Difference between revisions of "User Groups & Permissions"

Revision as of 13:52, 3 August 2018

Sample view of User Groups & Permissions page

The User Groups and permissions screen, is one of the most commonly used screens for Union Administrators. It contains all of the default permission groups created by UnionCloud on your behalf, the groups students are placed into by default. It also stores the sub sections for viewing group (Club & Society) membership groups (Administrators, Current, Alumni etc.), Events group lists, halls group lists, programme names, and their membership counts, demographic groups, and importantly Custom groups.

One of the reasons for it's heavy use is, that it is the easiest way to control which users have access to what, once you have your Permission Sets sorted and applied to a user group, as we explain further down, all you need to do is add a user to that group.

Union

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/user_groups

The Union Sub Menu, these groups here are some of the most important, and also the groups that users will be placed into automatically upon registration / upload / expiry.

Default User Groups Breakdown

Other Features within Union subsection

A simple overview of the first two rows of the table in the Union sub-section, of the User Groups & Permissions Menu.

Show Count

Previously you may remember this used to show the number of members in each screen by default, this meant that it performed a count function for a large number of groups in some cases, every time a page like this loaded, which caused larger burdens on the server, so to improve page load times this feature was removed and replaced with the line of text in blue, which on click performs a count for the group in question.

View User Group

View User Group Screen

This screen gives you an overview of an individual User Group, at the top you can see the title of the group you are in, highlighted with a blue font.

• Adding New Users

1. Manually

You can add users manually using the three boxes under the group title, the method is as follows;

• From the drop down list, choose a group you know the user is already a member of
• Search for the user by their name, it will return to you close matches, and Dates of Birth to allow you to check you have the right person
• Choose a membership expiry date for the user, this should be a year or so, and checked regularly to ensure there are no dormant accounts with permissions they shouldn't have.
• Select the 'Add members' button to finish the process.

1. CSV Upload

This is the same as in the #User Group Member Upload section below, there are just two places you can select this option.

• Filter / Sort Users

Image showing how the Filter / Sort menu bar looks after choosing the filter option

The header row of the table, with the darker grey background is of much use, particularly when you are dealing with groups containing thousands, or even tens of thousands of users. You can both filter and sort any users in this table, and it also allows you to filter by multiple fields, and use part matches. You can click any of the Column headings to sort (ID, University ID, Forename, Surname, DOB, Email Membership Expiry Date), primarily it will sort (A-Z) in field which can contain strings, and (0-9) in a field that contains numeric values, however if you click the heading a second time, it will filter this to the reverse.

With regards to filtering, this works almost the same, to make the filter section appear, all you need to do is click the small cocktail glass looking symbol in the far right hand column, and it will reveal the menu as pictured to the right hand side. You can filter by any of the same fields as outlined above, with the exception of Membership Expiry Date, and the only filter that works differently is Date of Birth, this filter gives you two calendar options, Start and End, which will return all user whose DoB falls within the range.

Finally, there are two buttons below the filter button, one to reset your filters, and another to apply the filters you have just typed in the fields, alternatively you can press return on the keyboard to update.

Edit user expiry date from a group

• Edit a Users Expiry Date

Editing a users Expiry date is a fairly straight forward function, it just requires the user to click the Edit button(), in the far right hand column, this will take you to the screen pictured in the thumbnail to the right where you can use the calendar to pick a new expiry date for the user, and then simply click the 'Edit Expiry Date' button, and you're done!

Feedback: Currently we have on the feedback log, a request for users to be able to instantly remove users from particular user groups, as the current method is to set their expiry to the next working day.

• Edit

The Edit button at the bottom of this page takes you to the same page as the edit button before you click into a specific user group, and we will cover that below or you can click here to skip to it.

For any particular group, a screenshot is provided on the right for your convenience.

