Best Practices for Roles and Permissions
Choosing an approach
User roles and permissions determine how outcomes assessment work is distributed across campus. Institutions can choose the approach that best fits each unit:
Centralized: One person (for example, an Administrator) manages all connections, learning outcomes, and data entry for their unit.
Dispersed: An Administrator grants Administrator or Creator access to multiple people, distributing the work of writing outcomes and entering data across the unit.
Different institutions can use different approaches. Permissions can also be used to limit access for anyone who has not yet been trained on a feature, for example, restricting access to the General Settings page until a user is ready for it.
Maintaining roles and permissions
User roles and permissions, like the institutional hierarchy, are not a set-it-and-forget-it configuration. They require ongoing maintenance. Institutions should review roles and permissions annually and update access for each new time period to reflect institutional changes: shifts in responsibilities, retirements, new appointments, and reorganizations. Changes to the institutional hierarchy itself—such as new units being added or existing units being removed—should also prompt a review of who has access and at what level.
Because past time periods should be archived to view-only status, there is no need to go back and remove a user's access from prior time periods in the institutional hierarchy. Updating access for the current and upcoming time periods is sufficient. If anything, that access record serves a historical reporting purpose: it shows that the user had access during that time period.
Access to Outcomes depends on access to your institution's tools. If a user no longer has access to institutional tools, they will not have access to Outcomes.
Tip
Permissions affect both who can enter information and who can view reports. Plan roles with both data entry and reporting needs in mind.