Custom Roles and Role Permissions - Genius CE & Enterprise

Introduction

Every account in Genius CE & Enterprise is created as a user. Once the account is defined, next step is to give that user the proper permissions – a role. Each account can have multiple roles and, in addition, can be limited to a specific organizational unit, such as department, training group, college or office.

An administrator or an authorized user can assign or remove roles for each account. There are a few default roles in the system, but administrators can also create and define custom roles as needed.  The default roles are:

• Learner – the one who takes the course
• Instructor – the one who manages course content
• Coach – the one who mentors the learner
• Affiliation (Manager) – the one who oversees the learners for the org unit.
• Administrator – the super role with all permissions

The majority of the users in the system will be created as learners, only a small portion of those would also be listed as managers and even smaller group will be admins.

Assigning a New Role to an account

There are two main ways to manage and assign a new role to an existing user.

1. From the Administration > Find Users.
   This way is mostly reserved for the admins who can use a filter to search for the specific user and edit an account. Upon clicking on the pencil icon (edit), an admin can manage the account basic information, affiliation assignment and roles. The primary role defines the landing page for the account, e.g. if the main function of the account is to be the learner, then the primary role should be set to “Learner”, then additional roles can be added.  Once all the changes are made, save changes.

2. From the Learner profile > Roles.
   This process of assigning the roles can be reserved for the managers (training officers) – those who manage all the learners in their org unit. This view does not expose the accounts that do not have a “Learner” role assigned.  An admin may need to check and evaluate all the existing roles to decide whether this permission should stay enabled.
   Under this flow the designated manager would search for the specific learner in the Learners menu, click on the name and use the ‘Roles’ link on the left to assign more roles to the learner.

Creating a New Role

If none of the core roles fulfil the need or there’s a specific set of permissions that needs to be configured, then a new role can be created and assigned to the user as described above.  The steps are:

1. Administration > Users and Access > User-defined Roles > Add new role

2. Create a name for the new role > Save. At this time, you are only giving this role a name. Next step is to set the permissions.
3. Once the role name is created, switch to Administration > Access setup. Use the drop-down menu to find and select the new role you created. Once the role is selected, the list of permissions appears.
4. Edit the role permissions separately from all available permissions on the left. You can also copy the permissions from the existing role and then manipulate it further. The copy functionality is handy when there’s a need to modify the existing role only slightly. Selecting the role to copy from will refresh the screen to display current permissions.

5. Save changes once desired permissions are set.

Each existing role can also be modified to clean up the navigation panel menus and the links within each one.  Permission sections on the list can be expanded to expose more options.

Switching between the roles

If a user has more than one role, only one can be selected as a primary. The primary role defines the landing page (area) for the account.  For example: a manager that also has learner role assigned, can be set up to land first on the manager dashboard, to review pending requests and only then switch to the learner role.  At this time the primary role can only be set up by the admin in the Find Users area.

• When landing as the learner on the learner dashboard, the role switcher will be located on the left-hand side under the account name and logout.

• When the user lands on the managing side (instructor, admin, coach, manager) the switch moves to the top right corner of the page. The user can select the caret drop down menu and see the various roles that they can swap to.