Setting Group Permissions en Masse

Setting Group Permissions en Masse

Info
This article will be most useful for Concourse Admins.

Overview

Group permissions can be set across your Concourse system, on large syllabus sets and on individual courses. Setting group permissions en masse is a good approach when a larger subset of syllabi in your system needs updates to their group permissions, as in the case of editing exceptions or creating an archive. For example, if Developers have View permission for the Objectives item throughout your institution but Developers in the College of Business must be able to edit this item to meet accreditation requirements, this specific group’s permission on a single item can be changed for a selected group of syllabi. More broadly, you could change Edit permission to View permission for all groups on previous terms’ syllabi to preserve the syllabi in their current state, effectively creating an online archive. Continue reading or watch the video below to learn more about setting group permissions en masse.

Before You Begin

Because setting group permissions en masse has the potential to impact a large number of courses in your Concourse system, only System Administrators are able to use this tool. When setting group permissions en masse, System Admins should be aware of what each permission means and what the codependencies are:
  1. Yes/No: Yes/No permission is selected for a limited number of course features: View User List, Files (if enabled), and Display Group CVs (if enabled). If Yes is selected for these features, then the selected group has permission to engage with the feature. For example, if all three are set to yes, then Instructors can upload or delete course files and view the list of all users registered for the course, and the Instructors’ CVs display.
  2. None: The item category does not present to the user group selected. If None is selected for the Syllabus item, the user group receives an error message when attempting to view a syllabus. If None is selected for syllabus items, such as Contact Information and Meeting Times, then those items do not appear on the syllabus at all for the selected group.
  3. View: The item category presents to the user group selected. The user group can access or view the item category but not edit it. 
  4. Edit: The user group selected can both view and edit the item category. 
  5. Syllabus: Permission for the Syllabus item takes precedence over other item category permissions:
    1. If the Syllabus item is set to None, users in the selected group cannot access the syllabus and receive an error message when attempting to do so. The user group cannot view or edit any item categories regardless of what permissions are set on other items.
    2. If the Syllabus item is set to View, users in the selected group can access the syllabus and view the item categories that are also set to View, but the user group cannot edit any syllabus content. The user group cannot edit any item categories regardless of what permissions are set on other items.
    3. If the Syllabus item is set to Edit, users in the selected group can access the syllabus and view or edit other item categories according to the permissions assigned. For example, if the Syllabus item is set to Edit and the Materials item is set to Edit, the group can edit the Materials item. If the Syllabus item is set to Edit and the Objectives item is set to View, the group can view but not edit the Objectives item.

Special Considerations for Concourse Starter

For Concourse Starter systems, the options to set group permissions en masse are more targeted (see image below). 

The Set Group Permissions interface for Concourse Starter only includes options to view the user list and set permissions on the entire syllabus.


System Admins can set permission for the user group to view the user list, manage files (if enabled), and display the user group’s CV (if enabled); however, there is only one item permission to select: Syllabus. Permissions for the Syllabus item also work slightly differently in Concourse Starter:
  1. None: The user group cannot access the syllabus and receive an error message when attempting to do so.
  2. View: The user group can view the uploaded syllabus document, but is not able to upload a new syllabus or replace an existing syllabus.
  3. Edit: The user group can upload a new syllabus document, view the uploaded syllabus document, and replace an existing syllabus by uploading a new document.
With this information in mind, let’s set group permissions en masse in your Concourse system.

How to Set Group Permissions en Masse

To set group permissions en masse, system administrators should follow the steps below:
  1. Select Admin in the main navigation menu.
  2. In the Admin dropdown, select Tools.
  3. On the Tools page, select the option to Set course group permissions en masse.
  4. Search for the courses whose permissions are to be updated. 
    1. We recommend selecting +Advanced to narrow search parameters for a more targeted list of possibilities.
    2. Search can be narrowed by domain, subject, session, year, and other criteria.

      The bottom of the course search results block; the options to set group permissions for selected results and all results are highlighted in yellow.

  5. From the search results, select the courses whose permissions are to be updated. 
    1. Select the checkbox to the left of individual course titles and then choose Selected Results at the bottom of the page; or
    2. Select All Results at the bottom of the search results page to change group permissions on all courses that matched your search criteria (See image below.).
  6. On the following page, select the group whose permissions should be changed for the selected courses. Multiple groups can be selected simultaneously.
  7. Select Set to change the permissions on an item.
  8. Select None, View, or Edit on the same item where you just selected Set to change that item’s permissions for the chosen group (See image below.).

    The Set Group Permissions interface; Guests and Public groups are selected. Meeting Times and Contact Information are set to None.

  9. Select Set Permissions at the bottom of the page.

Best Practices and Recommendations

Before setting group permissions en masse, consider the following best practices and recommendations:
  1. Confirming group permissions should be a part of regular system maintenance; if you don’t currently assess group permissions, you can get started by generating a group permissions report. This report can provide useful context prior to setting group permissions en masse.
  2. Group permissions can be changed for multiple groups simultaneously with this tool. Be careful to select and change the appropriate permissions.
  3. Think about how syllabus content is copied by instructors and other editors at your institution. Before making any changes to group permissions, remember that editors must have view (or edit) permission for an item on the original syllabus and edit permission for the same item on the destination syllabus in order to copy content.
  4. If group permissions will be changed to allow more editing permissions, you should consider downloading a PDF archive of the syllabi prior to updating permissions (see Bulk Download). By saving PDFs of the syllabi, you are effectively saving content that can be manually restored if the new editor’s changes must be reverted.



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