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Why are some users losing access to their "Creator" folders?
Edgar Millan
Tyro
in Moodle
We have some users that are seemingly losing "Creator" access to their course folders. Our site has Moodle integration and the instructors are automatically added to the course "creators" group. We've had a few users that have no issues accessing their folders and even upload videos to those folders but then out of nowhere, they seem to get dropped from the "creator group" and thus no longer have access to the folders they should have access too.
Our work-around is to manually add them as "creators."
Thank you in advanced for any insight on this matter!
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Answers
Hi Edgar,
This is definitely an issue for our Support team to look at. To expedite this matter, and make things easier for you, I will submit a Support ticket on your behalf as well as let your local Panopto administrator know that you're experiencing this issue. Please keep an eye out for correspondence regarding this matter.
If you have any additional questions, please free to ask - we're always happy to help!
Best wishes,
Cait
Hi @Edgar Millan - we notice this behaviour when the academic changes their role in Moodle, e.g. to a student view. This is passed to Panopto and they get moved out of the creator group and into the viewer group. To fix this the academic needs to return their Moodle role to "normal". Depending on how quickly your integration communicates with Panopto they should then get their "creator" access back.
Another potential situation that we see quite frequently here is an instructor removes the ::Creator group from their course folder (and thus thier access). They get a 503 error when they (or any other Teacher, TA, Course Designer, etc.) tries to load the Panopto LTI in the course. It is a quick fix in just adding the group back to the folder, but it is a problem that we see a few times a semester.
Hi @Clinton Caudell.
Thank you for your follow up. This was brought up as potentially being the problem but I have been unable to replicate it with my Moodle Sandbox sites. I would like to think that most users usually return to their "Normal" view after entering the "Student-View" for a moment. I am also not sure how quickly the integration communicates between Moodle and Panopto. I switched to "Student-View" on my sandbox site and left it there for about 30 minutes. Then I checked the permissions on Panopto and I was still a member of the "Creators" group for that course folder.
@Michael Espey . We've seen this happen too. Sometimes the instructors get a little too curious with the permissions and they accidentally remove the whole creator group, in turn, removing themselves in the process. In the issues we've been experiencing, the "Creator" group is still very much there and has not been removed. What happens is that the user is dropped from being a "Member" of the "Creator" group instead of the whole group getting removed.
Thanks for all of your insights.
@Edgar Millan The issue may occur if you enter student view as an instructor, and then click on a panopto embedded video or the panopto block/lti link (Just by changing to student view, the permissions wouldn't be changed - they would need to also authenticate into Panopto.) This would sign the teacher into Panopto as a student and change the permissions. I would see if you can recreate the the issue with the additional step of clicking on a Panopto item in the course.
If that replicates the issue - it should be resolved by signing out of Panopto first, switching back to instructor view in Moodle, and then re-authenticating into Panopto.
We've had reports of similar issues too - any advice would be appreciated since this has only started to happen recently.
@Sacha Goodwin It will depend on your environment, I would say start with making sure they didn't remove themselves, from there, the student view from your LMS can be a cause. In the latter case, having them log out, then back in in Panopto can be a good first step.
I've never seen a situation where things were actually unavailable and that it was caused by the system. Generally, it is just a matter of pointing the user in the right direction or a change of permissions.
There was a period yesterday where the folders weren't loading in the browse menu, but that was just with my profile that has access to all of our folders, when I logged in with my regular user profile it was fine. I might dig into that if the above doesn't cover it, see if they are still unable to see them.
@Michael Espey I also see a number of instructors remove the Creator group from their folder. We're a Blackboard shop, and if you view your Panopto folder in Blackboard under Student Preview mode, because of how Panopto integrates with Bb (from what I've been told) and that fact that an instructor still is logged into Panopto, it doesn't give you a proper view of what students see. I think this is leading to confusion of instructors for us and in turn leads them to remove the Creator group from the folder.
My solution for now is to just give more trainings and explain not to remove those groups, as it will remove their access.
Kevin Hartman, University at Buffalo
@Kevin Hartman Hi Kevin it does seem to be the issue that @Kathryn has indicated - as you have done we have added to our support documentation and advising instructors to check the role they are logged into the VLE first - @Kathryn are there any options with regards to updating the plugin code for a future version such that the creator role is used even when they are 'viewing as student' in the VLE?
Seems odd that this has only raised it's head now...
@Sacha Goodwin To my knowledge, it is not on our current roadmap to change the way this works. However, I did find a feature request on our internal system for this, and I added your organization's account to indicate interest.
Also, you can post a feature request publicly here, so others can indicate interest.
Hi Guy,
Im going to follow this thread as we have exactly the same thing happening. Users seem to just vanish from the creators group then i re-provision the course having made no changes to the users in moodle and they will reappear. But then they can vanish again a few days later and the only permanent solution seems to be to add them manually as mentioned above. Any solution to this would be great as its causing a lot of frustration for many user not to mention myself :)
@Daryl Haynes I posted one reason this might be happening earlier in the thread. Instructors may notice they no longer can see their Creator options if they enter "student view" as an instructor, and then click on a panopto embedded video or the panopto block/lti link (Just by changing to student view, the permissions wouldn't be changed - they would need to also authenticate into Panopto.) This would sign the teacher into Panopto as a student and change the permissions temporarily.
If that replicates the issue - it should be resolved by signing out of Panopto first, switching back to instructor view in Moodle, and then re-authenticating into Panopto.
Also, though, it is possible that you are experiencing something else. I see that you have a support ticket open with our team this issue, so I will not open another one. Let us know if there is anything else we can help with.
@Kathryn Yeah panopto support did a lot of investigating last year and even with the help of the log files that we turned on in the back end of moodle nobody could figure out why it is happening. We tried to recreate your suggestion but could not get the same results. Support have opened the case back up as it has started happening again so if we do finds any resolutions I will be sure to post here!