Please re-add default sharing functionality

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1

To be completed by the original poster:

CMS Version

3+

Player Type

Windows

Player Version

3+

Issue

Same issue as this user but the solution is far from feasible.(Usercontent isn't shared with it's group!?)
We have dozens of user groups for dozens of restaurants across campus. This solution requires every user save media and layouts content to a specific folder in order to have it be shared by default. These are high expectations for new users and adds so many points of failure that will end up consuming a lot of our developers time. We did not want the users to have to use the folders at all.

We simply just want users who share a group to share content by default as it was in version 2…

2

Hi, I’m “this user” :slight_smile:

and I’m totally on your side! We have to manage over 200 systems ATM with multiple users and user groups on two servers (plus a test server) an v3 make our lives also way harder.

We tried the folder solution some time but get rid of it in most cases, because it is extremely frustrating that you are always in the wrong folder and then you can’t find anything. Especially because Monitors, Layouts and Playlists share the same folders/folder-struktures, so you constantly have to change folder when you go back and forth between those places. You definitely can’t force this annoying-to-use system to users with less tech experience. In addition to the annoying nature of the system, it takes to much space on smaller screens (eg. Smartphones), so you not only have to change folders all the time, additionally you have to open and close them too. And when someone put something in the wrong folder, what constantly happend, it is complicated to move things around (->no drag-and-drop).

Combined with my other v3 problem that the search in the filter bar ist useless because you can’t “AND” things, and therefor we can’t use dynamic monitor groups anymore, make working with v3 really a pain-in-the-ass in comparison with v2!

Our “solution” for now is to get rid off all share rights, because managing them manually is impossible for bigger libraries, and upgrade every user to a group admin. Then when you have user groups and add every user to there corresponding one, every “group admin”-user in this group can see/edit/delete every content from every other user in this group. This way you can’t make an “see+edit only” share but it works if every user in it’s group is trustworthy, knows what he/she is doing and therefor doesn’t (accidentally) destroys other peoples works. It’s not ideal but it works O.K. in our case.

Hope this helps.

3

Folders solve a long running issue with Xibo permissions where users being added/removed from/to user groups didn’t have their new permissions carried over. This is because the old v2 settings for “default permissions” are only applied to new objects. Applying them to edited objects is not practical either, because the user may well have gone on to make adjustments to the sharing on the item as they saw fit.

Folders solve this issue, and more, because you can give a user group permission to a folder and they can share content between them without sharing the individual items.

There are several users I know of which find folders to be a much better workflow than what they had before, but we’d like the product to work for as many use cases as possible, and we do want to get sharing/permissions right if we can.

I’ve picked out a few things we can work on from both of your posts:

Folders:

Sharing

  • find some way of automatically sharing content (view/edit/delete) with users who belong to the same group

You can certainly make everyone a group admin and broadly get this functionality already (they can delete too, as you pointed out).

A “quick and simple” thing we could do is have a global option which enables view/edit for all group members. What we struggle with here though is that users can belong to multiple groups and we don’t have a concept of “group owner” on items.

We will throw some ideas around - further input is always welcome.

Searching

Combined with my other v3 problem that the search in the filter bar ist useless because you can’t “AND” things

We have this on our list to look at, but for obvious reasons we can’t change it in a minor release, so it will be looked at for v4. For reference this is your post about it.

Thanks,
Dan

4

Appreciate the response.

I have no love at all for the folders and can’t really see a way for them to be practical for low-level users. I have spent a lot of time training all these users and it’s hard enough for most of them as it is.
Also its very visually ambiguous which folders are open and closed. I painstakingly replaced them with + and - buttons in CSS.

What we struggle with here though is that users can belong to multiple groups and we don’t have a concept of “group owner” on items.

You’re saying that someone in group A + group B. Creates content for group A but then people from group B could also edit/view it…

Perhaps with the “quick and simple” implementation enabled, during Creation of media/layouts have a pre-folded section - ‘Default Group Sharing’
and show each Group they are in and allow them to toggle them off if desired, but defaulted to all groups on (maybe a additional ‘remember selection’ option). That being said, in my use-case pretty much all users are in a single User Group and the v2 implementation worked perfectly for us.

I don’t see the harm of having the old default sharing option still available in v3. Sure its not perfect and there are edge cases but it feels a lot better than having to rely on users to put things in the right places. Considering that folders are optional, I think we really need this feature available.

Also a mass permissions update by Owner could be a useful feature and perhaps optionally triggered when adding/removing users from a group. I’m sure there are some bad edge cases for this as well.

5

Supporting a way for you and others to effectively use sharing without using folders is definitely something I want to get right.

We also want to improve folders user experience, so if you have made improvements to the visual representation of folders we’d be delighted to take that onboard, even if you don’t ultimately use that yourself.

Yes exactly, which is/was also the case with default permissions in v2, where the new item would be shared with group A and group B. In fact they do not “create content for group A”, they create content for themselves. If the user moved out of group A and into group C, their content is still shared with group A and B. An admin of group A or C also gets access to the content.

What we had in v2 worked perfectly well for simple use cases where users/groups were 1 to 1. For your use case, I don’t see the harm either. A fair number of Xibo instances have 100’s of users in 100’s of user groups, and users regularly moving between groups. The old v2 system quickly turns into a ball of string in these cases.

Technical considerations aside, I don’t think I can put back what we had in v2 “as-is”. If it is there people use it, and then come unstuck and get rightly frustrated.

What I can say is that i’ll get together with the rest of the team and come up with a solution to cover off your concerns, ahead of the next release due on Tuesday.

