Hi everyone,
I'm wondering if there is a way to allow participants of a community to have read permissions by default. Right now when I look at a file in the content collection the only roles set-up by default are Organization Leader, Organization Builder and Assistant.
Here's why I'm asking. When a faculty member creates an announcement and attaches a file, the participants of her community are able to access the link from within Blackboard with no problems. But majority of the members are clicking the link from the email that is being sent out with the content of the announcement, and when they click the link in the email they either receive an HTTP error or a permission denied message. I want to avoid having her edit the permissions of a file every time she creates an announcement with an attachment.
Any tips?
Thanks,- Michael
Michael,
Do the organization members get this error message after they have already logged into Blackboard, or do they only get it if they try to open the file before they have logged into Blackboard?
Mike
Mike,
If the user isn't already logged in they get a pop-up window asking them to do so before the page opens, and then the error page appears. We just upgraded to SP8 if it helps at all.
- Michael
In that case, the problem isn't a lack of default permissions on the files for organization members. The problem is, until they have logged into Blackboard, they are not organization members. Rather, they are "guest", and can only see what "guest" can see. If your system does not allow guest (unauthenticated) access, or the organization does not allow guests, or the files do not allow everyone on the system read them, then they will get "access denied" errors.
Doesn't the pop-up login window act as a login to Blackboard? Once a user completes the log-in window, they'll see the error but they're logged into Blackboard as indicated by their username appearing at the top of the screen. They can also navigate to and access all their courses. But until I go in and change the permissions of the linked file to allow read access to all participants, this error seems to reappear. I've only had this happen twice so far but it's been the same solution in both cases.
I thought you said that they got this message before they'd logged into Blackboard--did I misunderstand?
Sorry for not being clear. When they click the link in their email, the browser opens with a pop-up asking for their username and password. The error is displayed after they enter their credentials and log in.
Normally you shouldn't have to specifically include read permissions for course users. Even if you don't see "All Course when looking at the file permissions, students can normally read files that are linked from the course files area because the read permissions are usually inherited from the folder, but there are definitely situations where that's not the case.
However, since since students can see the announcement attachments directly in Blackboard, but not from the email--even after they have apparently gotten a pop-up to log into Blackboard--it seems more like some kid of issue with the way the browser is handling those direct webdav connections to the file from the email. I tested by copying the URL for the file that's included in the announcement email and pasting it into the address bar of different browsers (without being logged into Blackboard). After logging in with the popup window Firefox displayed the image for me, but IE and Chrome showed the "Access denied" error message.
Do you find there's a difference based on what browser or email client they are using to read the announcement email?