User Roles
Polyphony has three user roles. Each role determines which parts of the application a person can access and what actions they can take.
Researcher
Researchers are the primary users of the platform. They design and run annotation studies.
What a researcher can do:
- Create and manage projects and corpora
- Upload CSV / XLSX files and add rows or columns to existing corpora
- Define variables and build annotation forms
- Invite annotators and create human workflows
- Create and run LLM pipelines
- Export data and run analysis (inter-annotator agreement, gold standard creation)
- Switch to annotator mode to preview what annotators will see
Researchers access the application via the /researcher section of the interface.
Annotator
Annotators work on the tasks assigned to them by researchers. They only see the documents and questions that belong to their assigned workflows.
What an annotator can do:
- View assigned annotation tasks
- Submit annotation values through the form defined by the researcher
- Review their previously submitted annotations
Annotators access the application via the /annotator section. Researchers can switch into annotator mode using the Annotate link in the top navigation.
Admin
Admins have all researcher permissions plus access to system-level settings.
What an admin can do:
- Everything a researcher can do
- Manage user accounts (create, deactivate, reset passwords) via the Admin panel
- View and manage all projects across teams
Admins access the admin panel at /admin.
Permissions Summary
| Action | Annotator | Researcher | Admin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annotate assigned tasks | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Manage corpora & uploads | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Define variables & forms | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Create & run workflows | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Run LLM pipelines | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Export & analyse data | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Manage user accounts | ✓ |