The crew roster is the heart of The Muster App. Every other feature — muster drills, abandon ship procedures, visitor host selection, head-of-department alerts — depends on having an accurate, up-to-date list of who's on board.
This guide walks you through adding your first few crew members from the admin panel. Once you've done it for one, the rest are quick.
Where it lives
Crew management lives in the admin panel at admin.themusterapp.com, NOT on the iPad. The iPad shows the live crew board for muster control and check-in/out, but adding, editing, and removing crew is done from the admin panel because it usually involves typing, photo uploads, and assigning muster stations.
Log in to the admin panel and click Crew in the left sidebar.
1. Add a crew member
Click Add crew member in the top right of the Crew page. A form will slide in from the right with the following fields:
- Full name — exactly as it appears on their passport. This is what shows on muster lists, badges, and audit logs.
- Department — pick from a dropdown of standard yacht departments (Deck, Engineering, Interior, Galley, etc.) or type a custom one. The department determines how the crew member is grouped on the muster list and the crew board.
- Rank / position — Captain, Chief Officer, Bosun, Stewardess, etc. Free text. This shows under their name on the crew board and on hard-copy muster PDFs.
- Email address (optional) — used for Head of Department notifications and the Muster Mate companion app sign-in. Can be added later.
- Phone number (optional) — used for WhatsApp Head of Department notifications, if enabled.
- Photo (optional) — drag-and-drop a photo or take one with your computer's camera. Shown on the crew board and on the muster list. Can be added later.
Click Save. The crew member appears on your crew list immediately and shows up on every iPad on the vessel within a few seconds via the live sync.
2. Bulk add (faster for the first time)
If you have ten or more crew to add at once, the form-by-form approach gets tedious. Use the Bulk add button next to "Add crew member" to paste a list of names from a spreadsheet. Each row becomes a crew member, and you can edit details like photos and emails later.
Bulk add accepts a simple format with one crew member per line. You can include just the name, or name + department + rank separated by commas:
John SmithJane Doe, Interior, Chief StewardessRobert Johnson, Engineering, Second Engineer
Click Import and the crew members are added in one go.
3. Set the Head of Department
Each department on your vessel can have a Head of Department flagged. The HoD is the person who receives WhatsApp or email notifications when a visitor checks in for someone in their department, and they're highlighted on the crew board with a small star icon.
To set someone as Head of Department, click their name on the crew list, then toggle Head of Department on in the detail panel that opens. They'll need an email address (and optionally a phone number with country code) for notifications to actually fire.
4. Mark someone as on leave
Crew on leave aren't deleted — they stay on the roster but their status is set to "on leave", which hides them from the active crew board, the muster list, and the abandon ship station view. When they return, you flip the toggle back and they reappear instantly on every iPad.
To mark someone as on leave, click their name → toggle On leave on in the detail panel.
5. Removing a crew member
If a crew member has permanently left the vessel, click their name → scroll to the bottom of the detail panel → click Remove from vessel. They're soft-deleted, so any historical records (muster sessions they participated in, visitors they hosted) are preserved for the audit trail. They just no longer appear on any active list.
If they ever rejoin the vessel later, you can re-add them with the same name and the system will offer to restore their previous record so the history stays linked.
What to read next
Once you have your crew added, the next thing to do is configure your muster scenarios — fire, abandon ship, security, etc. — and assign each crew member to a muster station for each scenario. That's covered in running your first muster drill.
If you're going to be checking in visitors, you might also want to connect a badge printer so each visitor gets a printed badge on arrival.