myGriffith permissions restructure
We are restructuring how permissions are granted to publishers. Previously, publishers were assigned to a specific asset (a carousel, contact list, etc). There is a growing need to assign permissions more effectively in order to:
- align page ownership more closely to publishing rights
- have clearer links between page owners and their publishers
- manage changes in publishers (and annual audits)
The plan is to use CMS User Groups for each page owner (Director Student Success, Director Campus Life, etc). Each owner's group will contain the publishers they nominate to manage their content. Each owner's group will be granted permission to manage relevant content that group is responsible for.
Page owners can authorise a the addition or removal of a publisher in their group at any time and those publishers will automatically gain or lose access to manage all the associated content. Page owners will be asked to audit their publisher group annually.
There are a number of issue we are working through in order to approach the changes without causing disruption or friction between groups.
One significant consideration is when myGriffith was created numerous publishers were assigned to areas they are not responsible for. For example, Student Administration staff have access to manage carousel items on the Study support page but according to the governance model they have no responsibility for that page.
It is possible they could be added to another group (which is responsible), or they could ask the other group to publish items on their behalf. Either way, it is up to the page owner to determine who is in their group and thus who has access to manage their content.
The myGriffith page owners and publishers spreadsheet contains a visual summary of governance including page ownership, assets types on each page and publishers who can manage those assets. The second tab of that document is a working document facilitating this permission restructure.
Supporting students category updates
The Portals and Search team updated the security applied to links in staff portal to remove access from students who should be accessing myGriffith instead of staff portal.
There is potential for some fringe case users to be impacted by any security adjustments in unforeseen ways so we are working with Student Administration, ITSC , EIS Assist and others to identify potential issues and minimise the number of users as far as possible.
We are mindful of some additional load on support staff through this transition so we are coordinating the timing of these changes with ITSC and EIS Assist.
We need to update 86 links and folders in the Staff portal > Supporting students category and about 60 of these could potentially impact some edge case users in unexpected ways. At present we are limiting updates to these links to just 10 changes per week as per the plan outlined below.
We are working with Student Administration to rank the links and folders in the 'Supporting students' category according to their priority.
Then the following process will be repeated each Monday:
- We will select 10 links and up to 2 sub-folders to restricted the following Monday.
- We will meet with EIS Assist to discuss potential issues with any of the 10 links selected being restricted.
- By Wednesday we will provide ITSC details about the links/folders being restricted the following Monday and include the following details for each link:
- The Link path > Link text
- The destination URL or component/application name
- The destination description
- Ideas about any audiences who may be impacted:
- Current roles applied to the link
- Future roles applied to the link
- Information about [ideal/alternate] access locations and/or workarounds for:
- students
- staff
- Edge case users
- The following Monday we will make the changes to the previously selected links live.
Staff who have access can review the upcoming and past link changes in the below spreadsheet.
Staff portal weekly updates: spreadsheet
Support issues related to a link or folder which is on the list of recently restricted links will be resolved at the point of contact by IT Service Centre if possible.
If IT Service Centre cannot resolve the issue they will log a Service Now request and assign it to EIS Assist. The category for these jobs should be EISAssist > myGriffith and assigned to ' EIS Assist'. If EIS Assist cannot resolve the issues they will get assistance from the Portals and Search team or discuss options.
Learning and teaching category updates
The Portals and Search team worked with Academic Services, Student Administration, International, Learning Futures and BSS Student Systems teams to update and restructure the content within the staff portal 'Learning and teaching' category. The changes went live in December 2015.
This project delivered an enhanced student portal, which went live in October 2015. The Portals and Search team were a technical resource to the project and are involved in technical operations of the myGriffith Portal.
Restricting student access to the staff portal
The Portals and Search team is coordinating updates to the security applied to hundreds of links in staff portal to remove access from students who should be accessing myGriffith instead of 'Staff portal'.
There is potential for some fringe case users to be impacted by any security adjustments in unforeseen ways so we are working closely with Student Administration, ITSC, EIS Assist to identify potential issues and minimise the degree of impact on user and support staff as far as possible.
Branding migrations (Gen 5 to Gen 7)
During 2015, on behalf of OMC Web Services, the Portals and Search team assisted many site owners to migrate their site branding from Generation 5 Intranet branding to Generation 7 ( G7 ) branding. This supported the launch of the myGriffith Student Portal and various other Griffith projects and initiatives.
If you are a site owner or publisher for a site which still has the old branding contact OMC Web Services to discuss available branding options for your site.
Note: Although the G7 branding status page is no longer updated, it remains visible as a static reference and resource only. It lists all intranet sites and their branding status at the end of 2015.