Using Groups

Julie,

It definitely sounds like groups are the way to go for you because you have multiple apps. The nice thing about groups as when you onboard a new employee you simply add them to the group and that they will get their permissions based on whatever role their group is assigned to in the various apps.  

In each different app even if the Role names are the same such as "Participant" that doesn't mean anything at all.    All that is going to happen is instead of adding individual users to an app you will end up in adding the group(s)  to the app in the correct Role for those "alike" group members and you will delete all those individual users from individual app access, where they belong to the right group.  Then the remaining individual users are typically special people such as admin's or people with very high-level access that you add individually.  Note that users can gain access to an app in multiple roles and they will get the most permissions possible based on their role.

You do have to be careful that they land on the correct dashboard though,  if you have multiple dashboards for various roles. That will be determined by their direct access role or through the role of the group, according to which Role is highest up on the list of Roles (The Roles can be dragged up and down)