Assign roles to a zaak

ZGW models the parties involved in a case as rollen (roles). Each rol links a klant or medewerker to a zaak with a specific responsibility — behandelaar, initiator, adviseur, belanghebbende, beslisser. This walkthrough wires up the rollen on a freshly created case.

Deprecated

ZAA is no longer actively developed. See the deprecation notice.

Goal

By the end the zaak has at least a behandelaar (the case handler) and an initiator (the citizen or organisation that started the case), so the work queue, contact moments and notifications all know who they are about.

Prerequisites

• A zaak in Intake or In behandeling status — see Register a new zaak.
• The relevant klant (citizen / organisation) and medewerker (staff) records exist, or permission to create them inline from the dialog.

Steps

1. Open Rollen from the navigation. The list shows every rol across every zaak — it is a flat view; filter by zaak number to focus.

   

2. Click Add Item to open the new-rol dialog. Pick the zaak, the rol type (e.g. Behandelaar), and the party — a medewerker for staff roles, a klant for citizen roles.

   

3. Save. The Rollen list updates and the same rol appears on the zaak's Rollen tab. Repeat for each role the case needs — at minimum behandelaar + initiator; many cases also carry an adviseur or beslisser.

   

4. Open Klanten to confirm the citizen record on the Initiator rol is correct — name, BSN/KVK, contact details. If it is wrong, fix it here once and every rol that references the klant follows.

   

5. Open Medewerkers to confirm the staff record on the Behandelaar rol — name, email, the Nextcloud account it is linked to. The behandelaar is who tasks default to and who the work queue treats as the case owner.

   

Verification

The zaak's Rollen tab lists each party with their role type. The dashboard's Open zaken widget counts this case under the assigned behandelaar's queue, and notifications about it route to that behandelaar.

Common issues

Symptom	Fix
The Rol type dropdown lacks the role you need	The zaaktype constrains which role types are allowed — an admin extends the zaaktype's roltypen list.
The Klant / Medewerker dropdown is empty	No matching record exists yet. Create one from Klanten or Medewerkers first, then come back.
Saved rol does not appear on the zaak detail page	The zaak ID was not selected — re-open the rol and pick the correct zaak.

Reference

• Track status and result — once rollen are set, work the status workflow.
• Features → Roles (Rollen) — the ZGW role-type taxonomy.