Permissions in the Curriculum Portal

Permissions Rules

Every folder and file stored in the Curriculum Portal is governed by permissions, which allows school districts to have real-time control over user access to each uploaded resource.

Permissions to a file or folder can be granted to the entire district, or to a school, department, individual, or custom group. There are four levels of permission that can be granted to a user:

• Read Access: allows a user to view a file, but not make changes
• Write Access: allows a user to edit/delete the file
• Write (No Delete): allows a user to edit the file
• Full Access: allows the user to edit/delete the file and also modify permissions

This article will demonstrate how to grant/revoke permissions in the Curriculum Portal.

Note: After the Portal is initially activated, the District Data Manager is the only user who will have access to the Portal's parent folder. This user must grant access to other staff members before they will see anything in their own accounts.

Case Study

OnCourse recommends that school district administrators outline a Curriculum Portal policy before starting to set up permissions. Here are a few sample permissions schemes:

School 1:

• District Data Manager has full access to all areas
• School Administrators have full access to school-level folder for their own primary school, and can grant/revoke access to this area to their own staff members
• Teachers have read access to all grade level/departmental resources
• Teachers have write access to their own grade level/departmental resources

School 2:

• District Data Manager has full access to all areas
• A selected group of Curriculum Portal mangers will be elected to manage the Portal, and are granted full access to all areas
• Teachers and Administrators have view-only access to everything
• A special "drop-box" type folder is created where teachers and administrators are granted write access. The Curriculum Portal managers will check this area for any submissions or notes, and can then move any submissions into their appropriate school/department/grade level folders

Note: This article assumes that folders and files have already been loaded into the Curriculum Portal. Please refer to other articles for instructions on creating folders and uploading files.

Permissions

When new files or folders are created or uploaded in OnCourse, they will automatically receive the permissions of the folder they are going into. This is know as inheritance. To take advantage of this inheritance, OnCourse recommends that each school district begin setting up permission at the very top folder, or the "parent" folder.

• Parent Folder: is any folder that has sub-folders, or "children" folders. If there are no folders in the Curriculum Portal yet, the first parent folder will be labeled with the name of the school district.

To apply permissions to any file or folder in the Portal, follow the steps below:

• Right-click on a file/folder
• Click the Permissions button

• Use the District/School/User/Groups tabs to find the group who will receive the permissions. Then click the green plus icon next to any group to add it.

• The added group will appear to the right.

District/School/Users/Groups Tabs

District Level Permissions

For district level permissions, choose the District tab.

These groups are determined by the type of OnCourse account each user has.

School Level Permissions

For school, department, or class level permissions, choose the School tab.

• First, choose the school using the drop-down box.

• Next, pick the school-level group.

Individual Permissions (User)

To add an individual user, choose the User tab.

In the search box, type the name of the user and click Search. All matching users will appear below.

Resource Group Permissions (Groups)

To choose a custom resource group, choose the Groups tab (for more information on resource groups, see the Resource Manager article.

Adjusting Access Levels 

Each group has an access level that governs the degree to which it can view and edit information in the folder/files.

To change the access level of any group, simply click the Access Level drop-down menu next to it and choose the appropriate level.

The four access levels are:

• Full: allows the user to edit/delete the file and also modify permissions
• Read: allows a user to view a file, but not make changes
• Write: allows a user to edit/delete the file
• Write (No Delete): allows a user to edit the file

Any changes made here will take effect in real-time, and users who have been granted access to this file will see it immediately. 

Use the red x buttons to remove access at any time, or click the Remove All button to remove all groups and access levels.

Applying Folder Permission to Child Files/Folders

If permissions on the folder are modified, the contents of that folder are modified automatically.

To "push" the permissions of a parent folder into its child files or folders, click the Apply Settings button.

In the window that appears, use the checkboxes to choose whether the permissions will be cascaded into all child folders, all child folders, or both. Click Apply to complete this process.

OnCourse Expert Tip

If permissions have been set, and users still cannot see a file or folder that they expect to see, check the permissions on all preceding parent folders.

In this example, a teacher with access to the first grade folder will not be able to see it unless they have AT LEAST read access to the Art,  Elementary School, and OnCourse University folders.