role's encounters, including the title, date, time, and all documented notes.
There are three full visibility options:
Option | What it means |
Within role | Only other users with the same role can see each other's encounters. |
Created or assigned | Only the person who created the encounter can see it, unless they actively assign another user to it. |
All | All users in the platform can see the encounter. This is rarely used, only appropriate for non-sensitive, school-wide information. |
Limited visibility
Limited visibility lets you give one role a partial view of another role's encounters. They can see that an encounter happened (title, date, time, and who opened it), but they cannot click in to read the notes.
This is useful when a role like the dean or learning specialist needs to know a student is receiving support from another practitioner, without accessing confidential documentation.
How to configure role settings
Go to Settings → Instance Settings → Role Settings.
You'll see every available role listed. For each role, you can configure:
Full visibility — who can see that role's complete encounter notes
Limited visibility into encounters created by — which other roles this role can see partial information for
To update full visibility for a role, click Edit next to that role and select your preferred option: Within role, Created or assigned, or All.
To configure limited visibility, select which roles this role should be able to see partial encounter information for, then click Confirm.
Repeat for any other roles you'd like to update.
💡 Tip: Changes take effect immediately. If you're unsure where to start, consider which roles in your building most often need to coordinate, the dean, learning specialist, and athletic trainer are common candidates for limited visibility access to counselor or nurse encounters.
Best practices & tips
Start with your defaults. August's out-of-the-box settings are designed with confidentiality in mind. Only adjust where you have a clear reason to.
Think in scenarios. Ask yourself: if the dean is trying to support a student, what do they need to know? Limited visibility often gets you there without oversharing.
Use "Created or assigned" for sensitive roles. Counselors and psychologists typically benefit from this setting, it ensures notes are never accidentally visible to the broader team.
Avoid "All" unless necessary. This setting makes encounters visible to every other role in the platform. Reserve it for truly non-sensitive, school-wide documentation.
Reach out if you're unsure. Every school is different, if you'd like help thinking through the right configuration for your team, contact us at [email protected].