Quick answer: Staff records let people verify who's doing the work on a shared device (like a kitchen tablet). Users let people log in to their own personal account. Most teams use a mix of both.
What's the difference between a staff record and a user?
Staff records
A staff record is the digital record of someone's work in the system. It doesn't give them a way to log in to the mobile app or the admin console on their own.
Kitchens often use a shared tablet. To avoid your team logging in and out constantly on the same device, everyone uses the same user login to access the app, then uses their own staff record to verify who is completing each job or task — like filling out forms or creating and completing corrective actions (follow-up steps taken to fix an identified problem).
The clearest example is what you see when you complete a form: a list displays all staff records, you select your name, and enter your PIN.
Every activity in Safe Food Pro is guarded behind a PIN. Your PIN tells the system who you are, and determines what you're allowed to do.
Staff records have two levels of access:
Tablet
Tablet Manager
Some activities can only be accessed by Tablet Managers:
Viewing a staff record
Viewing completed training forms
Viewing completed incident forms
Creating new staff, equipment, and supplier records
If a Tablet-level staff record attempts these, they'll receive an error message.
Users
Users are your way of accessing the system directly. In the shared tablet scenario, you'd create one user as the "door" into the app. A user logs in with their own email and password.
So what should you choose for your team?
Keep them as a Tablet-level staff record if:
They use a shared tablet
They only need to complete forms
They only need to create and complete corrective actions
Make them a Tablet Manager (still a staff record, with more permissions) if:
They use the shared device, but need to create staff records from the mobile app
They oversee completed incidents and staff training
Make them a User if:
They need to use Safe Food Pro on their own device
They need admin console access
They need to view completed forms in detail (from the admin console)