Your family, roles and invites

Add a parent, a child or a teacher, and decide who can see what.

Everyone who uses your Zen Reader belongs to one family. How many people it can hold depends on the plan: the Family plan covers up to six, and the Individual plan is one person — there is nobody to invite on it, and no seat count. See Your subscription if you started on Individual and now want to add a child.

The role decides what each person can see and do.

• Family Manager — everything, including invites, roles and the subscription. You can have more than one: promote another parent to share control.
• Parent — see the children's work, add and edit books, approve suggestions. Not the subscription.
• Reader — their own work only. Cannot see another child's results.
• Teacher — only the children a family has linked them to. See Teachers.

Each person can be signed in on up to three devices.

Setting the family up

Whoever signs up creates the family. The form, Get started, asks for your name and has a Create account button. There is no plan to choose on it and no family name to type: since version 1.304 every new family starts with room for six, is named (your name)'s family (a Family Manager can rename it in Settings from version 1.310 — see Renaming the family below), and picks Individual or Family later, when it subscribes.

That form asks for two things worth knowing about:

• Which country are you in? — it decides the tax treatment and which payment methods you are offered, so it has to be right.
• A guardian declaration — "I'm the parent or guardian of any children I add, and I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use". Ticking it is required, and we record that you did, with the version of the documents you agreed to. The two boxes beside it — Zen Reader news, and sharing anonymous app-usage data — are genuinely optional and start unticked; neither of them gates anything.

Inviting somebody

Invite family member, in Settings. Family Manager only, on the Family plan.

By email — they get a branded invitation. Opening it lands them on an accept screen showing the family, the address they are signed in as, and the role they were offered. They choose a display name and accept. Somebody who already has a library of their own keeps it: their books and recordings move into your family when they accept. An example book you both already had is not doubled up — they keep your family's copy, and their readings and practice on it move across to it. If they had changed that example's pages, theirs stays as a separate book.

By join code — an 8-character code, single use, valid for 24 hours. There is a code for a Reader and a code for a Parent. This is the route for a child: they sign in on their own device with their own email address first, then type the code and their name.

The join and invitation screens both offer a way out if somebody has landed on the wrong one: Create a new family instead, Set up my own family instead, and Sign out and use a different email for when the account they signed in with is not the one they meant.

Each outstanding invite can be copied as a link, resent or revoked. The link is worth knowing about — it works even if the person signs in with a different email from the one you invited, which is the usual reason an invitation seems not to arrive.

You cannot invite another Family Manager directly. Invite them as a Parent and promote them afterwards.

Managing members

Family members (Family Manager only) lists everyone. On the Family plan it is in the app's menu, just under Family activity, and it is also Manage family members in Settings. Per person you can change their display name, change their role, or remove them. Invite family member at the top of the screen opens the invitation screen, so you can add someone without going back to Settings.

Removed people are listed under Removed members on the same screen, each showing how long is left before their data is deleted. From there you can:

• Restore them — they come back, with all of their work.
• Leave them removed — if they sign in again with the same email, their work travels with them into whatever family they join next.

If nobody does either, their work is permanently deleted 90 days after removal.

If the work simply belongs to the wrong child, do not remove anybody — use Reassign… on the report to move it instead. Export first if you are unsure — see Export your data.

You cannot remove yourself, and a Family Manager has to be demoted before they can be removed.

Renaming the family

A new family is named after whoever created it ("Mei's family"). From version 1.310 you can change that: a Family Manager on the Family plan opens Settings, taps Rename family, types the new name and taps Save. Everyone in the family sees the new name in the app's menu, and it is the name used in emails from Zen Reader.

A name can be up to 100 characters. It cannot be empty, and it cannot contain line breaks or tabs. Renaming needs an internet connection: offline, the app says so and nothing changes — try again once you are back online. Parents and Readers do not see the button.

Privacy inside the family

Hide other parents' names (Family Manager) shows other parents as "Parent" rather than by name. You and the readers are always named, and everybody still sees their own name. It hides names, not work.

A Reader never sees another Reader's work in any configuration.

Seats

Your plan sets how many people can be in the family: one on Individual, six on Family. If an invitation is refused because you are full, either move up to Family, remove somebody who no longer uses it, or add seats — see Your subscription.

On the website too

The household can also be managed at zenreader.co/family — the same members, invitations and seat count, in a browser.

Suggestions from Readers

A Reader who spots a mistake in a book can suggest a fix rather than editing it. Those queue for an adult to approve — see Suggestions.