Community Roles overview

Community Roles is an optional feature with which Super Admins can create special "titles" for their organization and then assign them to the members in order to establish title-specific access permissions, such as which communities a member can access and what content a member can view in those communities.

IMPORTANT: Currently, Community Roles control a member's access privileges to a community's Workspace only. See Workspace Overview to learn more. In the future, their use may expand to other Higher Logic modules.

Community Roles and AMS-managed communities

Community Roles are intended for customers whose community site is HL-managed (i.e., it is not integrated with an external AMS/CRM database).

Customers whose community site is integrated with an external AMS/CRM database ("AMS-managed") should manage their member roles in that external database only.

However:

• your AMS-managed roles will display on the Community Roles page in Admin (described below), but they cannot be edited or deleted there; their Integration Keys display, but are for referential purposes only.
• you can create separate, unique Higher Logic roles and assign them to your members. This is helpful in cases where you need a role to fulfill a specific purpose, but that role does not exist in your AMS.

Notes

Community Roles are assigned at the Community Type level, which gives Super Admins the ability to customize and manage which roles are available to which communities.

• A Community Role can be assigned to multiple Community Types.
• A Community Type can have multiple Community Roles.
• A Community Role can be assigned to multiple community members.
• A community member can have multiple Community Roles.
• A community member who has been assigned multiple Community Roles has the cumulative permissions of all of those roles.

Super Admins can:

• create Community Roles.
• add Community Roles to Community Types (via Community > Communities > Types).
• customize the appearance of user profiles for each Community Role.
• assign Community Roles to members of any community (via Community > Communities > Roles).

Community Admins can:

• assign Community Roles to members of their community only (via Settings > Members).

Getting started with Community Roles

There are four high-level steps to setting up Community Roles. These are listed below in their required order and then detailed in dedicated sections in this article.

1. Create a Community Role
2. Add the Community Role to a Community Type
3. Assign the Community Role to one or more members from within a community
4. Define the permissions for the Community Role

Access your Community Roles

To access your Community Roles:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Community > Communities > Roles.

The Community Roles list page displays the roles in your account.

Manage your Community Roles

Select a role in the list to enable the page-top options, then:

• click Edit to change its name and description.
• click Delete, followed by Delete in the confirmation pop-up, to permanently remove the role.

You do not have to select a role to:

• click the magnifying glass icon to expand a search field that you can use to more quickly find one or more roles by querying the Name and Description fields. The list automatically updates with each typed character and displays all records (visible and hidden) that contain a match. Click the X to clear the search field and restore the original list.
• click the down-arrow icon to export the list of roles (as CommunityRoles.csv). The file contains the default list view, irrespective of whether columns are hidden.

Step 1 - Create a Community Role

1. Click the plus sign to the right of the page title.

2. On the dialog:

• Specify an appropriate name for the role.
• Optionally, provide a description that informs other Admins of this role's purpose. This displays on the Community Roles page.
• Optionally, check the box to make this a "leadership" role.

TIP: Refer to Understand the Include in community leadership setting, below, to learn how to maximize your use of this setting.

3. Click Save.
4. Review the list and verify that the new role displays.

Step 2 - Add the role to a Community Type

Community Roles are added to Community Types. All communities of that Type then automatically have those roles available to be assigned to the community's members.

NOTE: If a community has Type-based roles and its Type is changed, its existing roles are automatically replaced with the roles of its new Type.

To add a role to a Community Type:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Community > Communities > Types.

3. Click to select the Community Type to which you want to add the role and click the Edit button.

4. On the Edit Community Type overlay dialog, scroll down to the Permissions section.

5. Click into the Add Roles field and select the role from the list that displays. You can:

• Click any other roles that you want to add.
• Click the small x to delete a role.

6. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

The Community Roles that you have selected are now available to be assigned to members of all communities that are of this Community Type.

Step 3 - Assign roles to members from within the community

Community Roles are a community-based permission, so they are assigned to community members from within the associated community.

NOTE: If you assign multiple roles to a community member, the member will have the cumulative permissions of all of those roles.

1. Navigate to a community.
2. Click Settings, and then click Members.

3. Click a member's Edit Roles button (in the Actions column) to manage (assign, remove) that member's role assignments.

NOTE: You can also simultaneously manage roles for multiple users by checking their boxes and then selecting Edit Roles from the Select action dropdown. This option displays only on communities that have Community Roles.

The available roles are listed on the Edit Roles dialog, along with a few other settings.

NOTE: Any role that has a crown icon (as do Chair and Co-Chair below) was set as a "leadership" role on the Community Roles page in Admin (refer to Step 1 - Create a Community Role, above). Refer to Understand the Include in community leadership setting, below, for information about this setting.

4. Check the boxes for any roles that you want to assign to the selected member. You can also:

• click the calendar icons to specify start and end dates for the role assignment for this member, as shown.

