Assigning Project Staff Roles
As a Project Administrator, you have permission to assign project-based roles to users. This means that you are able to grant as little or as much access to the project you administrate to any given user that you choose. To begin assigning project roles to users, open the Administration menu, then select Assign Project Staff Roles. This will open the Project Staff Roles assignment window seen below.
In order to start assigning roles, you'll first need to find a project you're an administrator of. At the top left of this window, you'll notice a Company drop-down box. Choosing a company from this box will allow you to filter projects so that only the ones belonging to that company are displayed in the Project drop-down box. If you'd like to view all of the projects you have access to, you can choose (All) in the company box and a list of every project you have access to (regardless of company) will be displayed.
Selecting a company name from the Company drop-down box will populate the field just below it with information. This area shows information about the company you've selected such as the company's name, location, and contact numbers. Selecting a project from the Project drop-down will populate the area just below it in the same way, showing information about the project such as the project name, company, location, and task information.
On the left side of this window, you'll notice a list of the users you have access to view. This is a list of all of the people you have access to see, namely, all of the users that have access to accounts you administrate, or have been assigned the View Team Members role in. By default, the Show All Users checkbox at the bottom of this section has a check in it, and this will show all of the users you have permission to see. If you select a company from the company drop-down box, you can also uncheck the Show All Users box, and only the users in the selected company will be shown in the list. Selecting a user so that they're highlighted will populate a box to the right with information about the particular user account. For instance, if you select a user you'll be able to view their first and last name, contact numbers, email address and the company they belong to.
Each new project starts with a default set of roles. These are the most basic roles that you can assign to users of the account, and each one has a specific purpose. The basic roles created with each new project are:
- All Data - This role grants permission to view and update all data files in a project, as well as granting basic project permissions such as generating reports viewing and writing messages, creating thumbnails, and other basic functions. It does not grant any level of delete permission.
- User Assignment - Someone with the User Assignment role is able to edit user account information for people assigned to the project as well as assign roles (Excluding project Administration) to new users for the project. This role also grants basic project permissions and access.
- Project Administration - This will grant a user all of the permissions that go along with Project Administrator, including access to view users assigned to a project, permission to delete files and folders, permission to create shared directories, and a number of other things many users aren't able to do.
- View Team Members - This grants permission to view users assigned to the project, excluding company and system administrators. This role alone does not grant any sort of project or data access.
- Top-level Directory permissions - Each top-level directory (just under the root of the project) is given a read/write (no delete) role when you create a new project. Assigning a user one of these roles will grant them access to read and write to a top-level directory and any of its subdirectories. This can be useful for a number of things. For instance, you might have a user that you'd like to grant access to view documentation data contained in a top-level directory, but you don't want them to view any other data in the project. You could grant them the Documentation Access role, and they would only have read and write permission for that directory and its subdirectories.
- Task permissions - By default, the only people that can view tasks are the Project Administrator and someone assigned the "User Assignment" role. Each task that is created can have a role assigned to it, and all tasks generated with a new project are given roles. Assiging someone a task role will give them access to view the specific task in the Task View and update the Task Status.
- Messages - This will grant someone permission to view and add messages to files and folders.
To assign a user account a specific project role, there are a few steps you should follow:
- First, choose the project which you'd like to assign roles for. Using the Company drop-down box to filter you results may make this task easier.
- Second, select the user that you'll be assigning the role(s) to. Again, you can use the Company drop-down along with the Show All Users checkbox to help filter the number of users down if you have access to view a lot of them.
- Once you've selected the user (so that it's highlighted) browse through the list of the roles for the project, and check any roles that the user should be given. The small grey box next to the key icon is a checkbox, and clicking in it will mark it with a check.
- Once you've checked all of the roles the user account should be given, click the Save button. This will save your changes.
If you make mistakes or you've made a lot of changes but would like to start over, clicking the Reset button will set everything in the window back to how it was when you entered it. You can set multiple roles for multipe users and save them all at once, but if you switch companies or projects you will lose any changes you've made unless you click the Save button.
