Configuring a Family

A family's pages in the Descope Console hold its details and its members. You open them by clicking a family's row on the Families page. The left menu then shows two pages: Family Members under Manage, and Family Settings under Settings.

This page covers one family at a time. To turn families on for your project or to manage the list of families, see Families.

Creating a Family

To create a family, click + Family on the Families page. The Create Family dialog asks for the following:

• Family Name: The name that admins see in the Console. This field is required.
• Family ID (optional): Your own ID for the family. The ID can contain only letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores, and it must be unique in the project. If you leave it empty, Descope generates an ID.
• Custom attributes: A field for each custom family attribute in your project.

A family can exist with no members. You add members after you create it.

Family Settings

The Family Settings page shows the family's details. You can change the family's photo, its Family Name, and the values of its custom family attributes, and then click Save. The Family ID is read-only after creation, and you can copy it from this page.

To disable, activate, or delete the family, use the row menu on the Families page. The Family Settings page does not change the family's status.

Family Members

The Family Members page lists the users in the family. The page uses the same table as the Users page, with columns that fit a family:

• Family Roles: The user's roles in this family.
• Dependent: Whether the user is a dependent.
• Family-scoped attributes: One column for each family-scoped attribute, showing the user's value for this family.

The Tenants and Roles columns do not appear on this page, because a family membership does not change a user's tenant or project roles.

To remove a user from the family, use the user's row menu. The confirmation dialog uses the same Delete User wording as the Users page, but the action only takes the user out of this family. The user stays in your project and in any other families they belong to.

Adding Members

To add a member, click the invite button on the Family Members page. The dialog asks whether you are adding a User or a Dependent user:

• User: A regular user who signs in with their own login ID, such as a parent. The dialog works like a normal user invitation, with the family already selected.
• Dependent user: A family member without login credentials, such as a young child. For details, see Dependents.

Descope checks the project's family limits when you add a member. If the family is full, or the user is already in another family and the project allows only one family per user, Descope rejects the request.

Descope does not stop you from removing a family's last guardian. A family with dependents and no guardian has no member who can act on behalf of the dependents, so add another guardian before you remove the last one.

Family Roles

A family role is a project role that a user holds inside one family. Family roles work like tenant roles. The same user can be a "Parent" in their own household and a "Caregiver" in a relative's household, with different permissions in each.

When you turn families on, Descope creates one default role, Family Admin, for guardians. Family Admin holds the Family Impersonate Dependents permission, which lets a member act on behalf of a dependent in that family. You can edit or delete Family Admin like any other role. If you delete Family Admin, Descope creates it again the next time you turn families off and on.

Beyond Family Admin, Descope has no fixed set of family roles. You define the roles you need, such as "Parent", "Co-Guardian", or "Caregiver", as project roles in Authorization, and then assign them per family. A role assigned in a family applies only in that family, and it does not grant the role at the project level.

To let a role act on behalf of dependents, add the Family Impersonate Dependents permission to it. A caregiver role without that permission can belong to the family without access to the dependents' sessions. A user's family roles and permissions appear in the families claim of their session token.

Assigning Family Roles from the Users Page

You can also add a user to families and assign family roles from the Users page, without opening each family. When families are on, the invite and edit user dialogs include a Family Settings section. The edit dialog splits the section into Family Authorization and Family-Scoped Attributes parts. The invite dialog shows the same fields without those two headers.

• Families and roles: Each row pairs one or more families with the roles the user gets in them. Click Add Family / Role to add the first row, and use the row's add control for more rows. Each family can appear in only one row.
• Family-scoped attributes: The user's family-scoped attribute values for each family.

When you invite a user who already exists, the families and roles you set are added to the user's current ones.

The main users table also has a Families column and a Family Roles column. You can filter the table by the Families column, and each family in it links to that family's settings.

Next Steps

To add members who cannot sign in, see Dependents. To manage families and memberships from your backend instead of the Console, see Families with SDKs.