TIP: This is helpful if, for example, a member is filling in during an absence or has been given a task for which they require temporary access and/or view permissions.

• check the Include in community leadership box to give the member the community leadership banner and have them included in the Community Leaders widget.

TIP: Refer to Understand the Include in community leadership setting, below, to learn how to maximize your use of this setting.

• click the dropdown to select which role to highlight in the community's Members Directory.
• check either or both boxes to make this member a Community Admin and/or a Community Moderator.

5. Click Add to apply your settings.
6. Review the Roles column of the Members page to ensure that the changes you've made display as expected.

Step 4 - Define a role's permissions

The final step is to define the role's permissions in the Admin interface. All community members who are assigned the role will have these permissions.

NOTE: A newly assigned role must sync to Workspace before it displays on this page; this sync might take some time. If you don't see your role, give the sync time to complete and return here in a while.

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Workspace > Group Roles.

3. On the Group Roles page, click the role's associated modify link on the right.

4. On the Modify an Existing Group Role page, you can:

• manage the role's Name, Description, and Moderation Rules, and
• set the read-access, voting, and group-management permissions for the role.

5. Click Update at the bottom of the page to save the role's permissions.

Understand the Include in community leadership setting

This section describes the effects of the Include in community leadership? setting, which displays as a checkbox in the following places.

Admin interface (Super Admins only)

Navigate to the Community Roles page (Community > Communities > Roles).

When you create or edit a role, the checkbox is on the Edit Community Role dialog.

When this option is set here, the role is designated as a "leadership" role and three things happen:

• the role displays a checkmark/tick in the Leadership Role column of the Community Roles page,
• the role now displays the crown icon on the Settings > Members > {member} Edit Roles dialog, AND
• all members who are assigned the role will be included in the Community Leaders widget.

Community settings (Super Admins and Community Admins)

Navigate to the Manage Members list page (Settings > Members) in the community.

When you click the Edit Roles button for a member, the checkbox is on the Edit Roles dialog.

When this option is set here:

• the selected member will be included in the Community Leaders widget, irrespective of whether they have been assigned a "leadership" role. (Refer to Community Leaders widget display conditions, below, for more information.)
  • Obviously, if you assign a "leadership" role to a member, you don't have to also check the "include" box.

NOTE: Essentially, the notable distinction between these two methods is that when the setting is applied in Admin, it is for the Role and, as such, will be applicable to all users who are assigned that role. Whereas, when the setting is applied via a community's Settings page, it is applicable only to the selected community members.

Temporary leadership role for a member

When you are setting roles for members via the community Settings > Members page, you also have the option to make that role assignment temporary by setting start and end dates.

EXAMPLE: This might be useful if a member is filling in during an absence or has been given a task for which they require temporary access to and/or view permissions for an area of the community that they can't typically access.

Start and end dates

Using the Start and End dates is a great hands-off way to "set and forget" role assignments.

Start and End dates not specified

• The role assignment does not expire; this is indicated on the Members list:

Start and End dates are specified

• The role assignment is only for the term that is specified; this is indicated on the Members list:

Notes

If you specify a start date but not an end date, the assignment will begin when scheduled and not end until/unless an Admin ends the assignment.

If you specify an end date but not a start date, the assignment starts immediately and ends on the specified date. 

Community Leaders widget display conditions

This section provides quick-reference information on when a member will and will not be included in the Community Leaders widget.

A member is INCLUDED in widget if:

• Member has been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = YES
  • Role's time frame is active/current = YES
  • Include in community leadership? box = not checked

• Member has been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = YES
  • Role's time frame is active/current = YES
  • Include in community leadership? box = checked

• Member has been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = YES
  • Role's time frame is active/current = NO (was never set; has expired; or is a future date)
  • Include in community leadership? box = checked

• Member has been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = NO
  • Role's time frame is active/current = YES
  • Include in community leadership? box = checked
• Member has been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = NO
  • Role's time frame is active/current = NO (was never set; has expired; or is a future date)
  • Include in community leadership? box = checked
• Member has not been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = N/A
  • Role's time frame is active/current = N/A
  • Include in community leadership? box = checked

A member is NOT INCLUDED in widget if:

• Member has been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = YES
  • Role's time frame is active/current = NO (was never set; has expired; or is a future date)
  • Include in community leadership? box = not checked
• Member has been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = NO
  • Role's time frame is active/current = YES
  • Include in community leadership? box = not checked
• Member has been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = NO
  • Role's time frame is active/current = NO (was never set; has expired; or is a future date)
  • Include in community leadership? box = not checked
• Member has not been assigned a role
  • Role is a "leadership" role = N/A
  • Role's time frame is active/current = N/A
  • Include in community leadership? box = not checked