6

We’re investigating the below workflow, which I think completely solves your issue and puts you in a better place than the system in v2.

Set a “home” folder for a user

The workflow would be:

  1. Turn the folder feature off
  2. Set a “home folder” on all of your users, in your case you would have a home folder per group
  3. All new content automatically saves in the home folder - with folders off, the user never sees this
  4. As an admin you’ve set sharing on the home folder exactly how you want

This feature would also be useful for users who did want to use folders, and for users who want to maintain the current functionality, they set the home folder to be the root folder currently used.

We’d add some other things around this for administrative purposes, such as a feature to enable a “Folders” admin page so that permissions could be set, etc.

7

Thanks for working on this. This sounds like a possible solution to me, but it still seems like similar edge cases.

A user in two groups would be able to see content from the folder we’ve set as their home folder, but they wouldn’t be able to see their second groups folder (with folders feature off)? Maybe you’re saying the user will be able to switch between their home folders themselves as needed?

I assume with the implementation of this, all content that currently exists in the root folder is going to have to be transferred to the corresponding new Home Folder set for the user/user groups. If so, could this process be attached to the changing of a user’s root folder? Optionally ask if the user’s owned content should be moved accordingly.

Almost feel like if all content was in a single root folder with ‘edit/view’ permissions, and users could only see content from users they share a group with, or content that has been manually shared with their group. All my problems would be solved…
(like the existing ‘Owner User Group’ filter for the groups that user is in… Just return filtered content for Owner User Group A + Group B if user is in Group A + B)

Have you considered adding the mass update ‘With Selected’ feature to the Users Panel. I could see options for Set Home Folder, Set User Groups, Set Homepage, Set User Type, Retire. How it currently stands I assume we would need to touch each individual user to set Home Folder.

8

The home folder only helps users put content in the right place - with folders disabled you know that a user will always add content to their Home folder whenever they do anything.

As an admin you will still be able to see folders (in a new folders page) and set sharing as necessary.

For a simple Group A → Users 1 and 2 scenario, you would create Folder A which you share with Group A and set as home for Users 1 and 2. All new content added by Users 1 or 2 automatically goes in Folder A, and both users have access to it.

If their second group had a different folder, you could set that folder to also be shared with them. When folders are disabled the content would all appear in the same list, same as if you select “All folders” with folders enabled.

For example:

  • Group A and Group B
  • User 1 is in Group A and Group B

In v2 the new content would have been shared individually with both groups (assuming group view/edit/delete in settings).

In v3 the new content goes in Folder A (the home of User 1), which is shared with Group A and Group B.

Yeah, we have lots of multi-select things on our list - i’ll note down your suggestions.

Perhaps a global option for this is the simplest solution for you, Patrick and anyone else wanting a super simple set up. All sharing is managed by dropping users in and out of groups. I’ll discuss this option with the team and see if its viable.

I am not familiar with your setup beyond multiple restaurants per campus - but I have worked with an organisation using Xibo in similar circumstances. Folders allowed them to adopt a system where a user only belongs to one user group.

They have:

  • a folder per restaurant
  • all “single restaurant users” in the same group
  • a group for support staff that have access to all restaurants folders (these are only in a group called “support staff”)

In their situation they trust users not to use the root folder (they trained them to select the right folder one time and then collapse the menu). But with the above change we will be able to set home folders appropriately and disable the folders feature for the “single restaurant users” group.

The support staff are trained to pick the right folder when working with a restaurant. The org also have other folders for “National” and “Regional” content, shared with the right groups.

This may not be useful at all in your situation, but I thought it worth mentioning in case.

9

Our current setup is,

  • User Group per shop or building
  • Give displays ‘view’ permissions to corresponding Group. (w/ schedule with view option in settings)
  • Some Managers can float between 2-3 shops so they are added to 2-3 groups.

Issue now is somebody schedules a layout and then someone needs to make a change but they can’t see the layout because it wasn’t shared by default. (and the other employee is taking the day off)

Perhaps a global option for this is the simplest solution for you, Patrick and anyone else wanting a super simple set up. All sharing is managed by dropping users in and out of groups. I’ll discuss this option with the team and see if its viable.

Simple is good!! We want to least complex end user experience possible.

We have 120+ Xibo digital signs so far!

10

Our intention for how you would manage that in v3 is:

  • User Group for Shop Staff (set their features here, turn off folders, etc)
  • Folder per shop
  • Put the displays for each shop in its shop folder
  • Share the shop folder with the shop user (now done during “add user” if you set as home)
  • Share the 2-3 shop folders with appropriate managers

As a bonus an admin gets a much clearer view of who has what content and where.

Fantastic! :fireworks:

11

Doesn’t really work when I’ve got a dozen users that are supposed to be in 10+ shops, with folders off. Their content is not going to be seen by the users that are only in a specific shop because the content will be saved in some other shop folder. I guess I have to make a single folder for ALL shops to share, seems like the only way to make this new sharing system to work. :frowning:

12

In v2 new content uploaded by these users must have been given permissions to the whole group? So that they all had access?

In v3 could all of these users could share a folder, which is shared with everyone? Any time they add new content (new layouts, new library uploads, etc) it would be put in the “everyone folder” which is shared with everyone who needs it.

It also depends somewhat on what these roving users are doing - if they are editing layouts, replacing media, etc, then those operations happen in the current folder, not in their home folder. I.e. if they edit a layout in “Folder - Shop A” and upload some new content, the new content will also be in “Folder - Shop A”.

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