Working as a member or counsellor
Flow type: Agency · Product: StudyHQ Portal (team)
Members are coordinators and back-office team members who keep the roster up to date and follow progress. Counsellors work directly with students — sessions, reports, career plans. This page covers what each role experiences; organisation and project admins should read the rest of the Portal Guide.
The two roles at a glance
Roles are per project — the same person can be a counsellor in one project and a member in another; the portal follows the project you’re in. The counsellor role exists only when the plan includes counselling — on an assessment-only plan, colleagues join as members.
The member role
As a member you have full visibility of the project — every student, every case, every report — plus two ways to contribute: building the roster (adding students one by one or importing them in bulk) and writing notes on a student.
Think of it as: you can see everything, bring students in, and note what you observe; the counselling work itself is read-only for you.
- Students is your home page (members have no Dashboard). The full list, stage chips, filters, and Export CSV are all yours.
- On a student’s profile you can read everything — details, documents (downloadable), reports, sessions — and the Notes tab is the one place you can write: private or shared notes, editable and deletable for your own.
- A student you add starts out assigned to you on their case until an admin assigns a counsellor.
- After adding a student, their details are view-only for you — if something needs correcting, ask the case’s counsellor or a project admin.
- To check who’s handling a case, open the Cases page — each case shows its counsellor.
Intentionally not part of the member role: editing student details, academics, documents or family; anything on sessions or availability; SWOT and action items; locking or unlocking career plans; closing, reopening, or assigning cases; exporting the Cases list; project settings, billing, and team management. If your work needs any of these, ask your organisation admin about the counsellor or project-admin role.
The counsellor role
The portal is built around your caseload — the students assigned to you. Your Students list, dashboard, and sidebar counts all follow it. The Cases page is the exception: it shows every case in the project, so you always have context on the whole cohort.
How students reach you
- A project admin assigns you to a case (or moves one to you).
- You add a student yourself — a student you create (singly or via import) is automatically assigned to you.
- A first session is booked with you on a case that had no counsellor yet.
Your dashboard — your day
- Today’s sessions — your next sessions, each one click away.
- Follow-ups due — action items due today across your students.
- Your impact — cases assigned, sessions delivered, students added, your average rating.
- Where they are in the journey — your caseload across the stages; click a bar to jump to those students.
- What changed recently — a live activity feed from your caseload.
New here with no students yet? The dashboard points you to Set your availability → — do that first, so sessions can be booked with you.
Your working surfaces
- The student profile — edit details, education and per-term academic results, upload documents, record family and achievements; work SWOT, action items, and notes; and lock the plan — see Career plans & roadmaps.
- Sessions — your personal calendar, availability, booking and running sessions — see Sessions & counselling.
- Cases — from a student’s case menu you can close a case (with a reason) or reopen it.
Left to admins: assigning or changing the counsellor on a case (adding a student yourself is the exception), exporting the Cases list, other counsellors’ calendars, the project-wide analytics dashboard, project settings, billing, and team management.
Common questions
Why don’t I have a Dashboard or Sessions page? (member) That’s the member role — you work from Students and Cases. Dashboards and calendars belong to counsellors and admins.
The Add student button is greyed out. Hover it — the tooltip says why: the organisation is awaiting approval, has no active plan, or the plan is in view-only mode. Your organisation admin can resolve all three.
I can’t see all the project’s students. (counsellor) By design — your Students list is your caseload. For the whole project, use the Cases page.
A student says they can’t start their assessment. Usually the organisation’s credits have run out, or the plan doesn’t cover that student’s assessment type. Your organisation admin can check the Billing page.
Booking fails with “Insufficient credits”. Same cause — ask your organisation admin to add credits.
No slots are showing for me. (counsellor) Set your availability first (Sessions → My availability) — and remember only future dates can be edited.
Where are the session summary and transcript? They exist on advanced counselling plans only, and appear on the session page after the session is completed.
I need to do more than my role allows. Your organisation admin can change your role per project from the Team page.