• Download Demographics

After clicking the Download Demographics button, a timing icon will appear in the Downloads section at the bottom of the page, this usually takes a few seconds, but under peak times and heavy usage could take up to a minute or so, for the site to gather the data, and present you with a PDF to download, this is a short 2 page document containing the Demographic data for all members within the group you are currently managing. We will cover the content of the Demographics Report in another section.

• Download CSV

The final option within the View Usergroup screen is to Download a CSV of the group members, this downloads data on all of the users in the current group you are managing, in CSV Format, the data also matches the format used in the Student Upload file, so you will be getting Nationality, CourseID, StudentID, etc.

Screenshot of the Edit User Group Screen

Edit User Group

The Edit page is where it gives you the options to;

1. Rename
2. Update Description For
3. Change Permission Set

User Group Member Upload

User Group Member Upload Pop-Up

Before we begin talking through this section, if you click on the title to this section 'User Group Member Upload' it will take you to a page where we talk through CSV Uploads in slightly more detail. It doesn't matter which method you use to select the User Group Member Upload Option, the small CSV Upload button() on the right-hand side of the 'User Groups & Permissions' screen, or the View User Group Option, which you get to by selecting the View button() on the right-hand side next to any of the user groups, to get the more detailed view for a particular user group, and a list of its current members, then there is a large, 'Upload Members' Button on the right hand side.

Once the pop up appears you are presented with a number of options.

• Choose File button, to upload a CSV
• A Checkbox to add users for e-voting
• An icon to the right to 'Download Sample CSV Template'
• And two notifications, which we will clarify here;

• 'Email and Expiry Date can't be blank' (For e-voting users forename and surname are also mandatory)

Email and Date of Birth are the required fields that UnionCloud uses to find a user in the database and add them to the correct user group

• 'File processing is a scheduled background activity.

All files you upload will be processed at midnight local time, this is because processing large quantities of database puts an increased load on the server and to do it at peak time would cause an increase in page load times and a poorer experience for all members. Please bear this in mind when you need to upload Member files.

Groups

This screen, is the overview screen for all of your 'Group' User Groups

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/user_groups/groups

Default Group User Groups Breakdown

As mentioned in the caption, this screen is the overview screen for all of the 'Group' User Groups. That is to say, it will show all of the different User Groups, from all of your Clubs, Societies, Sports, Charity groups etc. Every new student group when they are created, via the Groups Module, have three User Groups created for them by default (although Group Administrators and Union Administrators are able to add more):

Events

Events User Groups Screen

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/user_groups/events

This area allows you to manage the usergroups for all your events. By default two usergroups are automatically created for every event which you create on your site:

For both the Groups and Events usergroups you can perform all the same actions as you could for Union usergroups, please see the section above for more details.

Halls

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/user_groups/hall_of_residences

Halls of Residence User Groups Screen

In this section you can view the usergroups for all your Halls of Residence of your students, if you have access to this data. This page will automatically keep track of Halls, by picking it from your Student Upload File, any record updated with a unique Halls name will create a new usergroup. On this page you are able to show the member count and filter by name. Clicking on the magnifying glass next to a usergroup will open a new page with a list of all members (and their details) in that particular usergroup. You are also able to download a CSV file of all members from this page.

Programme

Programme User Groups Screen

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/programs

Questionnaire

Demographics User Groups Screen

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/user_groups/questions

Custom

Custom User Groups Screen

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/user_groups/custom_tree

Dynamic

Admin/Usergroups/custom/dynamic

You can find this page on your own site at url: <yoursite>/administrator/user_groups/dynamic_tree

Filter settings-Dynamic usergroups

On the dynamic user group this allows you to filter through individuals on the platform if you select ‘add user group’ a filter will appear. This allows you gather more information or find a user for example students who have not yet voted for upcoming elections. All you need to do is drag and drop the filters into the box and it will create a user-group containing the users you would like to reach out to.

The index screen is the overall list of all the custom user groups on the UnionCloud platform, you can use this to your advantage to search, filter and find any custom user groups you are able to edit existing user groups by clicking the setting cog on the right-hand side.