Organizing Your Workspace
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      1. Knowledge Base
      2. Best Practices for Working with Multiple Users in a Small-scale Authoring Scenario Part 1: Set-up
      3. Organizing Your Workspace

      Granting access to authors

      Note: Wherever possible, it is a good idea to manage permissions on the basis of role (rather than user). Managing individual users will quickly become unmanageable across all folders, especially if there is a high turnover in item and test authors, as is sometimes the case. It is preferable, therefore, to grant permissions on the basis of individual users only for these scratch folders, but nowhere else.If you’ve organized the workspace as suggested above, authors need to be able to work in their own workspace (their scratch folders) - and be the only ones to do so - and they also need to be able to copy finished items or tests to the main area in the library corresponding to that topic, as well as having access to shared work or resource folders if you have them.       

      So, let’s look at the permissions Ian Archer will need as an item author. 

       

      Scratch folders

      You can see the permissions that Gwen would grant for Ian’s scratch folder - the folder named IAN ARCHER - in the image below.

      Permissions for Ian's scratch folder

       

      Ian is listed explicitly as a user and has been granted write permission (which automatically grants read permission too). All users with the role of item author have been granted read permission only – so apart from Ian, all other item authors will only be able to read the content of Ian's folder (i.e. look at the items in it) - but nothing else. In other words, the rights granted to Ian as a user override those which have been granted according to his role.

      Gwen retains grant permission over the folder as global manager.

       

      Main Library

      We said earlier that Ian had been developing items for a Grade 6 Math test in trigonometry. Therefore, he needs access to that folder in the main library so that he can put his finished items there. Gwen might decide to give him access to the whole Math folder, as he may need to work on other parts of the Math test the following week.

      Ian's access to the Grade 6 Math section of the library

       

      You can see that Gwen has granted these permissions recursively - by ticking the Recursive box near the bottom of the permissions screen. If this is ticked, the permissions apply not just to items or tests in that folder, but to any sub-folders (and sub-folders of sub-folders, etc) in it.

      The same permissions would be set for Iris's folder in the same way for Iris, and for all other item authors. The permissions in the Test library would be set similarly.

       

      Note: Wherever possible, it is a good idea to manage permissions on the basis of role (rather than user). Managing individual users will quickly become unmanageable across all folders, especially if there is a high turnover in item and test authors, as is sometimes the case. It is preferable, therefore, to grant permissions on the basis of individual users only for these scratch folders, but nowhere else.