Adding Users, Setting Roles

Updated 9 Apr 2020

The Add users process has been enhanced. You can now find teaching sets and add groups of pupil at once.

Users can have different roles on a blog, these will come with different permissions:

Administrator – somebody who has access to all the administration features within a single site.

Editor – somebody who can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users.

Author – somebody who can publish and manage their own posts.

Contributor (+ Upload)  – like Contributors (see below) but with the ability to upload files. (This is not a standard WordPress role but one developed for Glow. It allows pupils or staff who have the role to create posts with images and other media and save them as pending. Editors or Admins can them publish.

Contributor – somebody who can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them.

Subscriber – somebody who can only manage their profile.

The Subscriber role can be used to allow Glow  users to see a private blog. It will also allow the recording of subscribers’ scores when using quizzes and activities created with the H5P plugin.

The roles of Administrator and Author are the most commonly used roles.

As of January 2016 we have extended the Add users screen so that it can use information from SEEMIS that has been passed to RM Unify. In particular Teaching Groups. This allows the selection and bulk addition of users.

Add Users Dashboard

On the Dashboard the Add Users screen is accessed from the Users section of the left hand navigation, you may have to expand the Users section by clicking on the drop down arrow [1] before clicking Add Users [2].There are now two sections to the Add Users Screen: Add Curricular Groups and Add Users. the screen defaults to Add Curricular Groups.

Teachers can select Local Authority and the Establishment, Pupils can only select groups from their own Establishment [3].

Screenshot add users dashboard

Adding Curricular Groups 1: Local Authority

Teachers are Presented with a Popup list to select the Local Authority They want. They can either select from the list manually or filter it by typing [1].

Once they have selected a Local Authority the page will ‘pull in a list of establishments’[2].

adding curricular groups-1 local-authority

Adding Curricular Groups 2: Establishments

Once the Establishment Menu has loaded you can select form the list in the same way as above, either by filtering or selecting from the drop down menu. Once a selection has been made the curricular groups menu will load.

Screenshot adding curricular groups 2 establishments

Adding Curricular Groups 3

Once the Curricular groups are added these can be selected from the drop down or via filtering in the same manner.

Screenshot adding curricular groups

Adding Users from a Curricular Group

After the Curricular Group is selected the list of pupils in that group is displayed. All pupils in the list are selected ready to be given a role in the blog. The selection can be changed by checking the checkboxes[1] (or choosing Selet All | Deselect All [2]).

Once the selection is finished you need to give the pupils a Role[3] and click Add Selected Users[4].

adding users from a curricula group

The Users are Added to the site

the-users-are-added-to-the-site

Adding Teachers

In addition to the Teaching Groups, there is a Group of all Teachers in the School. This can be found quickly by Typing teachers into the filter box.

Screenshot adding teachers

Adding Curricular Groups Notes

The curricular groups functionality is brought into the blogs service via the RM Unify Graph API. This is in turn populated by a schools SEEMIS records. The groups  are the Teaching Groups. If a schools SEEMIS records are not up to date and they have not been sent to SEEMIS via Click + Go pupils may not appear in the lists.

Primary School pupils do not seem to be in Teaching groups , but are in Registration Groups which are currently not supplied via the API. Hopefully the Teachers list will be of use in primary classrooms. In may be possible that RM will ad Registration groups in the future, if so the blog service could be altered to use that data.

Bonus Copy List of Usernames

In most browsers you can copy the list of username selected as a semicolon delimitated list, by clicking the link below the list. The link will not appear in unsupported Browsers [1].

Copy list of users to clipboard

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Add Users


You can also add users via users names on the Second Tab of the Add Users page in the Dashboard.

To add users you

  1. Type or paste the list of users you want to add to the blog ino the username fields.
  2. Choose the WordPress role you want those users to have from the popup.
  3. Click Add Users

You will see a message at the top of the Add Users screen, to tell you the additon was successful.

Username optionally can have the @glow at the end of them. @glow will be added to any usernames without it automatically.

Usernames that are full email addresses will have everything after the @sign replaced with glow. It is possible to add any username, but only real accounts that can be logged on to Glow via RM Unify will allow users to log on.

Screenshot Add Users by Username

All Users

After users have been added to the blog they can be managed from the All Users screen [1].

You can view information about the users and change or remove their role on the blog.

Users that have been added who have not visited and logged into the blogs are added as NOT LOGGED IN YET (Previously marked Pending) [2]. Glow  users will have the account on the blogs service created when they visit the blog home page for their LA after clicking the tile in RM Unify or by logging on by click site admin on a blog or visiting a page on a Glow  only or privated blog.

Administrators can remove users from their blog or change their roles on this screen.

Screenshot Dashboarsd - All Users

Removing a User

To remove a user:

  1. Check the box beside their name (you can delete multiple users at once)
  2. Select Remove from the Bulk Actions pop up.
  3. Click Apply.

You will be taken to the Delete Users screen where you can make decisions to delete the posts from the user or attribute then to another user.

Screenshot removing a user

Changing a Users Role

To change a users role

  1. Check the box beside their name (you can change multiple users at once)
  2. Select a new role from the Change role to… pop up.
  3. Click Change.

Roles are the top of the Author & Users Dashboard page.

Screenshot changing a users role
Removing yourself from a site (Teachers only)

There is not a native WordPress way to take yourself out of the users list on a site.

This can be inconvenient for staff who may be members of many ex-pupil’s portfolios. We have now developed a way of doing this.

It is carried out from the My Sites page. Each site now has a  Remove me from this site link.

Screenshot My Sites page: removing yourself from a site teachers only

If a user in having difficulty getting acess to your blog please check the Sorting Out Access Problems – Users Pending page.

24 thoughts on “Adding Users, Setting Roles”

  1. Hi,
    I am in the process of re-building our school website as a glow blog.

    I would like staff members to be able to edit only specific departmental pages and sections on the site. I feel rather nervous assigning the full “editor role” to them. I have not been able to find a way to do this. Is there a plugin or workaround available to customise roles?

    Thanks
    Christine

    1. Hi Christine,
      No there is not. You could make some folk contributors, but they would be able to create posts but not publish them. They would not be able to upload media.
      Alternatively you could make them authors, they could create and publish post and pages but they could not edit the posts and pages of others.
      You cannot add plugins to Glow Blogs.
      As some reassurance there are hundreds of schools using Glow Blogs as websites.

  2. Hi there,
    Trying to add pupils to my blog as authors. Managed this with previous groups but this time it’s showing as pending. Pupils can access other blog groups they’ve been members of but cannot see my blog on their ‘my site’. Can someone help?

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