Permissions Overview

As with all other features, a role’s ability to display an instance of the Forums feature is determined by whether the role is allowed to display the page. (For details on managing page permissions, see the Letting a Role View Pages and Context Links section.) Put another way, as long as the user can display the page, he or she can display the feature instance—though the user may or may not have permission to display any categories, topics or posts.

Users with permission to display the feature instance also can subscribe to it (though the subscription will show only those posts and replies that the user is allowed to see, as determined by category and topic permissions, as well as other settings).

Permission to display a category’s heading and its description is determined at the category level, by the category’s Access setting. You set this when you create or edit the category. (For details on this setting, see the Access Setting for a Category section.)

This same setting allows a role to display the topics contained within the category, though the topic’s own settings could be more restrictive than the category setting and hide it from a user’s view. Users with permission to display the category also can subscribe to it (though the subscription will show only those posts that the user is allowed to see, as determined by topic permissions, as well as other settings).

Permission to see a topic’s heading, its description and its posts is determined at the topic level, by the topic’s Access setting. You set this when you create or edit the topic. However, note that if the category’s Access setting is more restrictive than the topic’s, the topic will not be displayed. Note also that some posts could be hidden from general view, and some replies could be hidden from people who have not yet submitted their own replies (for details, see the Edit a User's Post or Reply section). For details on a topic’s Access setting, see the Access Setting for a Topic section.

You give a user permission to submit and edit posts and replies through the access settings for the feature. These include the following:

When you give a role any of these permissions, the role has the corresponding privileges only in those topics that they have permission to display (as determined by the Access settings for the topic and category.)

Note that these three permissions are handled discretely, so a role could have permission to do one thing but not the other. (For details, see the Working with the Permissions Tab section.)

The ability to act as a moderator—which may include the ability to approve posts prior to their being published and the ability to edit and delete posts within a specific topic—is handled on a topic-by-topic basis. For details, see the Moderation section.

You can give a role permission to help manage the feature instance by granting Can Administer Portlet permission. When you give a role this permission, the role has access to the Edit Forum menu, which gives the role most of permissions listed above, as well as others. For details, see the Working with the Permissions Tab section. Within a course context, the Faculty role automatically has this permission.

Though this permission is called Can Administer Portlet, it does not give users the ability to administer permissions, layout and other advanced settings. This can only be done by giving the role the Can Admin privilege for the context, which is a much bigger privilege overall (as described in the Let a Role Administer a Context section).

There are several procedures in this guide that give you the ability to make a topic or post visible, read-only or hidden. If the state of a topic and a post conflict, the more restrictive label applies. Note that whatever setting applies to a post also applies to that post’s replies.

These states are defined as follows: