Program Admin, Facilitator, and Sponsor roles

Program Admin, Facilitator, and Sponsor roles

Three of the roles in upcoach are assigned per program, not at the organization level. You set them when you invite someone or when you add an existing org member to a program. The same person can be a Program Admin in one program, a Facilitator in another, and a Sponsor in a third.

This article covers what each role does and when to use it.

Quick comparison

Capability	Program Admin	Facilitator	Sponsor
See program content	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manage members	Yes	Yes	No
Create / edit / delete activities	Yes	No	No
Add existing activities from the library	Yes	Yes	No
Remove activities they added themselves	Yes	Yes	No
Edit Activity Settings	Yes	No	No
Edit Event Settings	Yes	Yes	No
Manage modules and curriculum	Yes	No	No
Manage sub-group structure	Yes	No	No
Reorder the left nav and folders	Yes	No	No
Manage their own one-on-one schedule	Yes	Yes	No
Create and manage events	Yes	Yes	No
Moderate feed and channel posts	Yes	Yes	No
Receive program notifications	Yes	Yes	No
Counted in member totals	Yes	Yes	No
Visible in the Members app	Yes	Yes	Yes
Uses a seat	Yes	Yes	Yes

All three are seat-consuming roles. See Seats and billing for team roles.

Program Admin

The person who owns a program end-to-end. Use this role when someone needs to build, run, and be responsible for a specific program — but you don’t want them to have organization-wide admin access.

A Program Admin can:

• Build the curriculum — sections, modules, activities of any type
• Edit the program’s structure — left nav order, folders, sub-groups
• Set Activity Settings, including Participant Visibility
• Manage member access — add, remove, change roles within the program
• View reports for the program and for individual participants they share a space with
• Run events, schedules, and packages
• Moderate the feed and channels

A Program Admin cannot:

• Manage Offers (those live in the Admin Area, not inside the program)
• See or change organization-wide settings, billing, or Stripe

If your organization has many programs and different people running each, Program Admin is the role you want for the people running them.

Program Facilitator

Day-to-day delivery — the role for people who deliver a program rather than build it. Use this when someone needs to run events, run community, and help participants, but content authoring stays elsewhere.

A Facilitator can:

• Run events and one-on-one schedules in this program
• Manage their own bookable schedules (not other Facilitators’)
• Moderate posts, messages, and reactions in the feed and channels
• Add existing activities from the library
• Remove activities they themselves added (but not activities added by a Program Admin)
• View reports for participants they share a space with
• Manage member access — add and remove participants

A Facilitator cannot:

• Create brand-new activities
• Edit Activity Settings
• Reorder modules or change the program’s structure
• Edit other Facilitators’ schedules

Default behavior: when an Owner or Admin creates a new program, they’re added to that program as a Facilitator automatically. They can be promoted to Program Admin if you want them to fully own it.

Scoped reports

When a Facilitator opens a participant’s report, upcoach checks whether the Facilitator and the participant share a space where the Facilitator holds report access. If they do, the report opens. If not, the request is rejected — even by direct link. This prevents a Facilitator in one program from reading reports for a participant they have nothing to do with.

For Program Admins, the same scoping applies. For Owners and Admins, all reports are visible.

Program Sponsor

A read-only observer. Use this role for stakeholders, executives, or partners who need visibility into how a program is going without engaging.

A Sponsor can:

• See all content, activities, and events in the program
• See reports — full member progress, event attendance, completion data
• See member activity in the feed and channels (as a reader)

A Sponsor cannot:

• Post, comment, react, RSVP, or interact in any way
• Receive any program notifications — emails, in-app alerts, broadcasts
• Be counted in member totals (they show up in the Members app but don’t add to the count)

Sponsors are the right role for an executive sponsor, a content licensor watching how their material lands, or a board observer.

Why Sponsors don’t get notifications

A Sponsor’s whole purpose is observation. Pushing program updates to them as if they were a learner pollutes their inbox and gives the wrong signal. They visit the program when they want to look at it.

Assigning these roles

You can assign space-level roles in two places:

When inviting a new user

In Admin Area > Users > Invite Users, pick Program Admin, Program Facilitator, or Program Sponsor from the role dropdown. The invite modal will require you to select at least one program to assign the role in — these roles don’t exist without a specific program.

See Invite participants for the full flow.

When adding an existing org member to a program

1. Open the program
2. Open Members in the sidebar
3. Click Add Members
4. Search for the user
5. Pick the role they should have

Members must already exist in your organization. You can’t add a brand-new email this way — use the invite flow above instead.

Combining with organization-level roles

An Owner or Admin can also hold a space-level role in a program. The interaction:

• Admin + Program Admin or Admin + Facilitator in the same program → natural state is “additive”: admin tools plus the space role’s experience. Use the banner Switch button to step down to the pure space role view. See Understand Admin Space Access.
• Admin + Participant or Admin + Sponsor in the same program → the space role wins. Admin tools are hidden inside that program. To administrate it, use Admin Area > Spaces.

What to do next

• Understand roles and permissions
• Invite participants
• Understand Admin Space Access
• Manage participants in your program