Roles, licences, and permissions

Three separate settings decide what a person can do in Ona: their role, whether they hold a licence, and the organization's patient visibility rule. They're easy to confuse, and confusing them is behind most "why can't this person do X?" questions. This reference explains each and how they interact.

Roles — what someone is allowed to do

Set under Settings → Team Members when you invite or edit a member (see Inviting your team & roles). Roles are checkboxes, so one person can hold several:

• Owner — the account that created the organization. Full control. Appears in the team list but is not assignable to others.
• Admin — administrative access to settings and configuration.
• Clinician — sees patients, charts visits, signs notes, prescribes.
• Staff — front-desk and support work.

Role is about authority: what category of work a person may do.

Licences — whether a clinician has a seat

Set under Settings → Subscription. A licence is a paid seat, separate from role.

The page shows your plan (e.g. Starter, Monthly), how many seats you have, and how many are used — e.g. "1 / 1 seats used, 0 available". Licence Assignments at the bottom lists each member as Licensed or not, with a Remove control. Add seats buys more; Remove unassigned seats gives them back.

This is the setting people trip over. A clinician with the Clinician role still cannot create a visit if they don't hold a licence — the button is disabled with "You don't have an active licence assigned. Ask your organization admin to assign one." Role grants the authority; the licence grants the seat. Both are required.

So when a new clinician can't start a visit, check two things in order: do they have the Clinician role, and do they have a licence assigned? If seats show "0 available", you need to add a seat before you can assign one.

Patient visibility — whose patients someone sees

Set under Settings → Organization (see Setting up your workspace). This is organization-wide:

• All Clinicians See All Patients — everyone sees every patient. Good for collaborative care.
• Assigned Patients Only — clinicians see only patients assigned to them. Maximum privacy.

This is orthogonal to role and licence. A fully licensed Clinician set to Assigned Patients Only will see an empty patient list until patients are assigned to them — which looks like a bug but is the setting working as intended. It's a common first-day surprise for a new clinician.

Prescribing — a fourth gate

Prescribing adds its own requirement on top of the above. To e-prescribe, a clinician must also be provisioned in DoseSpot (see E-prescribing with DoseSpot), and to prescribe controlled substances they need a DEA number on file. So a licensed Clinician who can chart and sign notes may still be unable to prescribe until DoseSpot provisioning is done.

Putting it together

To fully enable a new clinician, four things line up:

1. Role — give them Clinician (Team Members).
2. Licence — assign a seat (Subscription).
3. Visibility — if the org is Assigned Patients Only, assign them patients.
4. Prescribing — provision them in DoseSpot, add a DEA number for controlled substances.

Work down that list when someone reports they "can't do something." The symptom rarely names the cause — an empty patient list, a dead visit button, and missing prescribing are three different settings, not one.