Access rights to catagorys in moodle

Access rights to catagorys in moodle

by Andy Burrows -
Number of replies: 11

Hi there,

I work for a fire and rescue service and have set up a moodle install more as a repository for learning content for our organisation. I have created a Top Directory catagory called 'Learning Resources'  in which there are sub catagories for Operational, Support, Control and All Employees. This covers all of the different types of employees in our organisation and each one will follow that structure through to get to the learning material they need. The content in there are embedded in courses, but as I only wanted them to be there as information stores I set the directory permissions for the 'Learning Resourses' directory to 'view courses without participation' for Authenticated users so they do not have to be assigned the courses to view the content (Still with me?)

However, this was all well and good but we are working in conjuction with a regional control group that want some information putting on our moodle sight that's specific to them. So I have created a new Top Level catagory called 'Regional Contol'. What I want to do is create seperate profiles for all of the users within our brigade to be able to access the Learning Resources catagory but not the Regional Control catagory, and vice versa for the users that need to look at the Regional Control and not our brigades Learning Resources. Can anybody help out?

Any help much appreciated

Andy

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In reply to Andy Burrows

Re: Access rights to catagorys in moodle

by Mary Cooch -
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I'm not sure you are easily going to be able to do this if you have given them the permission "view courses without participation" by editing the authenticated user role. Can you outline the steps you took to do this - ie - did you go to Site administration>Users>Permissions>Define roles and edit the authenticated user role there? I think if you want one group to be able to see resources in one category and not in another you might have to find a different way or else manually enrol them. An alternative is to reset the authenticated user role  to default and password protect each course, only giving the password for the courses in Regional control to those who are allowed it.

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Access rights to catagorys in moodle

by Andy Burrows -

Mary,

Thanks for your quick response. I understand the "view courses without participation" option applied to the 'Learning Resources' folder for Authenticated Users is not going to work in light of scenario I am trying to achive as the Regional Control members will also be 'Authenticated' once they are logged in, so I will have to scrap that. . I think the issue is that there is a lot of information in the Learning Resources folder that needs to be available to 800+ people in our Fire Service. There will be a further 90 odd members from Regional Control that will need access to their area, but not the Learning Resources sad

 

 I must admit I have only been working with moodle for a couple of months, and we are not really using it (at present) in the way it was designed to be used. 

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In reply to Andy Burrows

Re: Access rights to catagorys in moodle

by Richard Oelmann -
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http://docs.moodle.org/26/en/Cohort_sync - automatically enrol your users as a chohort on each of the courses with the materials in them (treat most users as one cohort with access to courses in the Learning Resources sub categories and your Regional Control members as a separate cohort giving acccess to teh other courses) You could use this in conjunction with meta-link course subscriptions ie. create meta links between a single top level course in the Learning Resources category and all the others, then when you enrol a user/cohort on that top level course it feeds through the meta links to the other courses http://docs.moodle.org/26/en/Course_meta_link

or

a separate third party plugin http://docs.moodle.org/26/en/Category_enrolments

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Access rights to catagorys in moodle

by Andy Burrows -

Richard,

Still getting used to moodle, but after your suggestion I have looked into the whole cohorts option and have managed to figure it out. I created a cohort called LearningResources against the top level folder and assigned all 840 members of our service to this. Its a bit of a pain manually going into each course and having to change the enrolment settings to Cohort Sync as well, but this is just something I will have to get on with. I have done the same for Regional Control (just as you suggested), and with a few test users added it all seems to be working just the way I wanted smile

Many Thanks

Andy

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In reply to Andy Burrows

Re: Access rights to catagorys in moodle

by Andy Burrows -

Hi there,

I thought the cohort situation was the holy grail but realised that all of the courses now appear in the 'My Courses' section of all 800+ members (which on reflection is exactly how it is meant to work). However, as the content in the Learning Resources section are not specifically courses in the true sense of the word and more of a repository for information I do not want them to appear as a course in the My Course section of each user(if that makes sense).

The option applied to the 'Learning Resourses' catagory as an authenticated user, modified to 'view course content without participation' was fine, but obviously doesn't apply the restrictions I need. I will try and understand the security issues of moodle a little more, but if anybody has got a grasp on what I am trying to achieve and can make a suggestion in the mean time it would be much appreciated. sad

Andy

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In reply to Andy Burrows

Re: Access rights to categories in moodle

by Mary Cooch -
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Hello again Andy. Why is it important they don't appear in the My courses section? Is it because you have other "real" courses on the site or because you see these courses as merely "resource areas"? If it is the second then you could rename courses to "resource areas" in Site admin>Language>Language customisation and then it wouldn't jar so much?

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Access rights to catagorys in moodle

by Andy Burrows -

Mary,

You hit the nail on the head, we do have courses that we want users to be assigned and using the cohort option just fills up the My Courses section of the individual user profile with an unnecessary amount of courses that are in effect just resources. I have renamed the directory for resources in the way you have described also. I guess what I am after is a way of creating a group of users that has the 'view course without participation' assigned to a category sad

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In reply to Andy Burrows

Re: Access rights to catagorys in moodle

by Mary Cooch -
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How about.. create a new role, assigned at category level, and give it the http://docs.moodle.org/en/Capabilities/moodle/course:view (reset the authenticated user to default) and then assign all those in that category to that role?

See  Creating custom roles

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Access rights to catagorys in moodle

by Andy Burrows -

Mary,

Thanks for your continued help smile . What Archetype would you suggest using for this new role?

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In reply to Andy Burrows

Re: Access rights to categories in moodle

by Mary Cooch -
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None , I think.

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Access rights to categories in moodle

by Andy Burrows -

Mary,

Just letting you know I have sorted the issue based on your suggestion. The only issue I had was adding all 800+ users to the 'Assign Roles' dialogue because of the 100 user limit (think this is well documented). Finally manage to add everyone via a convoluted method of searching, but it's done now and seems to be working fine. 

Thanks everyone for all of your help and suggestions smile

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