It’s really important that you have the correct permissions set up on your Collections and Workflows, as this will help to control the visibility of workflows for staff members, along with controlling the actions that users can take. This article covers the Permissions related to the Collection and Workflow within Arbor Workflows. To check permissions relating to who has access to Arbor Workflows this article will support: School MIS and MAT MIS Business Roles and Arbor Workflow Permissions.
Permissions Overview
There are two core concepts to understand when controlling your permissions: Roles and Collections. You can read more about both concepts by following the linked documents at the bottom of this guide, but for now, let’s have a short review.
Roles: These are roles that exist either within your central team or at individual schools. Staff members at individual schools can be assigned to roles. All workflows run in a school context, and we will smartly bring in the correct person assigned to each role, per the school in which the workflow is running.
Collection + Workflows → Think of Collections as the folders in which you can store workflows. They’re not just simply for organisation, though; data can be analysed for all workflows that exist within a collection, along with being able to control permissions for staff.
Great, so how do I control permissions on a workflow?
Adding permissions works identically for Collections and Workflows. It is therefore important that you are in the correct place when managing your permissions.
To control permissions for a single workflow, head to the workflow in question and head through to the editor.
From your workflow, hit the Publish button and navigate to the People tab.
How do I know whether to add the permission to my Collection or Workflow?
This is quite simple: if you want to add permissions for a staff member to multiple workflows at once, adding permissions to a Collection is likely best. If you want to add permission for a staff member to a single workflow, then adding permissions to the Workflow is correct.
Remember, any permissions given at the collection level will be replicated for all workflows that belong to that collection. If, therefore, you make a user a manager of a workflow on a collection, they will automatically become a manager for all workflows within that collection.
For example, let’s imagine that you have a collection called Recruitment. It might be that you want to give permission to the HR Lead to become a manager for all workflows that occur under recruitment. Doing this is easily achieved by controlling the permissions on your Collection.
Managing permissions
Now that we’ve got the fundamentals down, let’s get started by adding permissions. This guide will show you how to add permissions to a Collection, but remember, adding permissions to a Workflow works in exactly the same way.
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To get started, navigate to the Workflows tab and select 'Select a Workflow'.
Here, I’ve navigated to our Collection called HR by clicking on the 'HR' title.
2. Click on the Collection Settings cog to open the sharing tab.
3. You can now control the permissions by either adding new permissions or removing existing permissions.
4. You can add either people as individual staff members or roles.
This is actually VERY important to get right - if you want to add a specific, single member of staff to a permission, use the people tab. If you want to add a role that exists across your schools (i.e. the Headteacher at the school the workflow is running in), then Roles are what you need.
For this, navigate back to the workflow in question, to the 'Publish' button and the 'People' Tab.
If I wanted to add a specific member of staff, I can do so by selecting them from the 'People' list.
If though I wanted to add the Executive Principle from schools across my trust, I would not add them as individual people, but instead as a Role. In this instance, each individual Executive Principal would be added when a workflow was run for their school.
Once the person or role is selected, you have two further choices: the level of permission to grant, along with whether they should be notified or not.
Choosing to notify will see the relevant member of staff notified each time they become a follower or manager of a workflow run.
What about removing permissions?
Managing your permissions regularly is good practice, whether this be at the start of a new academic year or following a change in job role. Remember, keeping your Roles up to date might solve your problem first, before making changes here!
If you do want to update a permission, simply find the Person or Role in question:
Hover over the Person or Role in question, and click the delete icon.
If you’ve got this far, you should hopefully now be ready to manage your permissions across your organisation's Collections and Workflows. For other commonly asked questions, see our FAQ below.
FAQ
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Does updating permissions affect current workflow runs, or only newly started runs?
Yes, updating permissions on a Collection or Workflow will immediately update permissions on all current workflow runs, including those complete, plus any future workflow runs.
The following articles will help with any Role-based questions: