I have several courses that are designed to be private forums on my Moodle site. At the moment the only way for me to deal with this is to make the members non-editting teachers of the course.
I was hoping that the new roles would mean that I wouldn't have to do this and have just created a new role called "Forum Member". However I'm a little stuck at how to do this properly. I basically want something inheritted from Student (as I don't want the users to be able to do things that non-editting teachers can do, such as the option to view reports or assign roles. I also want the course to appear in the person's registrations, which it doesn't while they are assigned as a teacher.
So what I've done so far is base my role on the legacy student role and then allowed them to view hidden courses. I've assigned a user as a "Forum Member" on a specific hidden course. My problem is that (a) they can see all hidden courses rather than just the one, and (b) when they view the page they are told that they are unable to enrol on the course (as I'd set the course to being un-enroleable to prevent people from accidentally enroleling on it.
Any ideas which permissions I should give to a student (or alternatively remove from a teacher) to allow me to achieve this, or is a non-editting teacher still my best option for hidden forums?
(It looks like my test user was set as a course creator, so I'm trying again - this time with the course enroleable.. so maybe it will work!)
Okay, problem solved.. I think. and apparently I don't need roles at all, although I'm sure this didn't work before. The course is now enroleable and allows students but is hidden.. it shows up in the "My Registrations" box for those who are members but not in the categories/courses lists.. I hope..