Guest Role vs Guest User

Guest Role vs Guest User

by Jeff Hookham -
Number of replies: 5

Hi All,

I'm having a problem making moodle 1.7.1 do what I want it to do and maybe it's not possible (suggestions welcome) but here's what I've done and why.

1. Created a user and under the roles tab I assigned that user a guest role. (Current context: User: guest one) FYI: I don't want about 15% of my users to have access to all of the courses. The other 85% can have access to everything.

2. Created a course that doesn't allow guest access.(Guest Access: do not allow guests in) I don't want those 15% mentioned above in this course.

My hope was that this user would then only be able to enroll in classes that allow guest access but that's not the way it's working. The user with the guest role can indeed enroll in this class.

So....I'm guessing that a user that clicks on the guest button to login (not active on my site) called a guest has different privelages then a user assigned the guest role. Does anybody have some insight into this for me?

Cheers,
Jeff

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In reply to Jeff Hookham

Re: Guest Role vs Guest User

by Yu Zhang -
Hi Jeff,

When you did 1) you did not assign him a guest role in the system context. The roles tab under a user is mainly for mentor/parent type of roles, they are assigned in the user context so they can monitor the student. To assign a user a guest role you should do it from the admin panel on your site page (Users->Permissions->Assign role).

Cheers,

Yu
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In reply to Yu Zhang

Re: Guest Role vs Guest User

by Jeff Hookham -

Hi Yu,

Thanks for replying. I actually had the guest role set in both places. In the roles tab under user I took out the guest role. So now I only have it set in the system context but....it still doesn't work.

If I login using the guest button then I can't enroll in the course (which is correct) but if I login with the user having the guest role (system context) it lets me enroll in the course.

Should what I'm trying to do work?

Cheers,
Jeff

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In reply to Jeff Hookham

Re: Guest Role vs Guest User

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Hmm, interesting scenario.

I don't think giving a real user the guest role across the whole site will in fact let that user into courses that have guest access enabled.

You might be able to just use enrolment keys for the courses (perhaps the same one for all) or perhaps some modification can be made to Moodle to allow this scenario.

Tell me more about what those 85% users are going to do in those courses? Will they be full participants or just "viewing"?
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Guest Role vs Guest User

by Jeff Hookham -

Hi Martin,

>I don't think giving a real user the guest role across the whole
>site will in fact let that user into courses that have guest access enabled.

It will let them in but it won't keep them out of courses that don't allow guest access.

>Tell me more about what those 85% users are going to
>do in those courses? Will they be full participants or just "viewing"?

What I'm trying to do is (with as little work on my admin part as possible) to restrict some users so they only have access to a few courses. The rest of the users can have full access to all courses and yes each group would be full participants. I was trying to stay away from using the enrollment key. This is being utilized in a distributed commercial environment.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
Jeff

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In reply to Jeff Hookham

Re: Guest Role vs Guest User

by Pieter van der Hijden -

If I understand your case correctly you have two categories of users: A has full access to all courses, B has full access to some courses?

In that case you can create two hidden courses:

  • course A: its only purpose is to adminster the enrollment of category A participants,
  • course B: its only purpose is to adminster the enrollment of category B participants.

Now all your regular courses can be meta-courses: some are fed by the course A participants only, other are fed by both course A and course B participants.

Afterthought: I realise I'm not sure about the changes in the meta-course mechanism in 1.7.

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