Add Staff and Users and set their Permissions

Learn how to add staff members to your firm in Smokeball and allocate their roles and permissions.

Before you begin

Familiarise yourself with the Default account roles in the Permissions section of Smokeball Settings. 

If your firm is on Smokeball Prosper+, you can create Custom roles to assign staff to. Read more about how Roles and Permissions work in Smokeball.

Accessing the Staff List

Viewing, adding and editing staff members are all done within the Staff tab in Firm Settings. Users with the following roles can view the Staff List:

• Full Access
• Productivity Access
• Partial Billing Access
• Advanced Access
• Full Billing Access
• Custom Roles with Firm Settings access

However, only Firm Owners can assign staff members to roles.
 

To access the Staff tab:

1. Open the Smokeball Web App.

2. Select the Settings (gear) icon on the bottom-left corner of the screen, then select Firm Settings.

   

3. Select Staff from the left panel. A list of all staff added to Smokeball will appear on the screen.

   

How to read the Staff List

At the top of the staff list, you can search for staff members by name or email, filter staff by their Role (for permissions), and filter staff by their Seat (Licensed or Unlicensed).

The Role column

Firm Owners can assign roles from the drop-down menu in the Role column. Changes to staff roles on this screen will automatically save.

The Seat column

The Seat column shows whether the staff member is Licensed or Unlicensed. 

• A Licensed seat means that a Smokeball user access license has been assigned to this staff member (i.e. they possess a set of Smokeball login details).
• An Unlicensed seat means that this staff member does not have access to Smokeball. 
  • If the staff member is marked as Former Staff, this is specified next to their name. 
  • Unlicensed (non-former) staff members can be selected in staff drop-down lists across Smokeball. However, since they don't have a set of Smokeball login details, they cannot see or be notified of anything they've been assigned to. This also means you cannot assign roles to these types of users.

The 2FA column

Use the 2FA column to check at a glance if Two-factor Authentication has been set up for specific staff members. 

Adding a new Staff member or User

To add someone to the Staff List:

1. Navigate to Firm Settings > Staff on the Smokeball Web App to open the Staff List.

2. Select +Add new on the top-right corner.

   

3. The Add user window will appear on the middle of the screen. Enter the First name, Last name and Email of the user.
4. Tick Assign licence if this user needs to access Smokeball. Then, assign a Role to the licensed user from the Role drop-down menu.

   • If you do not tick Assign licence, the user will be treated as an Unlicensed User and the Role drop-down menu will be greyed out. The user will appear in staff drop-down menus across Smokeball, but cannot log in as they won't have a set of login credentials. If your firm is on the Smokeball Boost plan, you can add a maximum of 5 unlicensed users.

     

5.  Select Save. If you ticked Assign licence, an extra confirmation will appear to inform you that your firm will be billed for this new user. Select Add User to finalise this.

   

Once a licensed user has been added, an email will be sent to them prompting them to set up a Smokeball password. They can then log in to Smokeball with their email address and password.

Editing a Staff member or User's card

Click on a user in the Staff List to open their card. 

From here, you can perform many user-related actions:

1. Edit the User Profile
2. Edit User Billing settings
3. Edit User Permissions

Editing the User Profile

In the Profile tab, you can update the user's profile picture, name, contact details and job title.

Clicking on the Title and Job title fields will display a drop-down menu of common terms added to those fields, however you don't have to use those. You can enter your own Title and Job title.

Once you have finished editing the profile, select Save.

Editing User Billing Settings

In the Billing tab, you can specify the user's hourly rate, whether their time entries are entered as units, and turn on AutoTime (if your firm is on Prosper+ or Grow with the AutoTime add-on).

Changes made on this page are saved automatically.

Editing User Permissions

In the Permissions tab, you are presented with the user's firm-wide and matter permissions all in one place.

Role

From the role section, you can choose the Role group that this user should belong to (if you are a Firm Owner). This provides the same functionality as the Role column drop-down menu in the Staff List. 

If you are not a Firm Owner, you can view but not edit the Role that this user is in.

Select View role permissions to double-check the specific permissions designated to this Role.

Learn more about Roles and Permissions in our dedicated article.

Colleague billing data visibility

The Colleague billing data visibility section is only relevant for users that do not have Billing App access. This is where you can specify if this user can view Hourly Rate and Time Entry information for:

• Everyone (all staff in the firm)
• Only theirs
• Selected users

If you choose Selected, a list of all staff (both Licensed and Unlicensed) will appear. Tick the box next to their names to allow this user to view their Hourly Rates and/or Time Entries.

Matter access

View all matters that the user can or cannot access from the Matter access section. Use the drop-down menu to specify whether the user can:

• View all matters except for specified ones - choose All matters except then click +Add to add matters that the user is restricted from.

  

• Only view specified matters - choose Only selected matters then click +Add to add matters that the user can view.

  

Changes made here are automatically saved.

Removing a Staff member or User

Staff members and users cannot be permanently deleted from Smokeball. They can only be Deactivated. To deactivate a user:

1. Navigate to Firm Settings > Staff on the Smokeball Web App to open the Staff List.

2. Click on the user you wish to remove.

   

3. Select Deactivate on the left panel of the staff card.

   

4. Upon clicking Deactivate, the Seat will be marked as Unlicensed and the Status of the user will be set to Former Staff.

   

Reactivating a Former Staff member or User

To reactivate a user:

1. Navigate to Firm Settings > Staff on the Smokeball Web App to open the Staff List.

2. Click on the user you wish to reactivate. You may have to filter Seats by Unlicensed to find the user.

   

3. Select Activate on the left panel of the staff card. 

   

4. Upon clicking Activate, the Seat remains Unlicensed, while Status changes to Active. Click on the Seat drop-down menu to change the seat to Licensed. A confirmation to assign a licence to the user will appear - click on Yes to proceed.