One system, four kinds of user: what it takes to build a platform with roles

Most software starts with one kind of user. As soon as there is a second kind (a customer and a member of staff, a buyer and a seller) the software has to know who each person is, and what they are allowed to see and do. Yash Talent, a creative production platform we designed and built in full, serves four kinds of user at once. Here is what that takes.

Four people, one job

Casting a production means chasing individual freelancers across email, Instagram and WhatsApp, then typing the same details again into a call sheet. Yash Talent brings that into one place for four different people:

• Talent, the creatives themselves, each with a portfolio, credits and a two-month availability diary.
• Agencies, who represent their own creatives and manage them as a group, on a roster that is private to them.
• Clients, who find and book the talent a job needs.
• Administrators, who look after the users, the categories talent is listed under, and the platform as a whole.

One system, not four products

Each of the four needs different navigation, different permissions and different data. The easy mistake is to answer that with four separate products. Yash needed the opposite: one system underneath, with each person’s role deciding what they see and what they can do. That runs from the moment someone registers through to what each person can see on a job.

Assemble, the feature that defines the product, shows why. Whoever is booking sets the job up once, adds every role the production needs, fills each one with verified talent and sends a single invitation the whole crew sees. One job, several kinds of user, each seeing it through their own role.

Why roles break quietly

A permission mistake rarely crashes anything. The page loads as normal and simply shows someone what belongs to someone else, or hides what they need, and nobody notices until a customer does. With four roles, a change made for one kind of user can affect the other three.

That is why the Yash Talent build carries an automated end-to-end test suite covering the registration and booking journeys for every role, so the journeys of all four can be checked whenever any one of them changes.

What it means for your build

Logins with roles and permissions are where our web applications begin, from £2,000: software your customers or staff log into and use. When there are several user types, each with their own journey, it is a platform, from £5,000. Marketplaces with multiple roles, like Yash Talent, are our flagship platforms, from £10,000.

Whichever it is, settle the roles early. Adding another user role once the scope is agreed is a genuine change: you hear what it means for the timeline and the price before it is built, and it is your call.

Before you pay for the build

Discovery is where the roles are worked out: who your users are, and what each of them should see and do. It comes first, for a fee agreed in writing beforehand: £400 fixed for a web application, under £1,000 for a platform, and under £5,000 for a flagship platform. The fee is credited in full against the build if you go ahead. If you don’t, the written specification is yours to take to any developer. Then you click through a working prototype before you pay for the build. If it is not right, you walk away.